ARTURIA Jupiter-8V 1.0.3 (Mac/Win)

Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Brian Smithers

Classic '80s keyboard with some new twists.

Extracrunchy Interface

My wish list for the next version contains a few other items. When the plug-in window is open in Digidesign Pro Tools, it steals all keystrokes from the application, including essential transport functions. You must either close the plug-in window to start, stop, rewind, and record, or resort to using the mouse to initiate playback. Because the patch effects are all stereo, the plug-in will appear only on a stereo track in Pro Tools. Although not a fatal flaw, it requires a couple of extra steps to make the instrument behave like the mono original.

While I'm picking on the manual, note that it doesn't document the procedure for assigning a Favorite patch to one of the 16 buttons that the original used to store its presets. (Simply call up the patch and then Shift-click on the desired button.) The original factory presets are not included as promised in the manual, but they are now available from Arturia's Web site. Patches are not organized in banks, sub-banks, and presets (as the manual says), but rather as projects.

Arturia does deserve kudos for including historical background on the Jupiter-8 along with a couple of good chapters on programming the instrument. But with the poor translation and rather large number of errors, the current manual is unworthy of such a good product. Because Arturia doesn't make its manuals available electronically, the chances of seeing a corrected version are pretty slim. I hope the company will at least post a persistent topic in its Jupiter-8V user forum listing known manual errors.

Extracrispy CPU

Arturia's system requirements for Jupiter-8V are a bit optimistic. It recommends a 1.5 GHz Mac or PC, but I couldn't get any sort of usable performance on my Athlon 2500+, which is significantly more powerful than that. Performance was better on my 2 GHz Centrino CPU (a notebook processor roughly equivalent to a 4 GHz desktop processor), and better still on my dual-core 2.33 GHz MacBook Pro. However, this synth can be an extraordinary resource hog.

Running within Cakewalk Sonar 6.2 with no other tracks, one active pad preset chewed up 35 percent of my notebook's CPU to play a 3-note chord. That's not too bad, but when I played a progression of 3-note chords, the overlapping releases overwhelmed my CPU completely by the time I played the third chord. I repeated this on my MacBook Pro in standalone mode, and although the CPU meter was somewhat lower, the third chord still choked the CPU. Disabling Galaxy and other effects did not help significantly. For all practical purposes, this particular preset is unusable. The moral of the story is that you should be prepared to make good use of printing or freezing Jupiter-8V tracks.

When running the plug-in within Sonar 6.2, I could escape constant distortion only by setting the buffer to an absurdly large size. I got the same results in Sonar 5, so I went digging for information. I found a link to a version 1.0.3 upgrade in Arturia's Jupiter-8V forum. It solved the problem, although I could still only get the latency down to a barely manageable 30 ms without distortion on my Centrino notebook. Arturia puts links to interim updates in its user forums and, less frequently, releases formal updates that have been fully tested. If you encounter problems, be sure to check the forums.

Like all recent Arturia virtual instruments, Jupiter-8V uses a Syncrosoft USB dongle. Authorization was straightforward, and the USB key allowed me to use the instrument easily on several different computers. However, Pro Tools refused to start without the USB key. Arturia says this should not happen, and it is looking into the matter.

Despite the handful of issues I encountered, I like Jupiter-8V a lot. Its ability to produce nostalgic sounds takes me back, but at the same time, its sonic potential has me looking forward. The more time I spend absorbing its sound-sculpting logic and making new sounds and templates for further experimentation, the less significant my quibbles about its interface seem. The Galaxy modulation module and the ability to patch effects into the synthesis chain promise nearly endless opportunities for timbre tweaking. Check out the demo when you're in the mood for some serious fun.

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Brian Smithers is course director of audio workstations at Full Sail Real World Education in Winter Park, Florida. His latest book is Mixing in Pro Tools: Skill Pack (Thomson Learning, 2006).

PRODUCT SUMMARY

ARTURIA
Jupiter-8V 1.0.3

software synthesizer
$249

FEATURES	4
EASE OF USE	3
QUALITY OF SOUNDS	4
VALUE	3

RATING PRODUCTS FROM 1 TO 5

PROS: Great for both emulative and original sounds. Broad plug-in format compatibility and standalone mode. Useful nonemulative features, including presets, effects, and 32-voice polyphony. Innovative Galaxy module provides complex modulation curves.

CONS: Major CPU hog. Manual suffers from inaccuracies and poor translation. Interface should be more streamlined.

MANUFACTURER

Arturia
www.arturia.com


BONUS MATERIAL
Web Clips: Listen to audio examples of bass patches, pads, and more from Jupiter-8V