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Roland Jupiter X(m)


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Is it on point that the Jupiter X is competing most closely with the Yamaha Montage 6 and the Fantom is competing most closely with the Korg Kronos?

Yamaha U1 Upright, Roland Fantom 8, Nord Stage 4 HA73, Nord Wave 2, Korg Nautilus 73, Viscount Legend Live, Lots of Mainstage/VST Libraries

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Is it on point that the Jupiter X is competing most closely with the Yamaha Montage 6 and the Fantom is competing most closely with the Korg Kronos?

I guess you're looking at it like Kronos and Fantom are workstations with full sequencers, while Montage and Jupiter X are not. OTOH, you could also say the reverse, that the Jupiter X competes more with Kronos than it does with Montage, since Jupiter X includes VA emulations of numerous old Rolands, and Kronos includes VA emulations of numerous old Korgs, while Montage doesn't include VA at all (though Montage and Kronos both also kind of emulate a DX7). I guess really I'd say they are all different animals, each with different areas of overlap with the others.

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The Jupiter X is very interesting to me. I am just trying to figure out what boxes it checks or doesn't check in terms of its overall uses. I realize it's not a Fantom, but I still need to be able to trigger samples and hits for certain types of performances and styles.

 

I also realize it's not a Nord, but I would need something in that size, weight and price to be pretty high quality for playing acoustic piano and electromechanical sounds, too. So I realize it's a Jupiter X and what it isn't, but I would expect that the acoustic pianos, rhodes, wurly, clav and B3 organs are at least good enough to sit in a band setting. It looks like the V-Piano is held for the Fantoms and RD-2000s. I'm not expecting this to also be a Nord Stage, but sample triggers and all of the piano/EP/clav/organ usability does matter too when checking all the boxes for me. Can it replace a VR-730 (or VR-09) for those sounds and effects?

Yamaha U1 Upright, Roland Fantom 8, Nord Stage 4 HA73, Nord Wave 2, Korg Nautilus 73, Viscount Legend Live, Lots of Mainstage/VST Libraries

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The Jupiter X is very interesting to me. I am just trying to figure out what boxes it checks or doesn't check in terms of its overall uses. I realize it's not a Fantom, but I still need to be able to trigger samples

No user samples. Maybe you could supplement with an iPhone/iPad? It will be interesting to see the Jupiter X's MIDI implementation.

 

I also realize it's not a Nord, but I would need something in that size, weight and price to be pretty high quality for playing acoustic piano and electromechanical sounds, too. So I realize it's a Jupiter X and what it isn't, but I would expect that the acoustic pianos, rhodes, wurly, clav and B3 organs are at least good enough to sit in a band setting.

It's not state of the art for that stuff... it's non-synth sounds that you mention are derived from the old XV-5080 and RD-700GX. But that's certainly not unusable.

 

sample triggers and all of the piano/EP/clav/organ usability does matter too when checking all the boxes for me. Can it replace a VR-730 (or VR-09) for those sounds and effects?

VR doesn't do sample triggers either, unless I'm mis-remembering. I doubt organ will be as good on Jupiter X as in the VR. Piano and EP are probably better (VR is not SuperNatural except for synth, iirc). Don't have a clue about clav.

 

If you don't need all the knobiness of the Jupiter X but simply want the sounds, maybe the Jupiter Xm combined with some other bread and butter board would serve you better than a Jupiter X... all the same Jupiter sounds, and a something else to fill in the gaps? Might be competitive in total weight and budget.

 

 

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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Thanks, AnotherScott. That"s great to think about. The Jupiter X is a nice piece of gear and the new Fantom is a pretty great upgrade and a quality flagship. It also reinforces that the FA-07 is hardly obsolete and still a ton of bang for the buck. The FA sounds don"t often excite or inspire me and it"s not the most fulfilling build quality, or a very interesting slab to move your hands around, but it"s a great workhorse for inexpensive money to be on the go with me. That's it's job. The new Fantoms and Jupiters feel more like centerpieces to how one approaches their music and creates, if that makes sense - and instruments that I would probably want to keep longer.

 

Interesting as well that there are much lower prices in the Montage 6 on the used/mint market now. That also can be a consideration, I just don"t really gravitate to the layout and interface personally and Roland is always easier for me to figure stuff out.

Yamaha U1 Upright, Roland Fantom 8, Nord Stage 4 HA73, Nord Wave 2, Korg Nautilus 73, Viscount Legend Live, Lots of Mainstage/VST Libraries

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Well that's a surprise; usually Roland releases the flagship first and then the cheaper version. April 2020 is still seven months away!

 

Does this new model relate closely to the last Jupiter they made? I can't remember if that one had Real Analog combined with SuperNatural, as I think it pre-dated the current VA stuff they're doing. I remember liking it but feeling as usual that some of the features in the 50 were needed in the 80 but the 80 never seemed to get a second pass. Almost bought it during the blowout sale though.

 

This one doesn't seem to have the organ register approach to its interface, but it definitely follows the design style of the Jupiter series as closely or more closely than the Jupiter 80 and Jupiter 50 did.

 

Apparently this will host most, or all, of the current soft synths that Roland makes? If so, perhaps it would work better as a controller than the System 1 (or whatever that 25-key finger-pain keyboard was called). I never could get that thing to sync up properly so I sold it (also due to how much it made my fingers hurt after just a few minutes of playing). I think they came out with a more typical synth keybed later for that series though.

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Hmm, Elmer's snippet of the specs makes this seem less of a Jupiter 80 successor than I thought:

 

Sound sections based on JUPITER-8, JUNO-106, SH-101, XV-5080 RD pianos (Supernatural)

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My now-gone AX-Synth keytar (replaced by an AX-Edge) had a few SuperNatural voices, including a violin that was almost telepathic -- it could tell the difference between a last-key-priority monophonic trill one moment, and a double-stop the next, something I haven't been able to do (so far) even with Kurzweil VAST. Unfortunately, the newer, more generally expressive AX-Edge keytar does not have even the limited SN engine.

Yes, that's part of the SN acoustic modeling of many instruments. On, say a Motif, you typically invoke alternate articulation with buttons. Roland SN intelligently analyzes what you're playing and will automatically bring in alternate articulations when they make sense based on how you play.

 

Correcting: Even though the RD-700GX was not Supernatural, they did make an add-on SN piano upgrade for it, and I guess they included it in this carryover, because in the Sonic State demo, he says it's Supernatural and from the RD-700GX.

Amending my correction. Yes the guy doing the demo say the RD emulation is RD-700GX. Yes, he says it's SN. And then he plays an acoustic piano sound. But it's not actually clear that he's playing an SN acoustic piano sound. The RD-700GX IS SuperNatural in its EPs, but I think we would need further confirmation that the Jupiter X's RD acoustic piano sound is SN.

 

The FA sounds don"t often excite or inspire me

That's an interesting point of comparison, because the non-synth sounds of the FA come from the XV-5080 plus a handful of SuperNaturals (piano, EPs, clav, organ, basses, acoustic guitar, and ensemble strings); and from what I've seen so far, it looks like the non-synth sounds of the Jupiter X come from the same FA-5080 plus the RD-700GX (so it would have SuperNatural EPs at least)... which means that there is a lot of overlap in the non-synth sounds of the FA and the Jupiter X. ONe question, in terms of non-synth sounds, is does the RD mode include the entire sound set of the RD-700GX, or is it just emulating its pianos? i.e. does it have tonewheel organ, and the rest of the sounds that were in the RD? I also don't know what the providence of the non-piano RD sounds is... original Fantom series perhaps? (Presumably not XV-5080, but who knows?)

 

Does this new model relate closely to the last Jupiter they made? I can't remember if that one had Real Analog combined with SuperNatural

No real analog in these Jupiters, or the previous J50/J80. (They do have real analog in the JD/XA.) The J50/J80 has SuperNatural synth and SuperNatural acoustic tones )and nothing else). It is still a little unclear (at least to me) how much SuperNatural there is in the new Jupiters. The only thing I'm reasonably confident at this point is that the RD emulation includes SN EPs. And I'm not a big fan of SN EPs. ;-)

 

Does this Jupiter pod the ACB models like the system 8? Or is it something different. Trying to work out what this offers over the System 8 other than more conventional sounds and multi parts

Jupiter X is not based on ACB. But I think you hit some of the biggest differences there... the non-synth sounds of the XV and RD modes, and the fact that it can simultaneously play up to 4 sounds from any combination of engines (plus drums), instead of up to 2 sounds from two engines. I think it also gives you more polyphony even when working with just a single emulation. Also high quality 5-octave action with aftertouch on the X, battery operation and speakers on the XM.

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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Looking at the rivets on the top surface, I wonder how easily this might be turned into a keyless module. That would be a temptation...

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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  • 2 months later...

Updating some of the info earlier in the thread...

 

...so far, it looks like the RD model only includes 5 acoustic piano patches, so not a complete RD emulation, not even EPs.

 

In addition to the various old Roland synths it emulates, it has all the stock patches from the Fantom except for the V-Piano. From Gearslutz, Fantom and Jupiter Xm both have these same patch libraries:

 

-Bank A new unpublished sounds

-Bank B contains the first 459 tone list from the AX-Edge Keytar

-Bank C is the 128 patches from the Integra-7 Synth Legends expansion.

-Bank D contains the 1109 SuperNatural Synth Tones from the Integra-7 / FA synths

-Bank E on the Fantom contains the 896 patches from in the XV-5080; these are in the Jupiter Xm under the dedicated XV model bank, but it's the same sound set (there is nothing called "Bank E" on the Jupiter)

-Bank CMN (Common) contains the remaining 837 tone list from the AX-Edge Keytar (from 460 to 1296)

 

So the Fantom sounds that are not in the Jupiter would be the V-Piano, the new downloadable SRX-based expansions they released, and the Scenes which include combinations of the other sounds (which can include up to 16 sounds, vs. 4+drums on the Jupiter).

 

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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Copied from the Specs for the Xm on Sweetwater's site:

 

4,000 Preset Tones, 256 User Tones, 90 Drum Kits, 256 Scenes

 

Lots of sounds from different Roland synth models and drums, packaged in one 37 key synth. Small enough to use as an auxiliary keyboard, and affordable at $1499.00

 

There's always a place for a smaller KB that can wear a lot of hats that is not too expensive to justify.

 

 

Mike T.

Yamaha Motif ES8, Alesis Ion, Prophet 5 Rev 3.2, 1979 Rhodes Mark 1 Suitcase 73 Piano, Arp Odyssey Md III, Roland R-70 Drum Machine, Digitech Vocalist Live Pro. Roland Boss Chorus Ensemble CE-1.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I picked up an xm yesterday. Only had a couple hours with it so far but I think it's going to fit in well.

 

The user interface will take some getting used to, how to navigate the buttons with their alternative assignments. But I can see there's a logic to it and soon it will be second nature. Which is what I expect from Roland.

 

Here's a critical point for me -- the keys are reasonably playable. They're a bit larger than true "mini-keys' like what you find on the Reface series. They might be a tad smaller than the minilogue, but I haven't compared side by side. But they're big enough that I'm not tripping over them, and they feel solid enough. Obviously you won't have good piano technique, but for playing synth sounds I think they'll be quite adequate.

 

I wish the mod and pitch wheels had a more tacky surface. The small size makes the plastic surface more of a challenge to deal with.

 

Great that they included some decent piano sounds, it makes the keyboard more capable of standing on its own. Too bad the ep and organ sounds are from the XV model, they clearly sounds like decades old Rompler fare. But it's not a do-it-all keyboard.

 

The tasty parts here are the synth models, and I've just begun to dig into those. Again, I'm just scratching the surface of the interface, but I can tell this is going to be tons of create fun.

 

I'm a portability freak, and I have no dedicated practice space in my house with my lovely family, plus synths are not really my main instrument, more an auxiliary. So the xm rather than the X is an obvious choice for me. I love that it's going to be so easy to take this anywhere.

 

I ordered a $25 DJ equipment case off Amazon just to get me by until Roland issues a custom bag. The one I ordered seems to have the right dimensions. I Gator mini keyboard bag looks to be just a tad too small based on specs, unfortunately.

 

I'll write a longer review after I've really dug into it.

Gigging: Crumar Mojo 61, Hammond SKPro

Home: Vintage Vibe 64

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Quick update after first gig with the xm. After just a few hours practicing on it, had no problem playing synth-type parts -- leads, pads, comping. Most synth playing is not pyrotechnic . . . certainly that's true of my synth playing, and so I think for most players the smaller keys on the xm are not going to be much of a limitation. 3 octaves and no aftertouch might be, but I'm only addressing the keys themselves here.

 

Most folks will probably have to read the manual to get started, but the user interface very quickly becomes second nature. Haven't done a deep dive into tone creation yet, but I can see the workflow should be easy when I do.

 

The first case I ordered was too small. After looking at every possible bag I could find online, I got a Kaces "small 49 key" bag off Amazon that will work pretty well. It's a high quality bag, the issue is size. It's 30" wide, leaving 3-4" on each side empty. Added a couple foam pieces to fill that space and it's good to go.

Gigging: Crumar Mojo 61, Hammond SKPro

Home: Vintage Vibe 64

 

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  • 4 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I took my new Jupiter X to its first recording session today. I am providing all the keyboards on a CD and was almost finished with all the tracks but I managed to create a 3 layer lead sound, a pad and another lead that will be featured on the last two songs. This keyboard has a smooth, buttery sound that is really inspiring to play. I don"t know if it"s the A/D converters or the ACB tech but it sounds amazingly sweet. If anyone is thinking about picking up a Jupiter X I can highly recommend it. Yes, it"s all metal, it"s built to last, feels solidly professional, and it"s not small, but I was pleasantly surprised that it fit into a Gator GK-61 semirigid case. (just barely). This keyboard is a sound designers wet dream and really satisfies in the 'knobiness' dept but can go so much deeper with the Zencore capabilities too. But on top of all that, it"s also just plain fun to play.

 

Anybody else pick one of these up yet?

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I took my new Jupiter X to its first recording session today. (snip)

Anybody else pick one of these up yet?

 

I played it at NAMM, really like it. Unfortunatly my PO was rejected by my accounting department.

:nopity:
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I really like what I see of the Jupiter X. Considered the Xm until I found that the synth engine is not as deep or editable.

I thought the engines of the two were identical. What's less deep or less editable?

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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I really like what I see of the Jupiter X. Considered the Xm until I found that the synth engine is not as deep or editable. Wish it came with a 76 key option.

 

Same synth hardware. The Xm can do everything the X can but has fewer controls surfaced directly and a smaller keyboard without aftertouch. One can sort of think of the Xm as a very powerful portable synth or kind halfway between a rack mount and a keyboard synth.

 

-Z-

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I never updated my post from above. I had the Xm for a couple weeks but returned it. Too much menu diving for me. Might be fine for someone who's willing to work with the screen editor on a regular basis.

 

The X would be too heavy and bulky for my purposes, which is a shame because aside from the lack of surface controls, there was a lot that I loved about the Xm.

Gigging: Crumar Mojo 61, Hammond SKPro

Home: Vintage Vibe 64

 

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The engine is the same, but from some videos I watched there are some parameter edits that you do not have access to on the Xm. Even by menu diving.

 

Got a pointer? I'd be interested to see the specifics.

 

My guess is the right approach to the Xm is going to be driving some of its functions from external controllers if one wants significant synth expressivity. This is obviously the case for the keyboard itself. The advantage vs. the X is price and size if one already has other equipment for various reasons or wants the option of portability. Of course it is Roland so who knows... none of their product lines are as logical as they ought to be.

 

-Z-

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I never updated my post from above. I had the Xm for a couple weeks but returned it. Too much menu diving for me. Might be fine for someone who's willing to work with the screen editor on a regular basis.

 

The X would be too heavy and bulky for my purposes, which is a shame because aside from the lack of surface controls, there was a lot that I loved about the Xm.

 

 

I did the same, had it for about two weeks, but found editing too tedious, if they had an ipad editor for it then I'd consider another one.

 

Scott

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