NEVER AGAIN A JUPITER

My post is jovial in nature and light hearted. Please keep this in mind if you read it.. :)

Well I’m a Roland fanboy and the Jupiter 80 was exactly what i wanted it to be—a poor mans Jupiter 8! I could not afford a working pristine J8 but i could the J80. It gave me the Jupiter 8 sound. It gave me the nostalgia of owing a “Jupiter 8”. It was sleek, bold. It was Ikutaro-san’s dream of what he wanted the J8 to be but at that time the tech was not there. The ipad app was icing on an already sweet cake that I could have eaten without icing. I still have the J8 and I still am intimidated by it—and ive had it since it was born.

My point is . Form these discussion it seems, for some, the J80 was not everything they expected—for others, the J80 was..and still is.. good to go.

“Librarian ”? What’s that? ;-) didn’t need it just like I don’t need or use computers for making music.

I’m not an accomplished pianist as you cats are.. I’m just a guy who loves to create music. I play by ear. cant really read music. Don’t know what Dorian Scale is but ive probably played it by accident.... :)

TL;DR - I’m a Roland fanboy. For me the J80 is perfect :p

Mahobe wrote:

I assumed...

You've used that word twice to complain about Jupiters. IMO Roland delivered on everything they said it was plus more. It certainly had it's limitations but I found many ways to work around it. Instead of getting worked up over the actual methods employed by VA and SN-A instruments I just used them in ways that fit the music I've written over the last 7 years. The machine has been a joy to use but now with Zencore synth, my trusty Jupiter is starting to show it's age. So much so I'm thinking about selling it.

Devnor wrote:

Mahobe wrote:

I assumed...

You've used that word twice to complain about Jupiters. IMO Roland delivered on everything they said it was plus more. It certainly had it's limitations but I found many ways to work around it. Instead of getting worked up over the actual methods employed by VA and SN-A instruments I just used them in ways that fit the music I've written over the last 7 years. The machine has been a joy to use but now with Zencore synth, my trusty Jupiter is starting to show it's age. So much so I'm thinking about selling it.

And I will keep using it! Because there are many ways to use language and probably your interpretation is not the one I gave it.
"I assumed" Jupiter 50 will have a basic function, which is that you can manage the sounds you make without overwriting them and without having a notebook of 100 pages with notes on how to avoid it. This function is "assumed" in every single keyboard, in the sense that is taken for granted. And this is not solvable by the possibility of coding a librarian, because I am not a programmer. Even if I were, I would not have time to do it. Or I simply would like to employ that time in something else. This is ASSUMED in a keyboard that stores user's sounds since the 1980.
A keyboard that lets you make sounds, BASICALLY has to offer some way to store them in a sense that you can track them and recover them easily without risks. This does not happen in the JP. And I would not have investigated this because I have had MANY keyboards in the past, and NONE of them had this BASIC FLAW.
"I assumed"" that they would maintain the iPad app, as it was heavily promoted for selling it. I could not have assumed that they would eliminate such a function of the keyboard (which in the case of JP50 is almost essential), in the same sense I would not assume that one day they will eliminate the organs or pianos section from the keyboard.
This is 21th century. And even if it wasn't, all competitors keep maintaining software updated even for products with more than 10 years in the market. Roland abandoned it two years after release. It is their problem, not mine. Only with me, they would lose 5 or 10K in products I will not buy from them anymore during my lifetime. Add other people. How much would have cost them to pay a semi senior programmer for updating the iPad app? Was it worth?
How could I go and look for an old iPad? Wrong!! This is part of the biasing some people have when they are so in love with a brand or a product. Try to think it for one second: how could it be me the one trying to solve such a problem, if I already paid for a product that included this functionality at the moment of buying it?
I assumed such things not in the sense that I "imagined" or "speculated" about them, but in the sense that they were obvious. Because they are obvious in the rest of the keyboards and vendors. And Roland FAILED me and every other customer on them.
Does this mean the JP50 is bad? No! It has great sounds and excellent build quality. But the keyboard became much harder to use because of Roland's own decisions. And these decisions are basically the reasons for which I would not buy any other Roland product anymore (exception made of the vintage ones).

The Jupiter had 2500 live sets and you could import/export singles as well as the whole machine. It was not very elegant and it required pen & paper but basic functionality was there and pretty much every other keyboard works like that. My Kronos doesn't have a librarian and I'm still using pen & paper. I can feel your pain having a JU50 and no ipad. As JU80 user, the ipad was redundant and better used for other stuff.

Jupiter X is a long ways away. June 2020.

Oleq wrote:

why keeping an old iPad solely for JP app was not an option?
Some people keep old computers running Windows XP and Snow Leopard for the sake of compatibility with the gear they prefer to use.

kimsnarf wrote:

If you regard the iPad app an essential part of your synth you probably need to dedicate an older iPad.

You guys have touched on what I think is the biggest flaw in integrating an iPad into your workflow. It is virtually impossible to confidently do what you're suggesting.

With a Mac or PC, you can always keep a Snow Leopard or XP model around, and you will always be able to reload Snow Leopard or XP onto it if need be. On a Mac, you can even partition the drive or use an external drive, and choose for any given session whether you'd like to run Snow Leopard or something more current.

But with an iPad, once an OS is updated, you can't go back, and of course you can't do an alternate boot. Even if you never mess up and accidentally hit Yes to one of Apple's insistent "upgrade now" buttons, there is a not-insignificant chance that, at some point, your system will start acting flakey and you will be told to "re-install the OS" which will upgrade you, or you will bring it in for "repair", in which case you will get an exchange unit that no longer has the OS you were using. Best you can do is hope to find an old model on eBay with an old OS that was never upgraded. Basically, unlike a Mac or a PC, with iOS, once the current version does not support the software you're using, you pretty much have to be prepared to lose the functionality permanently, at any time.

I don't "assume" something is included in a product that I want to buy. I do research to check if something is included.

Chrisk-K wrote:

I don't "assume" something is included in a product that I want to buy. I do research to check if something is included.

Yep. One thing I always do is download the manual and read it before buying any product.

Stormchild wrote:

Chrisk-K wrote:

I don't "assume" something is included in a product that I want to buy. I do research to check if something is included.

Yep. One thing I always do is download the manual and read it before buying any product.

I am sure that's a good idea, but not every manual includes all the necessary information.

Saxifraga wrote:

I am sure that's a good idea, but not every manual includes all the necessary information.

Good bedtime reading when you're awaiting the release/delivery of a new instrument.