Roland Leak! The System-8 synthesizer is real.

04 Sep 2016 by Robin Vincent | Approximate reading time: 2 Minutes

Roland System-8 · Source: http://www.sequencer.de/blog/roland-system-8-leak/27437/system8

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With Roland releasing 32 products on 909 day, the 9th September, something was bound to leak. A couple of weeks ago we reported on the rumours of a larger polyphonic System-1 style ARIA synth. Turns out it to be completely true! There’s also leaked images of a vocoder and two boutique modules.

System-8 revealed

Discovered by Twitter user @Moogulator and posted on his blog at Synthesizer.de the leak comes from a print advert from American retailer Sam Ash. It’s astonishing that in these days of instant networks that a major leak can still be made in print media. Anyway, it’s in the October edition of Keyboard Magazine, getting the jump on their competitors but creating some problems for Roland by being 4 days early.

The advert says nothing other than the name, System-8, and the price of $1499. That’s a pretty “professional” price point considering recent announcements from Behringer. We’ll have to wait for all the details but Moogulator has a go at pulling out some information based purely on the photo. The most interesting thing you can see, perhaps, is the the 3 Plug-Out buttons. This means that the System-8 can support 3 plug-out synths like the SH-101 and System 2 that the System 1 supports.

Roland System-8

In a world where analogue is considered king this is of course another one of Roland’s ACB based products. ACB stands for Analog Circuit Behaviour. It’s how Roland are recreating their classic sounds in the Boutique and ARIA range of products. To some of course this is a disappointment, but to the rest of us it all sounds fabulous.

Roland 909 day is only a few days away and if this is anything to go by it’s going to be quite exciting.

Moogulator’s original blog post can be found here. Also, we’ve got leaked images of the VP-03 vocoder and TR-09 and TB-03 modules!

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