Roland JV-1080: Is It Worth It? | The Most Underrated Vintage Digital Synth Module? 

I wouldn't call it "budget" because that immediately puts some people off. This is a highly technical instrument with amazing sound possibilities.

by the way RISC processor is Reduced instruction set computing. It operates using a reduced set of instructions compared to say an intel processor which uses a full instruction set. Very simply, it uses simpler instructions and less of them so it can do what it needs to do more quickly. RISC processing was really taken on board by Acorn microcomputers in the UK but ignored by most other people until the smartphone era when apple really pumped a tonne of money into RISC and acorn computers was the ARM (acorn risc machines). These chips are now the most widely used in the world and in almost every smarthpone because they can run very fast on low power. It was believed they would never outstrip a traditional processor but recently they have, and it is believed this advancement will usher in a new era of computing.

Dude I just bought one last night after seeing yours in the back room. I was looking for your video on it before I purchased. Glad I picked one up!

This and the JV2080 make up a huge arsenal of sounds for game soundtrack composing. I never run out of inspiration. These blended with real instruments and virtual instruments sound exceptional.

Great video. This was an awesome sound module back in the 90’s still has some great sounds.

These are HEAVILY used on a lot of dance music productions in the 1990s and early 2000s - especially trance, progressive house and house music.

I have the Intergra 7 and that still stands up today. Still a great sound module

Always loved this series very broad range of sounds. Once you get into it and start sound designing you can definitely make people second guess where the sounds are coming from. I have a jd990 and xv3080 and wouldn't say one replaces the other. Both have something different to bring to the party. Enjoyed the talk through and vid :-)

This is one of my favorite synths of all time. Something special about it’s actual sound and synth architecture. Very deep.

I love my 1080 after all of these years, and all of its expansion cards. It just fits.

I snagged one for £125 a few years back, best synth/rompler you can get for that kind of cash! The sound cards can get a little pricey that’s the only sting, but they already come packed with samples so it’s all good

9:48 - lovely rich sound

I still have my JV-1080 (with 4 expansion boards installed: Vintage Synths, Country, Drum and Bass and the Orchestral board) and have no plans to ever get rid of it. I bet that newer Jupiter-X has many of the waveforms present in the JV-1080 and maybe even some exact patches in it.

Great demo! Any chance for a demo on how to connect the 1080 to a PC/tablet and control the 1080 to change patches and parameters?

Still using my jv1010 with the Vintage synth expansion from time to time. :)

I haven't tried the JV-1080, but I used the JV-2080 a lot to blend with other virtual and hardware sounds for a small documentary score. I was really happy with how it sounded. Running these through a decent preamp can also really help beef them up for recordings.

My friend Michael gave me this synth. I love it

Heck yeah, it’s worth it! I need to get my hands on one. 😁🔥💯

I just purchased this popular module and it sounds good, a keyboard in a box

It's become a slice of nostalgia. So any current band or artist can grab this as a flavour in their sound. I believe that if it's used sparsely here and there for some ear candy in a modern song of any genre (I relate with Tame Impala who used this), it can be just the right amount of nostalgia sprinkled in to get the listener to subconsciously feel comforted in nostalgia but obviously not know where that feeling is coming from.

I got mine with the orchestra expansion for 75 bucks. I love love love it.

Still have mine and stil use it. A cornerstone synth for any studio.

I would have liked to hear more of the variety this synth has like the slap bass, drums, and other instruments.

I used to have a JV 2080 - I worked hard to be able to get one 2nd hand and loved it. I also had the small module, the JV 1010 which had some midi timing issues so I didn't love using it. I still wish that I had held onto the 2080 - the sounds were lush and it truly was a workhorse. I may find my way to owning another one, although Spectrasonics Omnisphere holds the title of best workhorse synth in my collection

Happy New Year man

Got this and jd990 And i just can't stop playing old ass anime and game song

There are new sound banks that have come out recently for this as well. They are fresh, modern and very interesting sounding as well. These new banks are a great example of the fact that programming is the thing that is the most important. Many wont believe these sounds are coming from a JV1080.

i've heard that the cork sniffers diss the JV-2080 dacs over the jv-1080 dacs. i scored a jv-2080 with 5 expansion cards for $200. it is beautiful and i decided to appreciate how excellent the 2080 is and never compare it. i will never part with this. it has 16 parts. you can do insane things with a workstation with 16layers and splits. do you have any of the vocal patches with the velocity sensitive expression layers? those are amazing, sounds totally multi-timbral (those might be on a card, been a while) props for enya mention. i still remember hearing orinoco flow for the first time and was blown away. edit: play the factory demo, those are killer. actually there are many youtubes, nm haha

RISC basically means it’s more efficient at doing simpler/specialized tasks. ARM-based CPUs in mobile devices (and now M1 Macs) and earlier PowerPC and MIPS CPUs used in PowerMacs and some consoles are RISC-based. x86 CPUs are CISC. I have a JV-1080 (and posted a few GM MIDI playbacks) with a Vintage Synth expansion card.

Reduced Instruction Set Chip (RISC) is a chip worth a simplified, built-in instruction set that results in faster performance for simple computing tasks.

Cheiron studios used this almost exclusively for NSYNC, Backstreet boys & Britney spears tracks in the mid-late 90's. Got a lot of mileage out of it. Still sounds great to this day.

My Roland XV-88 uses all the sounds that originated from the JV-1080. The digital sounds in question came from the D50, U110, U20/U220, JD800/JD990, and the JV80. It also had waveforms which came from the Jupiter 8, Juno 60/106, MKS20, Rhodes MK80, SH2000 lead, SH101 bass, Moog, JX10, MC202, and GR700.

I worked in a studio that had one of these and we used it extensively. I wasn't a fan of the user interface.... but the sounds were great.

bought one last week and what a piece of gear it is!

I just brought one for $150 and it had the world and sessions card in it, great find to do lofi hip hop

I need to get one of these and run it through my Alesis Quadriverb Plus for some ultimate 90s goodness

For those who are interested this is 100% JV-1080. It doesn't have to sound 90's at all. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bBHRXwwIpRI.html

Nothing budget about this module. This was literally “THE” sound module to have when it was being produced by Roland. The 1080 was used EVERYWHERE. It wasn’t just bands and studios. This module was used in a lot of movies, major tv shows, commercials, popular cartoons, and dominated the gaming sound tracks.., it was simply an amazing module, and it’s popularity speaks for itself.

Awsome Synth. I have had mine since they first came out. And I use it all the time.

Just got my Sector101 SR-JV ROMulator Card & Programmer shipped, i ow lots of expansion board but missing a couple, now i can program any expansion.

The JV-1080 factory sound set and the amazing expansion card library lived on through the XV and Fantom series all the way to my present Roland Juno DS 61. The D/A converters are better on the JV-1010 which also gives you the much needed Session card built in. I own three JV1010's, the original JV-1080 and an XV-3080. I bought all of the modules at pawn shops for chump change over the past 12 years. I play heavy handed so I'd rather gig with a rack of modules and cheap M-Audio midi controller keyboards than to keep wearing out and breaking keys on expensive workstation keybeds. Thanks for a new video on the JV-1080. For what it's worth the live sound of the JV-1080 is a little thin and dry compared to the newer editions. It needs a little processing help in the studio. I love my XV-3080 which has the core sounds of the 1080 and much more. Snag that one any chance you get.

I restored a dead Roland XP-50 back to life then loaded it with SR-JV80 series expansion cards versions 03 - 04 - 08 - 09 - 16, the XP - 50 cost nothing as was given to me by a customer who I repaired a Roland W - 30 for, the XP=50 is a great keyboard now I am learning to play this machine, cheers.

JV-1080/ JV-2080 are still very good deal, they are criticized for 32Khz engine, but I guess that is somehow part of it's charm today. Also they are from time, where they have been made more for composers (patches have "volume and body") then for studio technicians (before everything became mix friendly and "thin" sounding). It is also not coincidence, that Vangelis have couple of them. :-)

"Steel Away" most famous sound for 90s R&B songs.I heared it Everywhere.Aslo,the piano sound "64VoicePiano" back then Piano sample are Short so the only solution they used was LOOP .By the way,The Piano sound very nice,good for ballad song.

damn i got mine for 100 euros 8 years ago.. two expansion cards.. love it still

dude this thing is amazing.

I have had my JV-1080 for over 10 years, I also have a bunch of SRJV plugin boards including Orchestral and Bass and drums plus at least 2 PCM1 cards including Piano selection which gives you the same piano tone from older modules like the U-110. I do still also like it's stock sounds, this is still like a Rolls Royce equivalent to the SC-55. Some of the SRJV instrument still sound convincing. Maybe I might also get a JV-2080 or an XV-5080 in the future so I don't have to keep swapping SRJV expansion boards out. Also were some of those patches you played custom patches?

Yes man nice. Check my preset libraries for it. I went really deep into this unit last years! nice you're doing a video on it. it can sound so dull or at the same time deep and complex and still very contemporary.. Programming the 2080 is so much easier compared to the strange menu structure of the 1080. I do like the sound of the 1080 slightly more. Also the cloud Vst is nice but slightly flat sounding compared to the hardware. The hardware effects also sound slightly more dynamic despite not being special. I owe a vintage expansion and these waveforms are definitely worth it. Another cool thing, the new RAM cards that are developed. They hold up to around 20 banks of 128 patches I believe. Anyway this machine goes from being utterly cheese to the complex sounds of space. They are fun and so cheap.

I have both the *2080* and the *3080* in a rack. I pulled them out of the basement this past Saturday.

I have 5 JV modules with SR JV80-08 Keyboards of the 60s and 70s. JV80 JV1010,JV2080 JV880 900. Love them still and currently still being used here in my rig 2024. Yep i got the XP10 XP30 VK7 and VK8 and VK8m

It's a tough call. On one hand, they're seriously undervalued and will probably go up in price eventually. The JV series ROM cards are already getting expensive, and many of these sell for more than the cost of the units that they are going into. It's a great-sounding synth and quite reliable. The downside is that Roland Cloud has an excellent VST version, so you don't really need the hardware. Moreover, the later XV and Fantom series are almost as cheap and sound even better. Finally, if you have a Fantom or Integra, you'll already have many or most of these sounds in those. So, it's worth the money, but might not be the best or most flexible option. It's worth mentioning the JV-2080 too, as this basically sounds the same, but has a better display and more expansion slots (and is often even cheaper than the 1080).

I’ve had or used just about all of the JV family of synths. IMO the XV3080 was the best of them and at one point I had three of them. About 5-6 years ago I began to get really tired of the sound and started using them less and less and then eventually sold 2 of the three I had. I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Roland Cloud version here in the comments. Once the XV5080 was available on Roland Cloud I sold the 3rd module. Haven’t looked back. Do they sound identical? No. But the character is there and at this point, the trade off between only using a few sounds as well as having the free rack space and A/D inputs is worth moving on from the hardware version. I use mostly analog boards now, but when I want that quintessential old school sound I can quickly go to Roland Cloud’s XV5080 or the D50 as well as Korg’s Triton VST. No need for any of the hardware pieces of these 90s era synths IMO.

I have 2 in my recording studio, plus a JD990, Matrix 1000 and they all still are greatly used. It's all about how you work with these's units! I have clients who come in and work magic with these units. Your correct there are apart of history and I will never get rid on them. Do you see what the price of the Matrix 1000 goes for these days there? Over $1K! And the JD 990 forget it, I am so glad I had the mind to hold onto them :)

Been checking the Integra 7 hard and thinking about taking the plunge.

Is it worth it? Absolutely!! Im more or less 100% in the box these days but wont ever get rid of mine, or the other hardware I got. You cant beat hands on.

Great overview, if any digital synth deserves recognition this does! Due to Rolands notable miss-steps, I think many people into synths forget Roland incredible contribution to modern music. ( even after the Juno/909 era etc)When I think of the 1080, always makes me think of Robert Miles “Children”. Thanks for your content and all the best for the new year!

The JV series was the beginning of Roland moving to rompler synths. It started with JV-80. The XP series, starting with the XP-50 was the 2nd Gen of that series. The Roland JV-1080 is the rack version of the Roland XP-50. That is why JV1080 does not sync the samples loops on the SR cards to MIDI like the XP 50 and the JV series. When the XP 80 came out that was fixed, everything after that could sync the samples loops to MIDI on the SR cards. Like the JV-2080 and so forth.

I still use it for live performance, writing etc. you can own the latest whatever but if you can’t write a good song or track it doesn’t matter.

I’m seriously thinking about getting me a JV 1080 or a 2080 because there are a lot of Hiphop & R&B songs that was made on it including 50 Cent’s song (PIMP) & another reason why I want is because I think that Roland made a Vst for the SR-JV80 Expansion boards like the Session, Sound Super Set, Keyboards of 60s & 70s & the vintage keys 🎹 Expansion board so even though I’m using Logic Pro X 10.5 those free sound plugins are no way better then the JD 990 JV1080 or the first Yamaha Motif ES because til this day those sounds are still🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Whilst I love my 1080 I find some of the drum sounds have a high noise floor. Not sure if a gate would bring it down?

All the JV-1080 patches are in that Jupiter-X you are playing and every new ZenCore synth. In the JupiterX, they are 1-384 of the 5080 bank, which was a late expansion/evolution of the 1080.

lovely.

Don Solaris has a nice sound set for the JV-1080. The JD-990 unit sounds a bit more pleasing to me but I love the JV-1080. Get the JV80 "Vintage Keys", "Orchestral" and "60's & 70's" expansion cards for some real nice sound sets. Be sure to replace the capacitors which can be a fire hazard on these cards.

Can anyone confirm if the Stock synth sounds in the Roland MV8K series were from the JV1080?

Are these the stock sounds ? If so I'm getting one straight away !

RISC = Reduced Instruction Set Computer, basically there are 2 different predominate Schools of thought related to Architectures of computer processors, one being the RISC and the other being CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer), basically the key difference of the two schools of thought is the fact that a RISC computer provides the hardware necessary to perform complex instructions by breaking them into smaller 'chucks of operations' at the programming level, however does not provide the Instruction set elements required to complete the tasks at a programming level in a single instruction, a computers ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) is VERY reflective of it's hardware design as well so consequently CISC computers usually have more complex hardware blocks to facilitate any instruction set elements which fall into the category of a 'complex' instruction. Simply put, you can usually perform the same set of tasks on both a CISC computer and RISC computer, however it usually takes more instructions and hence more clock cycles on RISC computer as it does to achieve the same thing on a CISC computer. Why would the 'slower' processor architecture be used in something that is effectively a real time audio device you may ask? well, a big factor could be to do with the differences in the way that RISC computers and CISC computers often interface with memory, essentially, RISC computers have instructions which interface with the memory on a whole word basis and CISC computers provide instructions to interface with memory on a byte level, this however results in much simpler hardware in the case of the RISC machine and much more complex [and more electrically dense] hardware in the case of the CISC computer, this however does introduce a bottleneck between the processor and external memory which in the case of the RISC computer it's simpler hardware translates into quicker memory access times than the CISC computer.

In comparison to rhodes and piano VST nowadays, is it still relevant ?

Amazing demo! i quite like your insight and review with the JV1080 and i am hoping to see you do the JV 880/JV 80. Since they both have some differences that i find interesting. Sadly the expansions are getting more expensive then the unit itself, i managed to snag a Vintage Synth card in a cheaper price before it got too pricy. (How ever i think it sounds better in the JD 990, i still love the expansion itself.)

I've had two. They're great modules but they really come to life with SR-JV80 cards. I had a couple in my second unit (Orchestral and Vintage Synth). I now have a Jupiter-X, which contains all of the JV-1080's waveforms and some of its presets but, while the latter are definitely in the right ballpark, they don't quite sound the same. Roland didn't do a great job adapting them for the JP-X. Same with the JP50/80 patches they tried to recreate.

I have the JV1010, which is a later issued half rack module that contains the JV1080 synth engine and a huge number of presets - about 1000 I think. It can only take 1 sound card unlike the 1080’s four. And while patches can be edited, doing so is a pain given its vastly simplified interface. But given so many great preset sounds there is not much point in editing them anyway.

Why hasn't this one been done for iOS yet? Or has it?

It was the first Roland synth that allowed you to sync LFOs and effects to midi tempo. Roland was NEVER able to do that before when even Korg and Yamaha were doing it long ago. Besides, it sounded massive and expensive. It was a serious machine.

Hi.. im new in the modules world, therefore i have some questions are the sound coming out of the module, audio o Midi? Can you Sequence/quantize with a module like that? How do you connect everything DAW / Keyboard ...if you could make a video i'd appreciate ! Thank You!

The coolest thing for me was the ability to edit individual voices while in performance mode. Triton rack couldn't do that!🤩😎

I like this one. Mostly cause I use this for all my songs.

Rearranging my studio, decided to keep the jv.

ola, nice. you think its the best warm, fine roland sound of the serie (1985-2000) ? jd990 is not cheap ;) best vibes

The factory string presets had some samples with nasty aliasing, am I the only one ever noticing it? And... it's not my JV-1080, I heard the same artifact in some jingles around, that made me recognize it :) I think that JV-2080 and following has them fixed.

The JV1080 accepts polyphonic aftertouch commands via MIDI. Good to use with Roli midi controller.

From donkey kong country to the 90s happy hardcore music scene in the uk, you can here these sounds throughout.

It would be helpful if the preset names were listed during the demos!

I bought a JV1080 when they were released, its fully expanded with Vintage, Hip Hop, Techno and Session boards. I later got the XV5080, too, and there is no denying it is better in a lot of ways. But it lacks the character and charm of the 1080. What a great workhorse in the studio.

By the way, the JV-1010 has all the 1080 and 2080 sounds.

I will make it simple: YES IT IS WORTH IT. Now, you will need to fix those pesky unresponsive control panel buttons, but that is universal with vintage gear sadly. Outside that, YES! IT IS WORTH IT! 16 part multitimbral,64 note polyphonic, 128 user sound locations, 4 wave sample card expansion ports plus the front panel expansion..

"In computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a complex instruction set computer (CISC), a RISC computer might require more instructions (more code) in order to accomplish a task because the individual instructions are written in simpler code." - Wikipedia

RISC = Reduced Instruction Set Computer A risk processor is very fast as it has few instruction sets built into it. The Operating system / Software carry the load for the processor. A more common architecture in older computer would be CISC = Complex Instruction Set Computer Most computer processors today are a hybrid of these two technologies. It really is just two different camps. You can create more complex processors CISC which the OS and software leverage the built in instructions. Vs RISC which have very fast simple processors but the load gets shifted to the OS and the software running on it.

One Patch is essentially 4 fully independent synthesizers.

This is inside the MC 909 Groove box

The JV-2080 os deeper and sounds better than JV-1080, I don't know if it is because audio reaolution or effects quality...

My very first track ever here on RU-vid was completely done on a Roland XP-30. Two of the patches came from the integrated "Techno Collection" expansion. >> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-D16YZwaDNJU.html

These things are all pretty great. But if you don't mind the huge 2U versions do yourself a favor and get one of the ones with a better display like the JV-2080. Currently the JV-1080 / JV-2080 / XV-5050 all go for about $250. The XV-5080 is about twice as much. The JD-990 / JV-2080 / XV-5080 have a MUCH better 320x80 px display. The XV-5050 / XV-5080 have digital outputs. The XV-5050 is 1U, and it's MUCH smaller than the others. I like the XV-5050 because it's the size of an E-Mu Proteus (actually the Roland is about 0.75" shorter than a Proteus). There are several editors you can use if you have one with a smaller display. But if you get a JV-2080 you don't need to use an external editor because it has an awesome screen.

Put your goddamn hands down!

Back when I was getting into synths and eventually became an analog bitch(circa 2002) I think if I had one of these first I would have learned every nuance of it from the getgo. Of course at the time, Roland was trying HARD to make the best synthesizers in the world. How they did it didn't matter, they made sure you could do everything you wanted to.

backstreet boys!!!

I tought the JD 990 was more popular in movies

The Roland XV-5080 is even better. Nicer LCD and specs. The Fantom XR is awesome, too.

I could be wrong but I think you reversed Don Solaris's comments. He was speaking of the JV-880 being high fi. I have both the JV-1080 and JV-880. Both are great, but the 1080 is darker. The 880 very bright and clear. Also, it's great you played the actual 1080 unit because many of the patches didn't carry forward properly to the later modules including the Integra.

I love the 1080 but I would never get one over a soft synth. I have Logic Pro X and is amazing and everything is there. Still, I have my synths because hardware is fun to do stuff with. But it make no sense the cost of having external modules unless they are very unique like the E-MU Morpheus and such.

Fantasia, right?

F*ck I AM OLD! (Remember saving all my money to get this thing!)