Never judge a book by it's cover...

I've always had a thing for the Roland Jupiter 8. I think it's because it looked so big and complex, with all those lovely multi coloured buttons. Maybe it was also because it was on the cover of Howard Jones' New Song single back in 84..




..but when I heard it, it sounded so big and lush, it soon became an "I want" item that I have still yet to acquire. So, imagine my glee when Arturia announced the Jupiter-8v soft synth. Firstly, I was surprised that Roland allowed them to do it, having always been very restrictive in what people do in terms of recreating their gear in the virtual world.

So when the demo came out, I jumped on it straight away, especially as it looked so feckin' nice !!

Oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear.

Not what I was expecting.

Arturia have often come in for grief about how their emulations actually sound nothing like the synths they are trying to emulate. I kind of agreed with that on the CS-80v, disagreed on the Minimoog. I guess that unless you have an original sat beside you to A/B test, then it's all subjective anyway.

But the Jupiter-8v disappointed me. Not only because of the sound, but because it's a god awful CPU hog, and the best latency I could achieve was about 10ms which is more than double what I normally get on every other soft synth I have. My PC is no slouch either (AMD 64/1GB RAM). It was also impossible to assign an external keyboard controller !

If Arturia are hoping to generate sales with the demo, they need to sort it out. If the full product replicates the shortcomings of the demo, they've got problems.

Try it for yourself HERE

EDIT: It appears these issues have now been fixed in version 1.02 which came out on Thursday. I've tried it and most problems seem to be rectified, but it still uses an inordinate amount of CPU :o(