Roland Super JD-990
Digital synthesizer

written by Don Solaris

About

In 1991 Roland released the famous JD-800 synth with analogue-style control surface, 108 PCM waveforms and an awesome sounding digital filter that featured low pass, band pass and hi pass modes. Polyphony was 24, and it had a powerful effect section with two groups of 4 effects connected in series (that user could arrange in any desired order).


But it wasn't until 1993 when Roland released one of its best products, and probably one of the best digital synthesizers ever in the recent  history. Named Super JD-990 it was a big upgrade to its predecessor. You might read somewhere that JD-990 is a module version of JD-800, but this is simply not true! JD-990 is actually a completely different synthesizer, with triple the features of the JD-800 and a completely different engine. Only thing they share are the first 108 waveforms and the effects section. Thats's all! As a consequence of different engines, JD-800 can't load JD-990 patches. Many of the previous JD-800 users worry about complicated knob-less sound editing on JD-990. However,  JD-990's large screen gives a great overview of the parameters, so even if it doesn't have lots of knobs you can still program it very quickly - much faster than with a computer editor.




Differences between JD-800 and JD-990 / what was added in the model 990


  • Wave ROM was expanded to 6MB (vs 4MB on JD-800) with 195 PCM waveforms (vs 108 on JD-800) and that includes some waveforms transferred from JV-80 probably to make them soundwise more compatible.
  • Pan inside each Tone was added. Warning: On JD-800 you can NOT pan indivisual tone for those wide stereo sounds!
  • Matrix modulation was added on the JD-990. This is actually quite important feature. Take this as a precaution if you plan to buy model 800: there is no matrix modulation on the JD-800! Let's explain this in a more simple way - on JD-800 you can't: increase cutoff point of Tone 1, decrease cutoff of Tone 2, increase resonance of Tone 3, decrease pitch of Tone 4 - all at the same time by moving the modulation wheel. In fact there is no modulation wheel on JD-800 at all. Majority of the sounds you'll hear below use the benefits of matrix modulation, and as such are simply impossible to be performed on JD-800.
  • Multiple sources for the same destination added. On JD-990 you can for example use two different LFO's for the same destination - i.e. pitch, filter, TVA. This can create complex modulations. On JD-800 you can only use one source for the same destination.
  • SR-JV expansion card support! Next to standard JD-800 series card slots, there is additional card slot to use a 8MB expansion boards from SR-JV series. (i.e. Vintage Expansion, Orchestral, SFX, etc.)
  • Roland JV-80 patch import.
  • The LFO section got additional waveforms: sine, trapezoid and chaos.
  • Osc sync function was added. It lets you synchronize two oscillators - a feature found in many analog synthesizers.
  • FXM was added. It stands for Frequency Cross Modulation - again found in some analog synthesizers, for example in JX and Jupiter series (although a little bit different there). It has 8 positions (labeled colors) that actually control the frequency of the modulating signal, and a depth setting 0 - 100 that controls the amplitude of the modulating signal.
  • Next feature is (again from analog synth era), the famous ring modulation, for creating all kind of metallic percussions and strange efx.
  • This synth features 6 types of ''structures'' which among many other things let you stack two filters in series, for building complex filter textures.
  • 24 dB filter (using structures), next to standard 12 dB which is always available.
  • Outputs increased to 8 total.
  • Polyphonic portamento.
  • Tempo sync delay.

Sound Demos

Here are the .mp3 sound examples of Roland Super JD-990 that will demonstrate it's synthesis capabilities. All the sounds were programmed by Don Solaris. The third demo (Vintage) features some waveforms from Vintage Expansion card.

JD-990 Don Solaris: Etheral Demo.mp3 (3min) - A collection of some etheral sounds.
 JD-990 Don Solaris: Ambient Demo.mp3 (3min) - A little bit of ambient sounds.
 JD-990 Don Solaris: Vintage Demo.mp3 (1 min) - Sounds programmed using Vintage board waveforms.


More sound demos - Roland JD competition

For more examples, and songs made using a JD synthesizer only, please visit the JD Competition originally started by Paolo Di Nicolantonio (owner of synthmania.com) and me. The trick is to create the whole track (including drums) by utilizing only a JD-800 or JD-990 synthesizer. External effect processors used for additional production are not allowed! Mastering is however allowed and it can include a touch of EQ, a little bit of channel compression and the track normalization. Overdub is allowed too.

A link for competition details and how to submit a song
JD songs submitted so far




Deep Synthesis: Home

05. 26. 2006
Don Solaris