trixwagen's Reviews

The ROMpler to make a soundtrack for that 1992 Buddy Cop Move With A Dolphin

Face it. You hate the JD-800, the "real synth" the JD-08 emulates. Digital. Icy. Evolving pads. The last gasp of Genesis. The end of the Cold War. You only like analog. You hate Roland. You hate Boutiques. You hate "synths for ants". You have tweezer jokes for the sliders and magnifying glass quips about the knobs. You hate ROMplers. You hate buddy cop movies. You hate dolphins, their problematic ways, and the music made for them. I give it four stars. One less than a perfect score because there is no current sysex support so the extensive JD-800 patch libraries are not usable with the JD-08 (unlike how the D-05 could take D-50 sysex files).

Update (1/30/22) : Some users are currently working on some hardware/software that will allow transferring JD-800 patches to the JD-08. If it works, I may give this critter its coveted 5th star.

The great shit? Finally. Enough polyphony. The controls look busy, but the JD-800 looked busy. I don't want a synth with a few buttons and a little joystick to menu dive into oblivion. I have delusions that I will actually be able to program this lil' bastard using just the hardware controls; no software. Once you start hooking up iPads or computers to program a hardware synth, it feels like why? Why just not use a VST and a midi controller? IMHO.

The ok shit. This little monster sounds like the 1990s.

That is going to turn a lot of people off.

But for those who like the challenge to warping nostalgic cheese into the sounds of the future, this is your palette. Or you just want to make music with a heavy tip of the hat from that era.

Love this Boutique for what it is. Hope they will find work arounds to add what is missing. It sounds amazing and/or unbearable, depending on the preset and your ability to program it.

The word on the street is, some like the lo fi quality of the discontinued D-05 better because the JD-08 sounds too clean. I can respect that. Hell, those people with those opinions are heroes. They live for the grit. I could probably hook up the JD-08 to my MS-70CDR and bit crush that mother, but I digress.

///RANT WARNING///

Some prefer the JX-08 because it emulates the old analog JX-8P synth and virtual analog is better than ...is there such thing as virtual digital? Me, I like the trouble of actual analog synths. Having to simulate oscillator drift on a digital synth reminds me of the simulated old buildings we have in Los Angeles. The actual cool old buildings were torn down years ago and replaced with a strip mall which is also being torn down for "affordable" (read under $2,000,000) condos. Just give me a real old nasty analog adobe and not the drywall façade of one. "But, Gary, you can't tell the difference between a real analog and a virtual analog and a DAW in the mix." OMG. Just hook me up to META right now. Put my brain in a jar and simulate everything. Ironic twist: Maybe that already happened. We continue to review gear in a virtual world.

Update (1/30/22). Hey. if you have a computer, just get the PG-8X VST, which emulates the JX-8P "better than the JX-08". Now, I had issues getting it to run on Ableton. It works on the free Cakewalk DAW. Sounds amazing. But. Limited analog amazing. If there is that thick bass sound you need, come to the PG-8X altar and get our your knees. This is your god. But. I can't believe I'm saying this. I think I am getting over the entire analog sound. It's chocolate ice cream. Lucious. But. Sometimes I want other flavors. Nothing to do with chocolate. I am just like your favorite bands, who in 1983ish, RUINED THEIR SOUND, tempted by the shiny digital sparkle of the DX-7, throwing their Minimoogs into the trash. I. Think. I. Am. Warming (More like Chilling). Up. To. Digital.

///RANT COMPLETE///

Still here? Impressive. I am going to say, this may be my favorite Boutique. Before you get too excited, I've sold or returned every other Boutique I've had in my possession. I liked the SH-01A, but that felt like a redundancy when I got a JD-Xi. I wanted to keep the D-05 but the pandemic demand for that was so high, I couldn't pass up the cash. Also, I had iM1 emulator on my iPad and that seemed to fulfill the role of "late 80's/early 90's presets" at the time. The need for hands on manipulation opened the window for the JD-08. I will update this journey in the near future.

Update (1/30/22). And this goes without saying for ALL Boutiques.. If you play the JD-08 using its built in speaker, it sounds like ass. Every time I do that, I want to dump this thing onto Reverb. There are a couple there as I write this. However, with a garden variety set of speakers or junior audiophile level headphones, I want to get on the JD-08 Mothership. And swim with the dolphins dressed like a cop.

One of the better minikey options, even with its limitations

In a world of DAWless, before I had my JD-Xi, it was chaos. I needed an all-in-one synth; something I could build an entire song on. I didn't want a groovebox, though it probably could have worked. The JD-Xi allowed me to start with a drum track, selecting from solid 808/909/707/606/etc kits. I could put down a bass track from either of two digital or one analog synth tracks. Then I could add a lead. Then another track on that. If the JD-Xi didn't have the sounds I wanted, I could use MIDI outs to control other synths, though I needed a MIDI control box to control my four other synths.

It works. There is no "song mode", but there are work arounds. You can't add samples. Programming with deep menu dives is crazy. But there is "enough": enough control, enough knobs. The star of the show really are the drums.

I recommend it. Get it used. They are always available, though I've heard the keybed is fragile. I haven't had that problem.

Has Uli beaten Korg at their own game?

Now in 2022, I’m not sure what the outrage was really about. Behringer offered affordable decently made versions of expensive vintage analog synths. What’s not to like? I had a Pro-1 for a few months and, for some reason, it didn’t click. It didn’t have much of a patch bay. The K-2 has quite the patch bay, being a fairly authentic MS-20 clone. But then, I could have bought an actual Korg MS-20 Mini used for about the price of a new K-2. Why buy a K-2? Two reasons. One. I already have a decent midi keyboard and I heard the MS-20 Mini keyboard is not great (and the K-2 takes up less space). Two. The K-2 has two filters, one more like the angrier early model MS-20, and the other more like the later model MS-20s.

The K-2 feels solid. The knobs feel a little stiff but not wobbly. My K-2 sounds kinda like MS-20s I see on videos and a generally like the software versions I have. Do any MS-20s sound exactly identical? The resonance is not afraid to squeal when pushed. As it most definitely should. It sounds different from my other analog synths. The MS-20/K-2 is distinctive. It can be gritty, it can be smooth. It adds that vintage sound to my mix.

Why four stars; why not five? I say the original full-size MS-20 gets five stars. Those 1/4 inch patch points. The full size keys. The mod wheel. This is completely subjective. The current full size MS-20 is $1400; is it worth the extra $1100? I don’t know. Is the upsized drink at Taco Bell worth the extra 20 cents? If you want it.

My favorite monosynth

First off, I wouldn’t pay full retail price for this beast. $500? Nah. Maybe I got lucky, I found one that someone bought and never used for $300. Take off a star for every $100 over that. I had a Mopho X4. I had a Tetra. I like the sound of this Dave Smith synth better. Maybe I had bad ones. The sound from the Mopho/Tetra sounded “crispy”, but not in a good way, IMHO. I can’t really explain, however the Toraiz sounds definitely analog but cleaner. It really is a single voice from the Prophet 6. It’s sort of a modern Pro One, as well. The bad stuff: sacrifices; because its size and that it is a “DJ instrument”. There are only 11 knobs (still better than the microKorg’s eight knobs) so it is not close to one knob per function, however the important knobs are there (low pass and high pass cutoff, resonance, attack, decay/release, et cetera). The dealbreaker for many reviewers is the Toraiz AS-1 will not stay in sync when using the sequencer. I usually sequence the AS-1 with an external sequencer (JD-Xi) so it’s a nonissue. For me. Pioneer has not/is not/will not fix the issue with a firmware update. Build quality is fairly solid. It makes my Volcas look a little more like toys in comparison, but that isn’t difficult to do. The AS-1 excels in bass. It does old school leads like strings better than anything else I currently have. I can hook up the Toraiz to my PC and use the free Toraiz As-1 SoundEditor LE. It is a little like having a Prophet 6 panel in front of you to shape the sound.
In a nutshell: the Toraiz is a module monosynth with two VCOs, effects (delay, distortion, right modulation, chorus, phaser) and sounds amazing. It holds 495 factory presets and 495 user presets. Everyone says nobody has heard of it. And now you have.

Half a sandwich. Might leave you a little hungry.

I don’t particularly like my Volca Keys. The Volca FM, on the other hand, sometimes steals the spotlight from my other synths. The killer app for the Volca FM is it accepts all the Yamaha DX7 patches, at least in my experience. It has six operators per voice like the DX7, so, in my opinion, it sounds better than four operator synths (like Yamaha’s own Reface DX). The only real limitation on the surface is it is only three voice polyphonic (the original DX7 was a 16 voice polyphonic). I use Dexed, a DX7 software emulator to upload DX7 patches onto the Volca FM. That amazing feature also begs the question, “Why use this hardware synth when it sounds more or less exactly like the free software synth?” I am still in my absurd dawless phase, so for reasons only important to me, having a piece of plastic and electronics with the word Korg on my rack seems more authentic than my iPad accomplishing the exact same function. All that said, the sounds avail on this FM synth play well with my other analog and digital synths. It does more than those cheesy 80’s sounds, as there are literally thousands of patches to choose from online. To be honest, me not being much of a sound designer and FM synthesis still being much of a mystery, I use the FM mostly as a preset machine, maybe making some tweaks or running it through some effects pedals. I want to rate this Volca higher, but, again, unless you absolutely want hardware with (tiny) knobs, there is a selection of FM software emulators that do the same thing.

“I’d buy that for a dollar”

Right. It’s cheap. It’s small. It’s a Volca, so that alone is supposed to excuse its numerous limitations. It can make certain sounds reasonably well: a three oscillator vaguely Moog-like sawtooth buzz, a very analog square wave and…that’s about it. I know. A 303 is also a very limited synth and that has a legendary character in certain circles. But that has a killer app: ACID. I don’t know what the Keys killer app is. It doesn’t really excel at anything other than, once more, it’s cheap and it looks interesting, in a retro sort of way. I was drawn to the Keys because of its three note paraphony, but it sounds a little thin that way and usually play it as a monosynth in unison mode. If you see this mostly as monosynth, the uniqueness of its paraphony is meaningless. You may be better off with a Behringer Model D if a three oscillator analog synth is on the menu. I lump this synth in the category of “after playing this synth, you will know what your next synth won’t be missing”. Ever drive a car without air conditioning? Your next car will definately have air conditioning. Your next synth will have polyphony instead of paraphony, bigger knobs, a MIDI out or USB connectivity, an actual keyboard, presets, more control over sound creation, perhaps a display. And will cost a lot more. This isn’t a Minilogue XD. It’s not even an IK Multimedia UNO synth. Assuming you must have an authentic analog sound at the lowest price, this fits the bill. At least on paper. Me, I’m a bedroom producer, so my expectations are low for entry level equipment. Still. Deliberately limiting my already barely adequate abilities removes the question “is it the equipment or the producer that achieved that sound”? With the Keys, it is all you, for better or worse.