Roland Jupiter-80 v/s MKS-80 (Jupiter-8) : The Blind Test - YouTube



It's indeed very hard to hear any difference

Answers for the Test:

1A MKS80 - 1B JP80
2A JP80 - 2B MKS80
3A MKS80 - 3B JP80

I definitely heard a difference on the first sound. 1a sounded analog to me and 1b sounded digital to me. And this is when I watched it before looking at the answers.

"MKS-80 (Jupiter 8)" puts a pretty massive dent into the credibility of the whole exercise, methinks.

For years I always thought that the MKS 80 was basically a rack of the jupiter 8.
But then recently I read this-

"Contrary to popular belief, the voice architecture is more closely related to the Jupiter-6 synthesizer than the Jupiter-8, the service manual states that "The module board of MKS-80 features the following in addition to that of JP-6, its brother module. ) "

Yes, of course...and Santa Clause is real...

PS: This is a DIGITAL Youtube clip with heavily compressed audio. A real Blind Test is only possible with the real instruments under studio conditions.

But the clip demonstrates anyway how the Jupiter-80 comes very close to emulate classic analog sauriers. But it can also emulate digital sauriers like the D-50 ( I have a JP-80 next to a Juno-6 and D-50) and the JP-80 can create of course much more sounds than all of those sauriers together and on top of all of this, it offers some of the best acoustic emulations ever available on an elecronic hardware instrument...

Not for me. Headphones, heard it right away. And thats just the oscillator, let alone all of the other differences. Sounds less like an analog synth than Diva.

There is indeed NO real Jupiter-8 module existent. Here are more details of the differences between the Jupiters and MKS:
The Stretta Procedure: Roland Jupiter 8 vs. MKS-80


Everyone's irrational believe system can heavily disturb a rational assessment.

In fact, to me, when comparing my JP-80 with my Juno-6 and D-50 one to one, I have to say, THE JUPITER-80 sounds better than the originals...

PS: I am not from Roland and they don't pay me any money for this...

What?

Give me a blind test of a REAL Jupiter 80 vs. the analog modeling of the Jupiter-80...
not some BS Jupiter 80 vs. Jupiter 80, and I'll tell you which one is the analog one.
If you think one sounds better, so be it. I'm not going to argue taste, only fact.

In fact, the VERY best I've heard is the Solaris... and I can still spot the analog.
But it's damn close. And I like the other features no analog synth provides, actually
more than analog. I'm not an analog purist, I like digital. But it must be cool.

Think what you will. If you like it thats cool, but you aren't going to convince people who hear the difference that they don't.

I didn't say which one was better, only that I could tell the difference immediately.

No question these sounded indistinguishable, but i'd also say that these patches were pretty lame. I'd expect a $3000 digital synth to be able to nail these simple, uninteresting analog sounds. But every time iv heard a clip or video of a jupiter 8 or mks80 that made me drool, it was the wild out there stuff that just had tons of character and vibe. Lets here the jupiter 80 do that.

Just like you, I was very critical and dismissive towards the Jupiter-80 after one year of watching and listening every available clip and video on the web.

Only after testing the JP-80 for two days under good audio conditions, getting the whole structure and programing and playing my own sounds, I had to realize, that this is the best sounding and most expressive synth Roland has ever built. So I had to change my mind 180 degrees...

The web clips and videos unfortunately don't do justice at all to this marvelous instrument, as it is the case with most factory presets and demos. The marketing of the JP-80 is just bad...

that video has been around a little already on GS.. last time it was held up as an example of how good the jp80 is at jp8 (mks80) sounds... it got shot down pretty quick.

I have tried the search function, but didn't find this clip. So sorry for posting it again. I am quite new to this extremely busy forum...

Whatever, I will enjoy my digital, analog, electro mechanical and acoustic instruments and it's great to see, how hardware synths are getting better and better (analog and digital) since my synth fever has started in the early eighties, when I was still a kid, playing my first synth, the Roland JUNO-6...

It's just a dream to be a synth player nowadays...

A better test would be if somebody posted up some raw wav files on the MKS80 and the midi file playing it, and all the settings of the patch, and somebody else with a JP80 tries to re-create it, and posts up a similar raw wav file.

I've got an MKS80 rev4 and can post up examples if some JP80 wanted to try to copy them.

It should go without saying that duplicating static patches is much easier than something with fliter sweeps and other param changes ...

Who plays sounds like that anyway lol?

And yes, saying MKS-80 is a rackmount JP8 (straight from VSE no less) is grounds for something ...

lol, mks-80 is a jp8! Yay, not this again. so many things wrong with the premise of this that it's barely even worth talking about.

Hey MusicFan,

Welcome to the forum. We do this all day, every day.



Take a listen to this. It's a Jupiter 8 (not MKS-80) vs. a Solaris.
I think it pretty darn good but there's still a subtle phasing/thickening
and color on the Jupiter 8 that I like.

I've always lusted for a Solaris... Impressive comparison „Entrainer“! Thanks for posting!

I have to say that this is one of the better comparison videos.

I have yet to find a good Juno-60/106 or OB-Xa/8 comparison. The former on YouTube had the bass boost on the 106 on, and the latter on YouTube was just not very good quality.

Without doing any filter sweeps or PWM there's not much point in comparing just the raw waveforms. Samples will sound close in this manner.

To me it was easy to spot which one sounds like a Jupiter and which ones sounds like SH-201 (I used to own SH-201, good synth but not a Jupiter). Especially on the bass notes.

yep..thats crazy that all this people want to convince that there is no difference with bad quality mp3´s and most simple sounds..

Are you by any chance listing your JP-80 on ebay like everyone else and saying this to get the bids in?

I'm with the second poster - without even looking (I was on a different browser tab while the vid loaded) i could tell straight away the first sound which was analog and which wasn't. Aside from the extra noise it just.. was.. and the other just.. wasn't.

Exactly! Headphones here too (AKG K240 for ref). Was obvious straight away as soon as the MKS started playing. I've not heard any VA or softy sound like that.

Not that it matters to me cos I'm not an analog purist anyway and I even use software over hardware many times. At best it sounds like an, as usual, plastic version of analog - like any VA or digital recreation (inc software).

i could tell the difference..the rack just sounded "alive" the jp80 is a zombie!

I was at Roland Canada today and they had a 2010 pamphlet that showed the history of Roland synths from the beginning. They have a pic of each etc ... they describe the MKS-80 as a rackmount JP6, not 8.

Enough of people trying to say a MKS-80 = Jupiter 8 ... even Roland says the opposite.

I guessed 1 and 2 correctly listening on my iPad speaker.

I think the Jupiter 80 sounds really good. It is close enough to the MKS-80 in that demonstration, but I could hear the difference between the two. Nothing against how it sounded. I'd gladly take one, or preferably the rackmount version, any day. Not about to purcahse one though. I prefer a panel of knobs/sliders to create sounds with. Not a touchscreen.

What was the purpose of this demonstration anyways? To hear the difference between analog and digital or to show that Jupiter 80 can sound very similar to the MKS-80 with those sounds?

Yeah, I agree, it's pretty obvious which is which (I'm listening to this on my Genelec 8030As, BTW).

If it's that obvious with the terrible sound quality of youtube, I'd imagine it'd be even more obvious with a better quality recording.

Shows that the Jupiter80 is okay at emulating the MKS80 within fairly restricted parameters.

Now let's see what the JP80's good at in and of itself, besides marimba trilling and other uninspiring tricks, of course.