Well different people have different needs I guess... I like the knobby interface but already have a synth in the spare room because of space limits in the bedroom studio space. And one of the big pro's of the system 8 sound engine itself is that it's compact and leightweight.

While a lot people on GS complain the SE-2 is too small a lot of people buy it BECAUSE it's small. Perfect as carry-on luggage on the plane.

And if you ever did a live gig with HW you probably also realized that those very few pieces of gear you wanted to bring along suddenly tend to be a lot of pieces when bringing them to the location

To me the System-8 engine is among the most powerful synth engines that would fit into a tiny package. However there's indeed a huge offer of tiny synths by Roland and also I am happy with the System-1m so no complaint, only wishful thinking

Goes to show opinions on a forum are worthless from a marketing perspective. It is common the users with the more awkward tastes and needs are the most vocal.

Do you think antipathy against minikeys and tiny interfaces are awkward taste? I guess those are the most vocal opinions overall

Those not, but certainly it doesn't stop a lot of people from buying them.

My point is: I think the three big ones (korg, roland and yamaha) have enough resources to conduct market research. They don't risk their investment.

Volcas, boutiques and reface are products that have good acceptance in their target market, they have sold lots of those. (Not me BTW).

So when Roland, Korg or yamaha doesn't make a product you would like it is probably because you are out of their target market.

Or said it another way: forum participants are not statistical significant for marketing research.

In Facebook groups you can read this question a lot: "I bought synth X, is it any good? how do I use it?", The average buyer is totally clueless and lacks taste.

This forum is great for DSI, Moog, Waldorf and all the small manufacturers, in fact GS (and muff) is their niche market. They don't have money for market research (and probably don't care because they already know who their customers are) and so coming here gives them a good idea of what their actual market wants.

Yes that's for sure... They probably didn't sell that many System-8 so any sort of module/ rack seems to risky at this point... Nevertheless, you can't say there's no market for portable 8 voice synth modules. It's rather a marketing/ product line decision by Roland to reserve the eight voice ACB engine for their one big model at this time...

System-8ers!

Ever on the search for a “master” chorus tone for my fx-less hardware, I’ve been looking into a few options recently. I have a CE-2b on the synth board currently (which I like) but it doesn’t quite have that Junoish-motionless-dimensional thing happening (it’s also not stereo.)

So I’d ask, to those of you with first hand experience, how do you feel the System 8’s 106 chorus emulation stacks up to an actual 106’s, or more specifically the chorus on an RS-09. Maybe even a DC-2 or a CE-300?

Just curious, as I have never heard any of the above choruses in person, and maybe I’m on a fool’s errand, because I have a perfectly suitable option in the 106 plugout and the Sys8’s external input.

Thoughts?

I think the System-8 chorus sounds great. Very close to the Juno-106 chorus. And the best part you can turn off the noise!

I do have a CE-300 I use a lot and it sounds great but it is very noisy. Lots of swooshing in the background.

I haven't done any tests yet but I think i might try to see if I can pass a different synth through the input on the System 8 and through the chorus.

Right on!

I was running my SK20 through it last night and dug the sound, but they’re not exactly on top of each other, so it was a little tricky. Plus it’s not as immediate controlling the external FX parameters - so not ideal, but not bad for a set it and forget it situation.

I like hearing it’s not as noisy though

Do you have any mods on your CE-300, or do you just run line level right into it?

Unfortunately the fx you can load on the external input are separate of the internal synth engine. The whole signal chain is spearate of the synth patch. It's more for vocals/vocoder type of stuff, and I believ you can only load reverb and delay.

Would be awesome if you could set osc3 to external input (like on the System-1m) so you can drive an external synth through the juno chorus! Hopefully a future update could provide this..

For real? Definitely wasn’t the Juno chorus then anyway. Guess that squashes that idea haha

Thought I ran it through the flanger and the chorus though, but I could be mistaken. It was late and I only really hooked it up to test it. Was gonna play around with it more tonight.

Guess that just leaves one question then - RS-09, DC-2 or a CE-300? Ha

I will doublecheck tomorrow..

I can't trigger the arp from an external controler/DAW, I already turned the Remote Kbd option ON and nothing changes.

ANyone else has this problem?

External Input FX update:

You can run an external audio device through 2 FX simultaneously - a delay/chorus of choice and/or a reverb of choice.

They are drawn from the sys8’s own house FX, so you get those 2 right bank options - eg: either a combo of flange with a hall verb, or a delay with a plate, or simply a chorus if you’d like.

So, as MPrinsen accurately stated, you won’t be running your MS-20 through that 106 chorus emulation, at least not currently. Nor any distortion for that matter.

The 8’s FX are nice enough though, and my SK (and multiman) sounds pretty good through ‘em. But it’s not a great option if you have other outboard FX covering this ground, or like a little more real time flexibility with your FX.

I don’t have any reverb at the moment though, so it could be nice to take the pedal board’s chain through. Plus it frees up 2 ports on the interface, so I might just keep it there for the moment.

Would have been nice to try that Juno Chorus out though. Oh well.

So, a DC-2, or toss a little more at an RS and have yet another stringer for almost the same price?

Yup...Im not sure its meant to be triggered by a daw

That is correct. I usually record the Arpeggio MIDI notes into the DAW then I play them back from the DAW with MIDI to the S8. You can do that with MIDI clock sync to get things timed but it does take a bit of pre-planned thinking.

To be exact, I don't remember any of my poly synths which I can send a MIDI clock into and get the arpeggiator to run without doing it this way. I could be wrong though, I would have to experiment for a day or so to find out.

The System 8, like most Roland gear, has a nice but more common arpeggiator. I find it musically useful but not nearly as robust as some. Perfect for playing in real time. It is very stable and predictable which helps.

Back in the 80's before digital sequencers were so common we used to use the crap out of the arpeggiators. Whole songs were based on the patterns derived from them. The arpeggiator on the Jupiter 4 was a big deal for us in the band I was in and it was paramount that it as repeatable. We clocked it from custom-built circuits to the Arp, Korg and Sequential Circuits boards we had (pre-MIDI).

So in some ways the whole history of arpeggiators in use pre-dates MIDI so I never really think of the arpeggiator as a MIDI device like a sequencer - but that's just me.

Seems very weird since the reference manual states it is possible:

Remote Kbd OFF, ON

Turn this “ON” if you’re using an external MIDI keyboard instead of
the SYSTEM-8’s keyboard. In this case, the MIDI transmit channel
of your external MIDI keyboard does not matter. Normally, this can
be left at “OFF”
* If you want to control the arpeggiator from an external MIDI
device, turn this “ON"

Well maybe I misunderstood the performance use of the query. I realize you should be able to use any external keyboard to play the arpeggiator. I agree it is kind of odd to have that in the reference manual but it doesn't work. You may have found a legitimate "BUG".

system-8 finally reviewed in SOS.

Link please

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/roland-system-8

You'll need to pay £1 for the full review

Same guy that reviewed the SE02 this month. Equally boring reviews, mainly repeating already known facts from the specifications and not much else. I expect SOS to bring some more facts and indepth analysis in their reviews, but I did not find anything new in any of these reviews. In summary, it's made of plastic and it almost sounds as good as his Jupiter8.

It's been ages since Roland updated anything in the S8. Where is the JX-3P? There were promises of having some new stuff by "end of summer". That came and went. Is this product dead to them already?

I guess it's dead. Everytime someone dreams of a System-8 module someone seems to chime in and say: "They won't produce something without enough demand for it, you can be sure they are doing their market research well".

Honestly I think those voices are right, given the fact that the System-8 never did really do very well in the sales rankings of the shops (while the TB-03 did extremely well for example). So I guess it's boutiques like the TB-03 and the SH-01a where Roland have bigger business success these days...

Yes, no more plugouts since its release, becoming a joke now, my third plugout has a system-1 mono in it. Was expecting a jx3p in it soon after purchase....

I'm also disappointed...
If I remember correctly a Roland rep (in one of the first video previews) stated that the S8 had enough power for usefull updates and whatnot....
Ok no updates etc.. but not even another poly plug out for the 3th slot?

it's not dead... i will bet that we will be seeing more. firmware and plug-outs. also you can't compare sales of a boutique to a big synth, that's just silly. they don't produce big flagship products for raw sales profit. they know the kind of numbers they move, they have plenty of experience. smaller stuff like the boutiques probably subsidises the flagshippy forward thinking type stuff that generally doesn't sell insane numbers.

anyway the system-8 seems to be doing fine. prices are up again (second time!), so the retailers don't seem to be desperate to clear them out... it's now £1359 at some retailers, and i think they were £1270 at launch. if it was a dud, i think we'd be seeing prices falling under launch price, especially a year after the came out and if they were taking up valuable floor space.

but yeah, roland get your finger out. they're not doing themselves any favours with this muddy approach but it seems like there is no leadership/direction. probably wanting to make the cloud a big success foremost, since subscription models is where everything is headed

the JX-3P ACB code is there. it's not a killer app as far as the cloud is concerned, so i have no idea why they are sitting on it. maybe just trying to spread out content releases, but at least don't ignore us!

does this seem like a year-old review that's only just been published? if so, useless... don't know why the delay if it's just a bog standard run down of the features. why even bother.

But I can compare it to the sales of the DSI REV2-8, Minimoog Model D, Moog Subsequent 37, DSI REV2-16, Moog Subsequent 37 CV, DSI P6, MFB Dominion 1, Arturia MatrixBrute and DSI OB-6 - with every single of them (even the single product variation, if applicable!) doing considerably better than the S8 regarding sales while being at least in the same price region, if not even much more expensive.

But they also didn't do the promised third plugout which was promised to be there by now and they didn't do a keyboardless version of their flagship while lots of - say - P6 modules have been sold in the meantime.

I don't want it to be dead but you can't deny it would have made sense to bring another plugout to market rather sooner than later as they could sell more of the licenses as further the end of the product lifecycle still is away while investing the same amount of work overall. Let's hope they'll port over some of the boutiques or something - but that's not sure as they rather seem to want to sell the client an SH-01A for example instead of a plugout. And in the past roland also showed that they drop a product without delivering what they were promising to the buyers if it doesn't sell well, I think they also did it with the variOS for example.

This weekend I was browsing Thomann site and the S8 price was 1549€.
After reading your post I wanted to double check and guess what....they dropped the price..its 1425€.... :-/

Not many reviews on Thomann either and it's ranked at #34 in the synthesizer sales category. Wouldn't call that successful. Maybe if they'd released more plug-outs and updates by now it would have had more of a chance.