The Boutique series emulation of the classic JD-800, Roland's digital synth which brought back the controller laden front panel

With its retro workflow, evocative sounds, and powerful effects, the JD-800 was a favorite for top electronic music producers through the ’90s and beyond. Combining the original JD-800 waveforms with advanced modeling techniques, the JD-08 delivers the exquisite hands-on sound design of the original, along with hugely expanded polyphony, a two-part polyphonic sequencer, and other modern updates.

So says the Roland website... The JD-08 along with the JX-08 were the two second round releases from Roland's Boutique series which both used the newer Analog Behavior Modeling (ABM) DSP code, offering much higher polyphony that their initital restricted 4-voice ACB (Analog Circuit Behaviour) DSP modeling. With the JD-08 you get a whopping 128 vocies of polyphony which therefore yields a generous 32 voices for any 4 Tone patch being played.

The JD-800 architecture the JD-08 is based on was Roland's sucessor synth to the classic digital D-50, but with a front-panel controller section which encouraged the user to edit & build sounds with that complexed digital architecture. The JD-08 architecture follows the JD-800 but as various reviewers at the time confirmed it is not a copy of the classic JD-800, having some fundamentally different values such as completely differently octave-tuned raw Oscillator waveforms, but it does very much deliver the sounds & character of the classic it is based on. Sounds can be constructed of up to 4 PCM waveform generating Tones accessible via the Tone A, B C & D buttons.

Each 'Tone' has a multimode filter with choices of Hi-Pass, Low-Pass or Band-Pass followed by an amplifier section with the Filter & Amp each having a dedicated contour generator. Modulation is courtesy of 2 LFOs which can modulate the Oscillator, Filter or Amp section. Up to four of these Tones can be used to build a Patch & the max 4 Tones per Patch can all have independent programming values to create up-to 4 layer complexed sounds.

Finally at the end of the signal chain the JP-08 has a multi-effects section offering Distortion, Phaser & Spectrum Enhancer in FX Group A, plus Delay, Chorus & Reverb in FX Group B.

The JD-08 adds a decent arpeggiator offering the traditional up, down, up/down, random and As Played modes, with programmable transposition, rate, range, gate length, velocity and Hold. The JD-08 also sports a polyphonic 64-step sequencer with slots to memorise up to 128 patterns & two A/B tracks per sequence

The K-25m keyboard unit

Like all the Boutique range, the JD-08 can be used as a tabletop module triggered from any 3rd party MIDI keyboard controller or directly from any DAW external MIDI track, but a further option is to add the optional K-25m keyboard unit which connects to any of the Boutique modules using an included ribbon cable.

The K-25m is a 25-key, velocity sensitive keyboard designed for use with the Roland Boutique series. Measuring less than 12″ across, the K-25m acts as a dock for any Roland Boutique module, and once in place the module can be tilted at two different angles for easier viewing and sound programming, or can be laid completely flat.

The K-25m retails at around £95 from most music tech suppliers.

Finally, like with most of the Roland Boutique range the JD-08 has USB as a non-battery power source and can also can connect and stream its audio to your DAW via USB & also function as a USB audio & MIDI interface with a mini-jack stereo input.

Category:

Products » Synthesisers » Modeling synthesisers »

Added: 3 December 2023
New price: £290
S/H price: £225
Company: ROLAND UK

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This product is part of
Roland's
Boutique series

JD-08

JP-08

JU-06

JU-06A

JX-03

JX-08

SH-01A

TB-03

2015 saw Roland debut a new series of modelled synth modules & drum machines derived from their old classics catalog and delivered in a portable, mains or battery powered, table-top sized format.

Initially offering emulations of the Jupiter-8 (JP-08), Juno-106 (JU-06) & JX-3P (JX-03), Roland went on to add further models from 2016 onwards until the full range included emulations of the TB-303, Juno-60, SH-101, D-50, VP-330 Vocoder, JX-8P & JD-800, as well as their TR-808, TR-909 & TR-606 drum machines.

All these modules comprise what Roland calls its Boutique series.

The Boutique series is related to the over-arching Roland AIRA collection of products which included the AIRA hardware units & related Plug-OUT software emulations. Like most of the AIRA series hardware, all these Boutique series modules can connect to a host computer via USB allowing saving & management of patches while they also function as a 24-bit 44.1kHz USB audio i/o interface which includes USB streaming of the module's audio output IN to the end user's DAW & in most models also included streaming of a physical stereo audio input from the unit to the DAW, albeit line level only with no mic' pre-amp included.

For initial Boutique models Roland used a DSP technology they called Analog Circuit Behaviour (ACB) to model the sound of the instruments and they are rated as very accurate. The downside is a reduced 4 note polyphony with the first three models. They do however have a technology built-in which allows more than one unit to be chained together, so you can have two or three JP-08's for example chained together to get a super-accurate 8 or 12 note emulation of the Jupiter-8 and the slave unit/s sync to the master allowing you to edit & control the overall synth patch via one master unit. Later 2022 Boutique series models like the JD-08 & JX-08 are less accurate in terms of absolutely emulating the original's synth engine & use a newer system-on-a-chip modelling which Roland calls Behavior Modeling Core (BMC).

All the synths in the Boutique series run off battery or mains & even include a small built-in speaker. All the synth modules can work with the optional K-25m plastic keyboard mount. The synth modules clip into the keyboard unit and can be angled at different degrees and then played via the small 2-octave keyboard.

With the K-25m keyboard/stand & the built-in little speaker, any of the Boutique synths can be played on location with no other equipment in a rudimentary way if required.

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The Roland Boutique range is a major range of modelling emulations of classic old hardware products and therefore - like the Behringer analog synths section above - we're giving them their own mini-section here so you can see the possible range, albeit you'll only be able to get some of these products secondhand now from the free ads or Ebay.