PatchVault MKS80

Description

 All 64 factory patches from the awe-inspiring Super Jupiter MKS-80 • Multiple velocity layers, tons of multisamples: over 2.3Gb of rich analogue sound! • Sweet strings, thick brass, delicious bell and tine tones • Ideal for layering for immense, spacious warmth and depth • Still only 20 cents a patch!

Roland’s success with the amazing Jupiter 8 back in 1981 led them, three years after its launch, to refine that analogue masterpiece further, package it into tight 2-unit rackspace, and launch it as the Super Jupiter MKS-80. Foregoing the hands-on slider control of the Jupiter 8 in favour of a series of buttons allowed the analogue guts of the Jupiter to be shoehorned into a surprisingly neat box – though at the expense of making it fiddly to program. Luckily, Roland had this covered too: the add-on MPG-80 programmer unit provided slider-and-knob control of all the MKS-80’s patch and performance parameters, relaying them to the main unit via MIDI SysEx. Even better, you could rackmount the programmer as well!

The MKS-80 isn’t identical to the Jupiter 8: there are small but interesting differences in the behaviour of the filter circuit, and several revisions (to both instruments) give gearheads plenty to compare and contrast. But back in the day, the consensus – very broadly – seemed to be that the MKS-80 was the better-sounding machine for many applications.

Roland shipped it with 64 factory preset sounds in 8 banks of 8, and all of those sounds are lovingly recreated here with PatchVault precision. In the case of patches that lean on the wonderful-sounding filter, we’ve used multiple velocity layers to capture the original responsiveness. As you’d expect, strings and brass are standout instruments; what’s perhaps more surprising is the glittering bell, chime and tine patches (perhaps aiming to give Yamaha’s DX series a run for its money). Thanks to Kontakt, you can also layer patches for truly epic orchestral washes; and using the PatchVault control set, you can wring loads more mileage from the presets, sculpting them into whole new sounds if you wish.

The Jupiter 8 and the Super Jupiter were the pinnacle of Roland’s analogue polysynth craft. Now you can grab a tasty rackful of 1984 for just 20 cents a patch!

(All our Kontakt instruments require a full copy of Native Instruments Kontakt v4.2.3 or higher (including all versions of Kontakt 5). Kontakt Player is not supported: instruments will load, but will time out after 15 minutes. See the FAQ for further information.)