Roland Jupiter-4 $199 PC MAC

When great plugins come around, the very best stay in a perpetual orbit of use. We revisit the reincarnation of Roland’s original planetary gas

In the late 70s, polyphonic synthesisers were an expensive business; Oberheims, Prophets and Polymoogs were all over £3,000, and that’s when that could have bought you a nice car instead! Then along came Roland in 1978, at a price point of £1,800, with a four-voice poly called the Jupiter-4 Compuphonic.

Compu-what?

The term Compuphonic was one of Roland’s calling-cards, indicating that the synth’s oscillators were placed under micro-control, to assist with tuning, while its potential was opened up for the saving of up to eight user patches, which you would obviously try not to use all at once.

With the emergence of this new plugin version, Roland have unapologetically extended the ethos considerably; you can increase the patch saving capabilities to as many banks of 64 as you might like, while also extending the polyphony up to eight notes.

Fashionista

The Jupiter-4 sat in that period of Roland design with one foot firmly in the 70s, while the technology underneath veered towards the 80s. As a consequence, the Jupiter-4’s styling wasn’t an initial hit. With the benefit of hindsight, it has become a retro classic, and that design ethos has carried forward to the layout and graphics portrayed within the plugin GUI.

Thoughtfully, here you can switch the layout from the conventional original design, to something that will match a Roland System-8, which is ideal for anyone who is hosting these plugins as plug-outs. It can be offloaded to Roland System-based hardware, for use in the outside world.

Single sonics