Roland SYSTEM-8 - Sound Design with Scott Tibbs 

I think I'm going to take a drink every time he says, "It takes it to the next level". :)

It's amazing 21.20 - 21.50. the most gorgeous sound i've heard from synth!

with this finally roland re-did a no compromise quality analog style synth that sounds like a real roland. worthy of their legacy! good job!

Mr Tibbs, the coolest guy in the industry., thanks for the demo

I'm 5 days in. I own Moog and Dave Smith. Is the S8 better? It's really different! I find that it brings a lot to my rig. I find the sound a little on the "Extra Crispy" side, but in a really good way. I love weird modulation possibilities, and I've been exploring the modulation of the "Color" parameter with OSC 3. This thing can go BONKERS really fast. To me, that's the mark of a good systhesizer. I like a machine that can become crazy, driven and mod-heavy. The S8 has a really broad palate of "crazy". It's quite the sound designer's dream. Side band filters? S8's filter "3" is the System 1's ladder filter. Really nice! The Juno side is off the hook. I've always felt the 106 was charming but thin. The 60 has more heft and and diversity to it's sound. I think the System 8 Juno makes a few nods to the 60. The Pulse/Saw balance is variable like the 60! This one is a daily driver for me. I thought the Prophet 6 was entirely too polite and even a little boring. As for analog gear in general, it's always fun...until you try to record it. Now were dependent on the quality of my preamps, avoiding grounding problems. My audio from the S8 is coming in clean over USB. I'm pretty happy about that. Yeah, it's light. 3 DSP chips and 4 memory chips just don't weigh much. The S8's LFO has a few tricks. It's number 2 variant acts like two LFOs mixed. Not quite two real LFOs but interesting. Pardon my rambling, but I think this is one of those things that are greater than the sum of it's parts. I don't know if it's a classic, but it is a "secret weapon".

just from a layout standpoint this really does look like the funnest synth that is being produced right now for under 2k.

21:23 That is one cool sound.

Digital gone horribly horribly right. The Aira line is just amazing.

Just bought this and the Rev 2 along with the akai mpc live. Cannot wait to see how these things work together. I've never been able to understand what people meant when they said "two different beasts" or "they compliment each other but one isn't better". Maybe now I'll be able to understand. Gonna upload videos soon on recreating sounds on one synth and doing the same sound on the other synth and see how different the sound is.

The best from Roland! makes fun, to watch videos with this guy!!

7:30. That shimmer does sound really great

I like that it’s four-in-one. You can condense your stack if you want to play live rather than use as just a controller.

OMG, I just need one!

11:45 - 12:10 and 22:57 - 23:30 Ideal sountracks for next part of " Escape from New York " .

I don't know how they pulled it off man but this thing somehow manages to be hideous and beautiful at the same time in terms of aesthetics.

Frequency modulation (FM) is the coolest sort of modulation in my opinion

Frankly, it sounds fantastic. And for a sub $2000 synth, it's even nicer.

In my opinion, this is the best digital synth available today.

4 built in synth in one ... , Nice !!!

I waiting for the next ROLAND synth with BLUE LEDs !

Why people are paying huge prices for old Jupiters and whatnot when they can get modern synthesizors like this to do so so much more is beyond me.

Excellent demonstration - thanks!

Amazing machine👌

The BEST demo!!!!!! thanks

How the vocoder work on the system 8? No one is showing that.

J'ai bien fais de conserver mon Juno-6 !!! Tous les sons du système-8 sont dedans !!

I have a JP8000 and it's great but have to say this synth sounds, big, warm and amazing. I'd welcome it into my rig in a heartbeat. I'm reading the comments about same old sounds and plastic casing (yes, that's not ideal for travel) but my guess is these comments stem from that noisy, less playing, more knob turning, turn knobs while arpeggiator plays, type thing. Ya, some cool new sound textures out there but the System 8 sounds like it will do enough of that along with being a real 'players' synth. Would be great to have 61 keys of real estate to work with but aside from that, this thing rocks.

I got one and I LOVE it, so versatile, like a JP-8000 on steroids. Anyone calling this thing a "sampler" is cooked in the head, this thing's Virtual Analogue sound is damn accurate, go put it on a oscilloscope and see what I mean :) The only complaint I have is the lack of 2nd LFO, but then again I never use the 2nd LFO anyway, but hope they can somehow get around the HW limitation (maybe assign LFO dial to be dual personality) - Probably not gonna happen.

Фантастические возможности. И главное всё под рукой не надо не куда залезать не в какие проги. Супер аппарат!!!! Мне бы такой и я был бы счастлив.

Beautiful machine

Please make a desktop version!

Why didn't Roland use those 'rings' that fill up as you turn the knobs like on the Novation keyboards. They're be so handy to see what the settings were. :(

This is how the jd xi should have been designed, or they should have put alot of the knobs and other capabilities onto and into the jd xi. It looks very familiar. This thing sounds crazy good.

I prefer the sound of any digital synth of the late 80s or 90s ( CZs, K4, D-50, DX7, AN1X, VFX, CS2X, JP-8000, etc, etc, etc) to all digital synths actually.

Excellent demo.

Here is my personal opinion: I bought one of these system 8s last year when they came out, it was a great sounding synth, very capable, however for $1500, you get cheap plastic housing. I loved the Juno 106 plugout, however I ended up selling mine to get a prophet for about $1000, (Prophet rev 2 is $1500 new, all analog) and with the DSI synths you get a solid road worthy board that is all analog. Get the prophet instead

Only beef I have with this board is that all the filter section should have been infinite rotary encoders. Because as you will note in this demo when Scott goes to another patch then starts to edit, the sound spazz's out and instantly locks to whatever the value was on the last edit point was on the knob. A rotary encoder when programmed into the firmware would eliminate this because the encoder would be reset when recalled to whatever the stored patch was and just pickup where it left off. No more spazz's sound jumps. Still... nice product.

If you cant understand how great this is, listen to this: ROLAND SYSTEM-8 DEMO by gattobus

Are there differences between the System 1 Supersaw vs the original (ie is it still 7 detuned saws per OSC?)

I think it would be interesting if each note could have its own position in the sound space as then the notes would be doing the dancing instead of the stereo effects.

Oh boy, I could play with this for hours..... ^_^ !

This is My All Time Favorite keyboard,Just Incase If It can't be Special Ordered Or Custom Made, Can You Guy's possibly Upgrade the design With An Extended Key bed?

hey scott your a magician. wow i just like u play that system -8 gr8 love it

If you think the sound is not good just use it as a hardwear controller for omnisphere

Thank you.

Can someone tell me if it can be used as a midi controller with ableton?

hi scott i cant activate my system 1 without the origanal details how can i activate it wthout them as if i cant this makes the system 1 a total waste of money?

great video my friend!

Oh please please update System-1 with a step sequencer and add additional effects/replace that crusher effect!

There is an edit mistake in the video! At 26:40 the video stops...and then at 26:47 it restarts!!!!

Not bad sounding in the digital domain but what is up with the build quality and design Roland?

17:38 this is roland

Are the Jupiter and Juno plug-outs included out of the box or are they a separate purchase?

Is this synth all plastic like the jd xa? For the cost this synth should have aluminum housing.

Nicee sounding gizmo.

Nice synth!

huge sound. i like!

so in the end the cutoff always rules?

So much nice!

You should have finished a maxi house single just with this video

Thanks for the demo! Does it come with the Jupiter-8 Plug-Out option in-built? Or was it programmed that way for the purpose of this demo?

I played with this at guitar center and I didn't even know what it was. Felt very cheap though when I saw that it was $1,500 I was stunned. It had to be the cheapest feeling synth in the store and believe me I played with everything they had there. Would of never known it could do all these things now I want to try it again.

I want one of those

What's up, Is It Possible to Make A 76 key Version of the System 8? Or Can The System 8 Be Special Ordered for 76 Keys or 61 key?

Shut it and take me money! 💰

Some mid tuned soundy towards the last is seriously Boards of Canada

Can do all this and more on a lot of ''old''keyboards.Korg extreme,Ensoniq.....etc.

The dislikes are probably from yamakorg owners that just realized they made a mistake by buying a toy instead of a real instrument for real music making.

Scott aged since his V-synth demos!!!!

i wanna hear filter with resonance turned all the way up

So we heard you like knobs

that ending lol

If it was 1995 I´d be impressed. The unreasonable high price would still pull me from buying it. These days, when analog synths are so cheap and sounds so much better, System 8 just seems unnessesary.....

love mine.

omg 9:40

Does it have sequencers?! Groove box?

а есть версия без комментариев?

nice!

This or the Matrixbrute??? Which would you guys and gals go for.

good synth cant wait to try, but we still like our virus though

Ripsquad brought me here

BLown Away

vu le prix c le top non? ty,mr scott

Is efficiency in creating sounds not a priority with synth companies?

Plug-Out - Does that mean I could bring in the D-50 and not have to pay a monthly license to use it? This would at least save my actual D-50 from having to go to gigs anymore.

That saw thicc

fucking awesome....! genius..........

I dont know what it is but ios plugins sound more fractured. Like broken.

This thing sounds quite good, and all the knobs are very helpful, but Roland has a relatively proprietary way of navigating and programming here with the plug-out idea. I also find this synth a bit overpriced considering it has a bit of a plastic feel to it, if you see and play one in person.

The "Variation" LEDs on Oscillators 1 and 2 only have 1 and 2. What a waste of space and a waste of LEDs. I returned mine because I was not impressed. The effects aren't as "drastic" as I like and the total "wet" effects are pretty bland. I returned mine and got a Behringer Deep Mind 12 for $500 less! I just wish Roland would bring back the original Jupiter-8 and Juno-106 like the original full-size Arp Odysseys were recently re-released by Korg. If they re-release those, I'd probably purchase them.

Shauntrack???

If only I could load the damn good SYS-8 engine into one or more of the Plug-Out slots! Damn idiots at Roland didn't think about that. I don't want ONLY 64 patches per engine and four different engines. You can only load external engines bought from Roland or Roland Cloud! What asshole came up with that "solution"?

V Synth GT is still lot more powerful in all dimensions

I have nothing like this coz I play a stage piano, but when I listen to it as the video is running, I recall of all that crazy music The Prodigy does.. and I like it! BUT not interested on paying more than $600 In fact the Nova Novation II and an old Virus Access do most (if not all) the things I heard here.

when the hell we came from system 700 to system 8?

does this keyboard have patch memory?

its an actual SYLENTH1 lol

little bit of resonance

No 5th octave...

Why not a beautiful rack version?