The Arturia Jupiter 8V, is immense. It has the titanic unison basses, twisted cross modulated soundscapes, bippy electro arpeggios and crystal percussion that it should. It’s simple to operate yet deep, and like most simple synths – it always produces musically useful tones. All the original functions are on one page, within a single glance. It’s exactly the type of synth you come to rely on.
The oscillators are bright and fizzy, the filter is sweet and aquatic sounding, turn down the resonance and thunderous low end comes through, the envelopes are sharp and percussive if you want them to be or slow and glorious if you’re in the mood. There’s cross modulation and oscillator sync and if you switch the second oscillator to “Low”, then you have two LFOs, the oscillator one varying in speed slightly depending on which note you press, thickening the sound with subtle variations as the two LFOs work independently.
The Arturia Jupiter 8V, like a the original Roland Jupiter 8, is bi-timbral – meaning you can have two sounds dialled into the keyboard at any time, divided into two zones across it. You can noodle a bass line with your left hand and bop an 80’s electro riff with the right. Whack a button and you can swap between editing the Upper and Lower sounds in a second, then switch on one of the best-loved arpeggiators ever created and hold down some notes!
Just like a real Jupiter 8 you’ll find an LFO mod switch at the bottom left of the keyboard (with a configurable rise time), so dial in how much you’d like it to affect the pitch and/or the filter and the sound will change for as long as you hold the button. Momentary LFO, if you will, and very useful for creating spaz-out sounds when you’ve got a droney pad going on. The same panel has sliders to let you dial in pitch and filter changes that get applied when you wobble the modulation wheel. Similar to a CS80 in that respect, the sheer playability available in the keyboard is fantastic.
So you have the complete layout of a Jupiter 8 in front of you. Click an icon at the top and it reveals to you where the software goes beyond the hardware. Arturia have included a bunch of extra tools obviously not found on a real Jupiter 8 – effects firstly (delay with a high degree of control, chorus, phaser, flanger, reverb, distortion, parametric EQ), but tucked away there’s a super flexible 32 step sequencer included (sync-able to your host, with swing and 303 style glide and accent), which you can set to control individual oscillator pitch or filter settings. Beyond that is Galaxy, and you have to love Galaxy – you may need to see it to really get it, since the best way I can think of describing it is “two LFOs working in tandem to drive a point on an X/Y pad where the two axes are set to control two independent functions of the synth.” In English, it’s like a Spirograph that allows for more crazy evolving soundscapes than you could ever get from the original machine without a massive MIDI retrofit and Reaktor, or without growing extra hands.
If you have a MIDI controller, then CTRL-Click a dial, twiddle your MIDI knob, done! You’ve got real hardware controlling the software in an instant.
With more than 400 presets (categorised and searchable by tonal character, rather than abstract naming) you’ve got a ton of sounds to play with right our of the box, and Arturia have already released more preset banks for free on their website (including the 64 factory-shipped original Jupiter 8 preset bank). Of course, join the communities of users online and there are lots of homemade banks to share.
That’s Jupiter 8V. Yes, it can be CPU intensive, but it couldn’t sound as amazing any other way (and Arturia have just released an update with further optimisation). It’s the best thing Arturia have done yet except, of course, the V Collection which contains the Arturia Jupiter 8V.
Arturia Jupiter 8V Video Review
Watch Arturia Jupiter 8V video review by clicking on the moving reel on the product page: Arturia Jupiter 8V