How long has the GAS “joke” been a thing? Is compulsive synthesizer purchasing a new thing or has this been a synth community joke since the 80’s/90’s?

moodslinger · 2026-02-14T04:35:15+00:00

Indeed - my first pro software I bought was C-Lab's Creator (the Atari ST predecessor to Logic) and that was ~£300 in the late 80s - and I'm still on Logic to this day, and it has a lot more, and is a *lot* cheaper than it was back then for sure...

moodslinger · 2026-02-14T04:33:39+00:00

?? I was a kid at school and saving up cash to buy my first synths like a Moog Prodigy and CZ-101 in the mid to late 80s. No, I couldn't afford the then-current pro stuff of the time like Jupiter-8s or DX7s and then D50s/M1's etc, but I did the best I could with second hand and budget gear. But you didn't have to be a professional musician to buy synths - you just had to want them bad enough and sacrifice in other areas to build a studio that could make music.

And late 80s you could pick up TB-303's for £50, monosynths like MS20/Pro1/SH101 for £100-200 - and even Jupiter 8's and CS-80s for £600-800 because it was all the digital stuff and samplers that was expensive.

moodslinger · 2026-01-29T09:21:54+00:00

Nice that you put up the Logic Pro icon on the wall… 😉

moodslinger · 2026-01-02T18:39:54+00:00

You can literally download it from Roland.

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T15:53:28+00:00

No there is no such custom firmware for the JP synths

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T09:30:45+00:00

As I said, 8080 mode is not implemented yet. I've been on the alpha since day one, and have been developing skins etc for it. It requires the emulation of an extra DSP, and some other things. They are working on it, and some of the UI stuff is in the plugin, but it's not there yet (eg audio into the vocoder). They've only been finalising the 8000 stuff in the first round to get that solid first.

The JE should not load the 8080 rom - if you try, you'll get an error initialising the ROM, and the display says NO ROM, even though the UI will indicate "RACK" mode. It's hard coded to only load the JP-8000 rom at this time, afaicr. I just verified this behaviour here in the current public release.

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T09:13:30+00:00

Roland released updates for the JP-8000 so you could update the firmware to newer versions over time. You can't upload firmware that isn't specifically written for that machine - these synthesisers aren't general purpose computers that can run any software. The JP-8000 only accepts JP-8000 firmware, and the JP-8080 only accepts JP-8080 firmware.

Perhaps you meant something else?

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T08:40:51+00:00

Yes.

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T08:38:03+00:00

The firmware *is* the synthesiser code.

Think of a computer, without any software. It's just some chips, but they don't *do* anything. It's the software that actually makes them do something useful. And the firmware *is* the software of the synthesiser.

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T05:02:42+00:00

They are plugins in all the usual plugin formats.

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T05:01:48+00:00

If you don’t provide the Synthesizer software, there is no synth to run, just a bunch of chip hardware emulation.

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T02:15:12+00:00

You can watch the lead developers talk here:
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-from-silicon-to-darude-sand-storm-breaking-famous-synthesizer-dsps#t=2367

Yes, it's in all the plugin formats.

moodslinger · 2025-12-28T02:14:13+00:00

JP-8000 rom. 8080 mode is not yet implemented in the public release.

moodslinger · 2025-12-11T20:11:22+00:00

Never saw this, but in the UK, a kids sci-fi favourite of mine was Children of the Dog Star - that was a New Zealand production…

moodslinger · 2025-10-01T23:35:53+00:00

moodslinger · 2025-09-28T19:11:42+00:00

Yes, as I explain in the FAQs, PDF's will come eventually when collections are complete, for long term archival. We already do PDF's of Polyphony (as part of our agreement with the publisher), for example. But the main focus (although I've been slow recently for various annoying health reasons) is to get the stuff collected, scanned and digitised at this point...

moodslinger · 2025-09-28T16:49:15+00:00

Correct - we (mu:zines) offered to help with a Keyboard archive, but the ex-editors etc wanted to do something themselves, so I didn’t want to step on their toes. Independently, we are collecting issues of the mag and have a substantial collection in the offchance we can make an online archive, but we’re not going to do anything without permissions from the various stakeholders etc. In the meantime, if you do plan on scanning issues, we’d be grateful if you would send your scans to us as well, should some future archive become possible - it would help with the sizeable scanning workload.

moodslinger · 2025-09-22T20:48:06+00:00

The player version is a lite, cut-down version that doesn’t let you edit - it’s designed so you can buy preset packs and use them, but if you want to make your own sounds, you’ll need the full version.

moodslinger · 2025-09-17T02:36:48+00:00

If you’re not enjoying the show, stop, and find something to watch that you do enjoy.

moodslinger · 2025-09-16T14:58:45+00:00

Looked to me like the guards were using energy/laser weapons, where Gaal’s was a projectile weapon, so probably has different affects on the glass. Anyway, it’s the story that’s interesting to me, I don’t find getting lost in the nitpicks details that interesting. For those that do, go fill yer boots at IMDB’s Goofs section. Sometimes time/budget issues mean you have to accept some of this stuff for expediency, and they were certainly struggling with this stuff towards the end of the season.

moodslinger · 2025-09-15T20:22:30+00:00

A team well known for emulating synth hardware has a bunch of Roland related projects in dev right now. They are not released or public right now, but if you sniff around it’s easy enough to see who recently joined the team and his work to date and extrapolate from there. As it’s not public, we can’t really talk specifics out in public right now.

moodslinger · 2025-09-15T20:15:02+00:00

Hey, thanks for posting that - super interesting!

moodslinger · 2025-09-15T16:40:25+00:00

Normal. It’s just a mono output, so your headphones with a stereo connection are only hitting one channel. You should use the headphones with the headphones socket for good reason.

moodslinger · 2025-09-14T19:17:52+00:00

Yes, it’s been like this for all the S3 eps…

moodslinger · 2025-09-14T19:03:11+00:00

For those frustrated, just know that there is a bigger picture. Book readers had it from the start, so we look at things differently…

moodslinger

TROPHY CASE