Roland Jupiter-6 Analog Poly Synth

A different creature

If you believe that a Roland Jupiter-6 is simply a boiled down version of the Jupiter-8, think again. The Jupiter-6 has got a different filter and synth engine. The addition of a true multimode filter (LPF/BPF/HPF) expands the sonic possibilities of the single synth engine. But the Jupiter-8’s ability to layer 2 different patches gives it a much wider scope that the Jupiter-6. The Jupiter-6 can split the keyboard and thus use 2 different sounds for each part. But the Jupiter-8 has separate outputs for each split/layer, which the Jupiter-6 has not.

The Jupiter-6 was born with MIDI, as one of the first synths from Roland. This is only available as a quite costly retrofit to the Jupiter-8.

On top of the Jupiter-8 – a natural expansion.

If you put a Jupiter-6 on top of a Jupiter-8 you’ve got a killer combo. I had this for several years, and I loved it. It was the basic synths on the DéFilm production, together with the Roland System-100M, Fairlight and Synclavier system.

Most of the Jupiter-6 and Jupiter-8 parameters was gathered in the Roland MKS-80 MIDI Module, with 2 ekstra voices and ability to layer sounds and play them on different MIDI channels.