Roland Jupiter-50 Synthesizer Puts Jupiter-80 Power Into A Portable Keyboard

Roland Jupiter 50

At Musimesse 2012, Roland announced the Jupiter-50 synthesizer, the second release in its contemporary Jupiter-series keyboards.

The Roland Jupiter-50 inherits the sounds and Live Set architecture of the Jupiter-80, but packs them into a relatively lightweight keyboard.

Inside, the Jupiter-50 is equipped with a sound engine that is the sonic equal of its predecessor. The Jupiter-50 offers all of the SuperNATURAL synthesizer and acoustic tones found in the Jupiter-80. Four separate sound engines can be stacked together to create classic synth tones and massive voices.  Users can also import Jupiter-80 sound data into the Jupiter-50.

With the Jupiter-50, though, Roland brings this synth engine to a portable instrument designed for live performance. It offers a 76-note weighted keyboard, with a color-coded front panel that’s designed to be intuitive to navigate.

The Roland Jupiter-50 Synthesizer

A USB Song Player/Recorder lets you play backing tracks or record performances to USB flash media. The Jupiter-50 can also act as a USB audio/MIDI interface, making it easy to integrate the synth with popular computer music software.

Here’s the official intro video for the Jupiter-50 synthesizer:

Cakewalk’s SONAR LE DAW is included, as well as the JUPITER-50 Control Surface plug-in, which gives the ability to control SONAR from JUPITER-50.

The Jupiter-50 will be available in late spring. At the same time, a Version 2 update for the flagship Jupiter-80 will be released. Pricing is to be announced.

20 thoughts on “Roland Jupiter-50 Synthesizer Puts Jupiter-80 Power Into A Portable Keyboard

  1. I wish Roland would get back to building proper synths, not these plastic imitations. Nord as well! Stop with the Pianos/organs!!! We need the next DX7(when I mean next, I mean as game changing as) not glorified home organs :-pppppppp

  2. not impressed- it probably makes sense from a business point of view, but nothing that
    makes my synth heart miss a single beat. Hope that Frankfurt holds some nice product surprises and won’t be a spinn-off and IOs borefest.

    Korg to the rescue .. ( no , not the scaled down Chronos, but the polytron 🙂

  3. Keyboard layouts like the Jupiter’s which have a single flat all by itself the way the Jupiter has a Gb over on the right-hand side always to my eyes look like they’re giving me the finger.

    I know it’s a silly kind of point, but if I bought one of these I’d think about that every time I looked at the treble keys and saw that lonely Gb by itself: My keyboard is giving me the finger.

  4. I’m interested in seeing what the price is going to be on this.

    Everybody here seems to gripe about this not being an analog synth – but anybody that’s actually tried the Jupiter 80 knows that it’s a pretty kick ass keyboard. The 80 is out of my price range though. This could be killer if they get the price right.

    1. I know, me too. I’m actually surprised they did what everybody speculated, released a JP80 Lite. If they stuck to the naming logic though, shouldn’t it have been called Jupiter-60?

      That tiny LCD screen just kills the creativity, sadly. The big color multi touch screen is pretty awesome to be honest.

  5. Uh oh, a new Jupiter. Everyone start cussing on the count of 3: 1, 2, 3….! I know people wanted this to recreate the splash of the JP-8, but the truth is, it DOES sound good. It offers so much detailed layering and multi-sampling that its pretty creamy to play. I think people will start liking it better the day someone really smokin’ plays one and uses a small modular or two right above it. The stink surrounding it will turn into a nice cachet then.

    1. That demo was merely functional rather than inspiring. Its like the Disney “John Carter” promos that were all noise and too little connecting pizzazz, when its really a cool action romance with aliens. Roland is doing it wrong. It should have been presented as a SYNTH with some great acoustic sounds, not vice-versa. If they had played that up foremost, people would surely feel less negative about it. I say again: my Roland gear has always held up in use and sounded great. This Jupiter is getting a bum rap, partly due to amazingly weak marketing.

  6. the first thing I looked for on the front panel was… “where’s the filter and envelope sliders… the oscillators?…” I fail to see how you can quickly create, modify and synthesize without these controls at your fingertips.

  7. I like how they claim that it can sound identical to a jupiter 8…lol lol. It’s not even close to sounding like a jp8 🙁 …. A jupiter 8 has a sound that makes you keep coming back for more over and over again. A jupiter 8 sounds like it is alive. This is just another spin off of the keyboards that roland has produced over the last two decades. Very disappointing!

  8. I wish Roland would just make the gear we want: REAL Analog JP8, Juno 60/106, 303, 101, 808 and so on. Their current strategy is just lame.

  9. If Roland made a “real” JP8 nobody but the wealthy could afford to buy it. All of those sliders and knobs cost money, ditto the internal bits that make it analog. Check the price of modern analog polysynths. The DSI P08 is the most affordable and it is not all analog in many respects.

    The funny thing to me is that if you took this keyboard back to the 80s I bet that most working keyboard players would have gladly traded their JP8 for this one. Pianos, clavs, organs, strings, guitars and synth sounds in one portable board!

    I think that Synth focused musicians miss the point of products like this and the new electro from Nord. They are aimed at working keyboard players who need to cover all of the standard electro-mechanical instruments as well as synths, and/or be the horn section/second guitarist.

    1. I checked the price of the Jupiter 80 today, 3,500, that price is not cheap, i wonder what roland is thinking, who is their market for this Jupiters 80, nobody, real musicians buy most analog synthesizers, stage musicians buy workstations, what are they thinking, and now they come with something cheaper than the jupiter 80, in sound sucks the same, but cheaper keyboard, who is going to buy it? just people to put the keyboard on the corner of the living room.

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