The New Roland Jupiter-50 Synthesizer

When one thinks of the Roland Jupiter series of synthesizers, classic 1980’s pop music likely comes to mind, or perhaps you picture a heavy duty analog synth devotee crafting strange and magical sounds in a studio filled with other vintage electronics. No matter what your perception of the Roland Jupiter is, at their core they’re instruments that were designed to enable a player to quickly change between delightful, song-inspiring patches, provide useful keyboard splits and integrate seamlessly with other instruments. This tradition has been passed on to the new Roland Jupiter-50 Synthesizer, along with all of the muscle and vast depth that modern keyboards possess.

The younger and smaller sibling of 2011’s landmark Roland Jupiter-80, the new Jupiter-50 is capable of creating dense and detailed sounds that definitely don’t come off as lighter versions of its larger counterpart. This is due in part to the two models sharing identical audio componentry and D/A converters. The Jupiter-50 features six synth engines, 128-voice polyphony, 76 weighted keys and a much more gig-friendly size and weight. It’s stocked with more than 1,500 of Roland’s SuperNATURAL sounds, and incorporates Behavior Modeling technology for its 70 acoustic instrument patches. You can stack up to four sounds and save them as a “Live Set,” and still have the ability to edit each sound to your liking.

One timely and useful touch is the deep iPad integration in the Jupiter-50. A dedicated editor app enables you to fine-tune parameters on the iPad’s 9.7 inch capacitive multi-touch display (a luxurious improvement over the Jupiter-50’s built-in 240 x 64 LCD non-touch screen). The layout and interface of this keyboard are tailor made for live performance, but there are plenty of appealing sounds and features that will entice electronic music lovers, sound designers, or film composers with its four built-in multi-effects units and five types of reverb. An integrated USB port enables you to play back sound files (live backing tracks onstage for example), and to record to attached flash drives. A second USB port is dedicated to exchanging audio and MIDI with a connected computer.