Cherry Audio Mercury-8: A Classic in Positive Retrograde
4,8 / 5,0 | 
After Mercury-4 and Mercury-6, Cherry Audio finish the year with their most requested instrument ever, the Mercury-8, a Jupiter-8 recreation with bells on!
- A Jupiter-8 recreation that goes beyond the original
- A huge array of FX
- Incorporates the factory presets and hundreds of new sounds
- Supports original Jupiter-8 SysEx, both import and export, in Encore Electronics Format
How Did We Get Here?
There are a handful of vintage synths that get the juices going, that fire up many an online debate and are so revered that the originals command astronomical prices on the used market. But one of these seems to have captured our hearts more than the others. That synth is the Roland Jupiter-8.
For me, it was seeing the cover of Howard Jones’ debut single, ‘New Song’, with him leaning over his JP-8. Predominantly black, with big silver end cheeks, bright orange legends on the top panel and those multi-coloured chiclet buttons. It was the epitome of an 80s synth.
Very few people don’t lust after one, and those who don’t are probably saying that just to be different. It’s that elusive combination of looks, sounds and endorsements that make it so desirable. Nick Rhodes, Howard Jones, Alan Wilder, Giorgio Moroder and Tears for Fears were all seen rocking one. And we wanted desperately to look and sound like them.
Of course, today we have a number of software recreations, and Roland has traded off the name and look for many years, falling short of actually producing a new version themselves, except in software. So do we need another one? Cherry Audio seem to think so, and so do their customers, demanding a recreation of this more than any other.
The Mercury-8 – Is It All That?
On the face of it, Cherry Audio’s Mercury-8 is the absolute spit of the hardware original. Look more closely, and you will see plenty of new features. For example, the increasingly familiar FX section sits at the bottom of the UI, waiting to transform your sounds.
Mercury-8 features two 16-voice layers that can be split or stacked with per-layer controls for all parameters. Both the high pass and resonant low pass filters accurately recreate those on the original hardware with their famous curves and 12dB and 24dB slope options.
There are two full ADSR envelopes per layer with plenty of shaping and modulation options, plus tempo-syncable LFOs per layer too. Playback modes include Solo, Unison, Poly-1 and Poly 2, Multi and single-key Chord memory. A multi-voice mode features trimmers to deliver small or large variations in pitch, filter, panning and much more.
The digital display goes way beyond the one found on a Jupiter-8, delivering loads of useful info. There’s a four-slot mod matrix, and Mercury-8 gives you 25 sources and 43 destinations, all assignable using a simple click-to-assign feature.
Performance and Effects
Performance-wise, Mercury-8 features a powerful arpeggiator and 16×4 polyphonic sequencer, so you can start programming those classic Nick Rhodes patterns straight away. Pro Tip: There’s at least one banger in the presets!
The FX section is choc full of 20 superb effects that can be saved and recalled within their FX chains and they have the added bonus of being compatible with their recent Trident III synth, so you can swap FX chains between the two synths.
Because the original hardware preceded the dawn of MIDI, many people chose to retrofit MIDI to their Jupiter-8s back in the day. One such mod was made by Encore Electronics. Very cleverly, Cherry Audio have built in the ability to exchange patch data in both directions between Mercury-8 and an Encore Electronics modified Jupiter-8!
As well as the compatibility with retro-modded Jupiter-8’s, Mercury-8 comes with a MIDI controller map that is compatible with Roland’s own Jupiter-X hardware synthesizer!
Mercury-8 comes with over 600 presets, including the factory originals and a set of enhanced factory presets that take full advantage of all the extras that the plugin has to offer. With all the usual Cherry Audio enhancements and improvements, this might be the best Jupiter-8 recreation you can buy today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What FX are included?
BBD Flanger, Compressor, Digital Delay, Digital Reverb, Distortion & EQ, Dual Delay, Dual Ensemble, Dual Phaser, Envelope Filter, Flanger & Chorus, Galactic Reverb, Lo-Fi, Lushverb, Ring Modulator, Seven Band EQ, Spring Reverb, and Tape Echo. New in Mercury-8 are DCO Chorus, Panner, and Pulser.
Q. What plugin formats does Mercury-8 come in?
AU, VST, VST3, AAX and a standalone version.
Q. What are the minimum computer requirements to run Mercury-8?
macOS Requirements: macOS 10.13 or above. 64-bit required. Intel or Apple Silicon processor. 3.4 GHz Quad-Core or Apple Silicon CPU with 8GB of RAM recommended. Hard disk space: 87 MB. NOTE: Internet connection is required for product activation.
Windows Requirements: Windows 7 or above. 64-bit required. 3.4 GHz Quad-Core computer with 8GB of RAM recommended. Hard disk space: 87 MB. NOTE: Internet connection is required for product activation.
A powerful recreation of an all-time classic with a huge amount of new features and improvements that don’t get in the way of what made the Jupiter-8 special.
Is There Room For This New Jupiter-8 Recreation?
There have been numerous recreations of this classic, both in hardware and software. Roland themselves have the Jupiter-8 plugin available via their Cloud service. They also made a Boutique version that was criminally only 4 voice!
Then there’s the beautiful Black Corporation ISE-NIN hardware which is far from cheap but gives you a proper hands-on experience. But the Cherry Audio version not only recreates the original very closely, but adds a wealth of features that take it to another level.
And of course, we cannot ignore the fact that it only costs $69 USD. As with all of their releases, the value for money is just incredible, and I am constantly amazed at how Cherry Audio do what they do for as little as they charge us. Now, where’s my guyliner, lip gloss and shoulder pads? There’s a Duran Duran cover band with my name on it…
Price & Availability
Cherry Audio’s Mercury-8 is available right now for just €69.00/£61.00/$66.00. The latest version of Cherry Audio’s Synth Stack, Synth Stack 6, is also available now for €499/£575.00/$579.00.
More Information
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