Roland Juno-106

Robert L's Analog Synths

Roland Juno-106

Roland Juno-106 is a popular "must have it" synth, and one of the most widely known analog keyboards. If you don't have it already, you should really ask yourself why! Juno-106 is quite affordable, reliable, easy to work with, and has excellent MIDI implementation. E.g. system exclusive messages can be sent with every move of the sliders and get recorded in your sequencer. Or the program data can be sent whenever a program is selected and thus recorded in the song you are working on.

Made by Roland in the mid 80s, when digital synths like Yamaha DX-7 ruled the musical scene, this synth silently entered the keyboard scene. By the mid 90s it became highly popular and extremely wanted. Hundreds and thousands of them got into the hands of the analog fans. Ten years after it is still highly appreciated and sought after. It stands in the lower range of prices only because it is not a rarity. Otherwise Juno-106 is considered as a valuable analog synthesizer and a music-production standard. Certainly one of the keyboards you will not want to part with.

Juno-106 is a DCO based synthesizer. DCO stands for Digitally Controlled Oscillator -- therefore there's no need to tune the oscillators. However, the rest of its functions is produced by analog circuitry.

It has the excellent Roland Voltage Controlled Filters (VCFs) of both, the Low Pass (LPF), and High Pass (HPF) type. They sound just as you would want them, and will produce great synth brasses, strings, pads, effects, filter sweeps, strong resonances, you name it.

Besides the great filters, there's just about everything you would expect from a quality Roland synth, like square suboscillator, LFO modulations, versatile ADSR envelope, chorus to fatten the single-oscillator voices, etc... Every function is easily accessible by a dedicated potentiometer, all laid down in an easy to follow manner.

Although Juno-106 was announced by Roland as "Juno-60 with MIDI", besides a few added functions, like the unison mode and portamento, this is not quite so. Juno-106 does sound a bit different. The predecessor is slightly warmer and more gentle, while Juno-106 sounds a bit tougher and stronger. But each of them excels in its own way. Of course, we are talking here about the nuances of the sound. We can say that both of them have the classic "Juno" character. For the standard technical data about Juno-106, please refer to many other pages available on Internet.