It’s very much mini synth season over at Behringer right now - following the announcements of the Pro VS and JP-4000 late last week, the company has now unveiled the Saturn, a trimmed-down take on Roland’s classic Jupiter-8.
We learnt last year that Behringer is working on a full-size Jupiter-8 clone - the Saturn promises the same “authentic circuitry” but in a smaller, more affordable polyphonic package. In fact, it’s projected to cost just $99.
Of course, some compromises have been made to hit this price point. The 27 keys are of the touch-sensitive variety, for example, though Behringer claims that they offer “great playability”. If you can look beyond that, there’s plenty to get excited about, including three oscillators, a multimode filter, an arpeggiator and a 16-step motion sequencer.
What’s more, you can hook up a larger MIDI keyboard if you wish, and there’s further I/O for syncing Saturn to other synths or drum machines. Power can come from your smartphone, power bank or computer.
Roland previously released its own mini Jupiter-8 - the JP-08 - as part of its Boutique range, though this used digital technology to model the analogue circuitry.
Behringer says product development is complete and that it’ll start shipping the Saturn once it has the necessary chips.
