JX-8P

click on JX-8P for original advertisement

The Roland JX8P was released in 1984 at an original price of $1,695 and had a hardware programmer available as an option. Unfortunately allot of people didn't buy the programmer and today they are hard to find and sell for $200 - $300. I think a lot of people bought the synth since they are very easy to find and sell for $250-$350. A very undervalued synth in my opinion.

The synth engine is a 6 voice unit with each voice having two DCO's, a mixer, a VCF (high-pass and low pass), a VCA, a LFO, and two ADSR envelopes. The DCOs features sawtooth, fixed pulse, square and noise. Variable pule width is available by sincing (SYNC 1) the two DCO's and turning the volume off of DCO 1. Set both DCO's to square and the pulse width of the DCO2 is determined by the pitch of DCO1. The unit also feature cross modulation where DCO2 is the carrier and DCO 1 is the modulator, and SYNC 2 where SYNC 1 and cross modulation work together. Additionally SYNC 2 tracks the keyboard so a normal scale may be played. Both DCOs may be modulated by either or both the LFO or either ENV (note: the env may be inverted).

The mixer sets the level of each DCO before sending it to the VCF however the level of DCO2 may be controlled by either of the ENV and/or key velocity. The ENV may be inverted here as well. The filter is has a high pass and low pass section. The high pass has only four setting which I find a little to limiting. The high pass really eats away at the low end very quickly. The low pass features frequency cutoff, resonance, and may be controlled by the LFO and or either ENV (note: the env may be inverted). There are four level of VCF dynamics based upon the key velocity. The LFO features sine, square, or random waves. Triangle, Up Sawtooth, and Down Sawtooth would have been nice, but random provides some very interest effects. The other LFO controls include delay, rate, and bender depth (which is nice to have included as part of the patch). The envelopes are standard ADSR's with key follow. A two mode chorus is also provided to fatten up the sound.

The keyboard is a five octave velocity sensitive unit. However it my opinion the sensitivity is pretty poor. There is also pressure sensitivity which is monophonic and it can control volume, brilliance (filter cutoff), and vibrato. However only one of these three options may be selected at a time. The pressure sensitivity is worse than the velocity. I have read that these sensors wear out over time and are available from Roland. The unit has six voice assignment modes: 1) Poly 1 - one voice per key (normal), 2) Poly 2 - same as Poly 1 but only the last note(s) played receive their natural release time (note: this is used with the portamento), 3) Unison 1 - two sounds (however its the same sound except that you may adjust the fine tuning of the second sound) are assigned to each key, 4) Unison 2 - same as unison 1 except that one of the sounds is an octave lower than the other, 5) Solo 1 - monophonic synthesizer with a single voice to each key, 6) Solo 2 - monophonic synthesizer that assigns all six 6 voices to one key. Controlling pitch bending and the LFO modulation are performed using that horrible Roland joystick. Why can't everyone just use the wheels are the base of the left side of the board?

Program memory feature 64 ROM slots and 32 user RAM slots. As with most Roland units the factory preset are quite good. A cartridge (MC-16C) accepts another 32 programs which may be accessed directly. The unit has a 16 digit alpha numeric display that allows you to name your patches (up to 10 characters). An eight patch program chain is supported to recall patches during live performance. You may go forward or backward in the chain. The unit supports MIDI and feature local on/off which should be mandatory on all keyboards.

The JX-8P was by Tangerine Dream on Underwater Sunlight and Livemiles. Preset 7 (Voices) is used on Underwater Twilight and a variation on Preset 25 Sync Lead is used on the Livemiles Part II (On Livemiles the 8P's big brother the JX-10 is probably being used). My unit doesn't have the patch names label on the 32 membrane switches but the unit(s) used in the Roland advertisement do. I am not sure which are the newer ones and I'm curious if there are any other differences with these units.

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