Roland JV-80 Series Page with .mp3s

Hi,

I made a new JV-80 sereis page with mp3s.

http://deepsynthesis.net

To me JV's filter sounds fat and warm, even slightly better than Super JV.

The sounds are recorded with my JV-880 without external effects. Unfortunately, one of my JV's output is broken, and the clips are in mono.

Please take a look and tell me what you think.

Very good demos! I specialy like the "Wavetable" sound you built. I would never tell thats JV.

I'm sorry for broken output. Ahh you miss the whole joy of stereo Chorus. And it is a really good chorus. A friend in 1994 told me that JV-80 chorus was much better then the one on JV-90. He had both synths at that time. About filter, yes you made a good point. It is much different from Super JV (and XV) filter. I had another friend who in 1995 almost sold brand new JV-1080 because he got used to JV-880 filter, and just couldn't live without it.

Offtopic: Roland's JV synth line (followed by Super JV and XV) series is my favourite area. I had (or played) them all, and left XV-5080 to stay here forever - i will never sell it. It is a perfection of digital synthesizer design. They will never do something that good again, just like they never did something better than JD-990 synth (and its been 13 years since!). But we can not blame Roland. Because how can you build something better, when you already done it perfect.

Thank you very much for your comments, Don Solaris!!

The information that JV-80 excels JV-90 in effects is new to me. Roland experienced several advancement in architecture at that time, and they may have been making minimal changes in each release. Then I may be lucky to have JV-880, which may be closer to JV-80 than JV-90.

In making these demos recently, I found JV-880's filter is more comfortable to work with than my Super JV XP-50, which I loved for years. I feel 880 sounds fatter, though synthetically limited.

You once mentioned on this forum that JV, Super JV and XV are all different machines that shares the same architecture. It gave me an insight. Each has its own assets.

To me my XV-5050 sounds much louder than any other synths in my room. It's a related, but very different synth from JVs. I wish it recreates 5080 engine (surely, 5050 has no sample RAM and less polyphony, though).

And now, how do you evaluate Fantom X and V-Synth, that were released after 5080? To me, they are still pricey

Excellent demos as usual, Sealed

I am also a JV-series lover, and a maxed out with cards JV-2080 has been a staple in my setup for many years.

I LOVE the "Square" patch in the Decay group, spot-on Duran Duran's "Save a prayer" - who needs a Jupiter, hey?

Also great programming in Pad - "Analog Modulation"

Pad - "Vocal" is outstanding!

Comp - "Wavescan" is also very cool

I just passed on a JV-880 on eBay myself, but I'll get it one of these days to put on synthmania

It feels like betrayal. The didn't continued the JV series, but killed it with the Fantom, unless they plan to release XV successor. But at the moment, XV is the last JV compatible synth. Fantom can't import JV patches - and i don't want such synth. It is a matter of tradition.

Spam warning -

I happen to have a nice JV-80 with hard case for sale, if anyone is interested.

$250, location Ames, IA

more details, along with more old Roland goodies for sale:

http://www.hotrodmotm.com/forsale/sale.htm

Don Solaris: I didn't precisely know about the compatibility issue, and thanks for informing me about it. I'm still exploring my XV-5050, and it will take a long time as it's a super-deep synth.

Paolo: Thanks for your comments! I'm glad that you enjoyed the fake-save-a-prayer patch.

In the examples you cited I modulated the resonant filter with aftertouch sequence. I like the way JV's resonance fattens things up.

I'm looking forward to seeing JV-880 on your Synthmania site!

They're more compatible than you might think. What hacks Don (and myself) off is that Roland didn't provide software (either internal or external) to automatically transfer XP/XV patches to the new Fantoms. There's always either identical or close waveforms, and all the XP/XV paramaters are in the Fantoms... they've just been expanded on. I've manually transferred dozens of JV/XP patches to my Fantom S. It's just tedious work. So you're not out of luck should you go Fantom. But the XV-5080 is still an awesome box, and it's price in the used market reflects that.

I have no way to listen to your clips at present.... sorry.

I used to have a JV-80 and now have an XP-60 and XP-80. I've always loved the sound of those boards.

Some of the expansion cards are great too and hold up really nice. Especially allowing for the technological advances since then. The Bass & Drums expansion is killer!

Good price on the JV 80, considering I just paid $300 for a JV 30 in Saigon.

But the used synth markets here doesn't offer the astute shopper a lot for the money. My choices were, Korg X3 for $400, JV30 $300, XP10 $300.

I liked the Korg sound set better because I've worked with it in the past. The X series is the C bank from the N series. And there were some killer patches in that bank. But it's too heavy to lug around on a motorcycle.

So I opted for the JV30. I like the sounds on the JV better in general than the XP. Maybe that's because it's 1991-1992 technology. I like how old patches sound. And editing is very easy. But 24 note polyphony is a pisser.

Thanks for your information. Some company releases many versions of essentially same synth. The compatibility program would surely lessens the risk of buying the new model.

Me, too! I have Pop, Vintage, World boards. Also my Roland D2 have most of the Techno board waves. World is my best favorite.

I'm listening to your music. Lullabye's lead and the bossa nova feels very comfortable to me. Have you made these songs with X3 and JV-30?