If you know anything about the Roland Super Jupiter MKS-80 you know that it’s glacially slow to program the beast without using the Roland MPG-80 programmer. That’s all well and good, but the MPG-80s are pretty hard to come by and if you do find one you might have to sell a kidney to pay for it.

That’s where the reKon Audio VST-AU MKS-80 editor comes in. It’s a software editor for Mac and Windows that has an interface modeled after the MPG-80. It’s got all the real-time controls that the MPG-80 has, plus a patch librarian, randomizer, and more. What I have found most useful is the ability to run it as a plugin.

In Ableton Live I was able to save the patch data with the set. I also mapped many of the controls in the editor to sliders and knobs on a MIDI controller. In the process of setting this up, I thought that there would surely be noticeable latency going from the MIDI controller to the reKon plugin, then to the MIDI out, and back into the MKS-80, but it was fast and fluid. I did notice some minor aliasing when sweeping the filter, but I got the same result when I made the adjustments directly on the MKS-80.

Here’s a mono lead sound that I programmed using this technique. Please pardon the self indulgent playing, but I’m pretty pleased with this patch and it was a breeze to program with the reKon plugin. I’m also impressed with the quality of the MKS-80 VCOs over a broad frequency range. With sampled and modeled waveforms you often end up hearing artifacts or undertones in the high frequencies. Not so with this beast.

Self Indulgent Synth Solo