The Ultimate Eight
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Mercury-8 synthesizer builds on Cherry Audio's renowned Mercury legacy with a passionate focus on detail and modern technical advancements. Every aspect of the original hardware has been meticulously modeled to capture the authentic sound and behavior that made the JP-8 so legendary. Furthermore, Mercury-8 goes "beyond Jupiter" by offering expanded polyphony, versatile modulation options, studio-quality effects, expressive performance capabilities, and even data exchange with the original hardware. These features not only surpass what was possible in 1981 but also exceed anything seen in software to date.
Get Mercury-8 today or get it as part of the new Synth Stack 6
Cherry Audio's Mercury-8 utilizes advanced circuit and behavior modeling techniques to ensure unparalleled sonic accuracy and even compatibility with the original synthesizer. Unlike sample-based emulations, Mercury-8 uses virtual analog synthesis, enabling comprehensive, dynamic control over all synthesis parameters while remaining compact. Its precision not only captures the distinctive sound and essence of the JP-8 but also facilitates data exchange with MIDI-modified hardware.
Mercury-8 features a highly optimized dual-layer architecture that supports 16 polyphonic voices per layer, enabling powerful split keyboard and dual-stacked modes. Analog drift and condition controls allow fine-tuning of the synth's age and state, and the multi-voice mode provides subtle to extreme variations in pitch, panning, filtering, and envelopes for tones and patterns.
The comprehensive modulation matrix includes four slots with user-friendly click-to-assign functionality, offering dozens of source and destination options. The built-in arpeggiator and 16x4 programmable polyphonic step sequencer are both syncable and transposable, and feature flexible humanize settings to create endless pattern possibilities.
Furthermore, Mercury-8 features three independent effect chains and provides 20 studio-quality effects for chains that can be customized, saved, and recalled. And producers can get started immediately with over 600 stellar presets, including precise recreations of the original JP-8 factory patches along with "Factory Plus" enhanced versions.
Mercury-8 is not just another recreation of the legendary classic synthesizer; it transforms one of the greatest analog synths of all time into a fresh and inspiring tool for today's musicians and producers.
Cherry Audio has assembled its biggest sound design team in years to do justice to this monster synthesizer. Mercury-8 includes over 600 sensational presets in 16 categories, as well as the original JP-8 Factory Presets.
Producers will find immediate inspiration in Mercury-8's extensive preset library, created by the talented and passionate sound design team led by veteran sound designer James Terris. Mercury-8 comes loaded presets covering everything from faithful recreations of familiar JP-8 sounds to brand-new creations that push Mercury-8's sound engine into modern territory.
Among them, you’ll find precise recreations of the 64 original Jupiter-8 factory patches, plus enhanced versions in the Factory Plus category that take advantage of Mercury-8’s expanded features while keeping the unmistakable Jupiter character intact. We’ve also included the eight original factory setups (the classic Dual and Split configurations) ready to play exactly as they appeared on the vintage hardware. For sound designers, the Templates category offers a variety of starting points that are useful for building your own patches quickly.
And don't miss The Grid for Mercury-8 Preset Pack (sold separately), featuring an additional 100 presets by acclaimed synthwave sensation Michael Oakley.
James is Director of Sound Design, responsible for preset programming and curation at Cherry Audio. He is a long-established sound designer and musician based in the San Francisco Bay Area who has worked with Dave Smith Instruments/Sequential, Pioneer DJ, Apple, and Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control.
James is a freelance sound designer and musician based in the UK. He creates third-party preset packs as JD Soundsets. He draws inspiration and influence from Tangerine Dream, 80s film scores, and others and has been a long-time sound designer for Cherry Audio, Modal, and IK Multimedia.
Andrew first worked on soft/hardware development, preset design and sample libraries in 1983, going on to work create for Sony, Amek, DAR, Steinberg, eMagic, Lexicon, Klark Technic, Akai PMI, Roland, E-Mu, Creative Labs, Novation, Red Sound, dS-Tec, Yamaha and others. After 25 years in AV/VR, he has recently returned to product and sound design.
Michael Oakley is a Scottish producer and singer whose moody, melancholic synthwave/retrowave sound is a love letter to 1980s synthpop. His albums California (2017), Introspect (2019), and Odyssey (2021) have gained huge critical acclaim from The Huffington Post and NewRetroWave.
Julie Kathryn (I AM SNOW ANGEL) is a recording artist, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and sound designer. She has developed a signature dreampop aesthetic as I AM SNOW ANGEL. She regularly designs MIDI presets for Ableton Live and has created audio sound packs for Splice and BandLab.
Mark Wilcox is an avowed synth geek, writer, and artist who’s been programming synths since before he was old enough to drive. Mark has contributed sounds and product designs for synths and software/hardware from Sequential, Avid, Digidesign, Groove Synthesis, and Nonlinear Labs. His obsession with making sonic mischief has only grown with time and technology.
Mike Martin is an accomplished musician, sound designer, and music industry product manager. An alumnus of the Conservatory of Music at Capital University, he has worked in the music industry for more than 25 years and has held positions at Casio Music, Sonic Foundry, Kurzweil Music Systems, Yamaha, and TC Electronic.
Drew Schlesinger began developing third-party sounds for Casio CZ synths in 1986, leading to a career designing presets for over 200 products from 30 companies including Roland, Korg, Kurzweil, Alesis, E-mu, Ensoniq, TC, Lexicon, Eventide, and others. After a 20-year hiatus in the corporate world, he has recently returned to music and sound design.
Sound designer, music producer, and songwriter. Dave has crafted sounds for major artists including Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, The Cure, Bonnie Raitt, and Fleetwood Mac. He has created thousands of factory presets for synthesizer giants including Yamaha, Korg, Roland, and Dave Smith Instruments.
Cherry Audio's Support Specialist is a musical chameleon and jack of all trades. Danny has written custom music for many television commercials and pitched on 20 times as many. He has also written and produced music for primetime television, theatre, features, web series, documentaries, and toys.
Mitchell Sigman is a keyboardist, guitarist, and producer from Stamford, CT. He served as the keyboardist and musical director for the 80s synth-pop band Berlin from 2000 to 2007 and spent a year with Survivor in 2010. Until 2025, Mitchell was the lead designer for Cherry Audio, creating over 25 hit virtual instruments.
Robert Saint John is a writer, designer, and musician based in Cleveland, Ohio, who serves as the Director of Marketing at Cherry Audio. He created the JUPITER-Xpert website, featuring tutorials and content related to Roland's Jupiter synthesizers, and releases electronic music under the moniker CeeZED.
Under the leadership of founder Mr. Ikutaro Kakehashi, Roland released the Jupiter-8 in 1981 as its flagship analog polysynth. Priced at $5,000, it quickly became a staple on stages and in recordings of the era, prominently featured in Michael Jackson's "Thriller," Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf," and Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing." Today, the JP-8 remains celebrated for its diverse sonic palette, including lush pads, soaring brass and strings, and exhilarating leads.
The JP-8 features 16 analog oscillators -- two per voice -- and offers eight-voice polyphony. The synthesizer was one of the first to enable both keyboard splitting (assigning different sounds to different sections of the keyboard) and the simultaneous layering of two patches. Following an early revision to its digital-to-analog converter (DAC), it also became renowned for its superior tuning stability, thanks to its digitally controlled auto-tune function. This represented a significant advancement over earlier analog polyphonic synthesizers, which would often drift out of tune during use.
The instrument boasted impressive features, including programmable banks for its 64 presets, oscillator sync, cross modulation, and a memorable arpeggiator. While it used a proprietary Digital Control Bus (DCB) port for connecting to Roland sequencers, it lacked MIDI (which came later with the Jupiter-6). However, aftermarket MIDI retrofit kits, such as those from Encore Electronics, have helped maintain the JP-8's popularity and usability over the years.
Production of the original JP-8 synthesizer ended in the mid-1980s as Roland began to shift its focus to new digital-based designs. Like many analog instruments, the JP-8 declined in popularity during the late 80s, and its used price actually dropped below $1,000 in the early 90s. However, over time, the value of JP-8s began to rise, and today, original models typically sell for between $20,000 and over $30,000.
Apart from the performers mentioned above, an incomplete list of the many who have immortalized the mighty Jupiter-8 are Journey, Howard Jones, Talk Talk, Tears for Fears, The Blue Nile, Huey Lewis and the News, Jean-Michel Jarre, Cameo, A Flock Of Seagulls, Depeche Mode, Roxy Music, OMD, Jezz Woodroffe of Black Sabbath and Robert Plant, Stevie Wonder, Simple Minds, Heaven 17, Toto, Yes, Kitaro, Greg Phillanganes, Rush, Thomas Dolby, Devo, Tangerine Dream, Moby, Jan Hammer, and countless others.
Cherry Audio and Tim Shoebridge have collaborated once again to share an in-depth introductory video for Mercury-8. This comprehensive guide demonstrates how simple it is to create powerful sounds from scratch, maximize the modulation matrix, and get the most out of splits and dual layers. Additionally, the video highlights the new effects and Mercury-8's remarkable capability to import original JP-8 patch bank SysEx data via a drag-and-drop feature.
The ultimate JP-8 emulation, engineered by Cherry Audio with its latest comprehensive circuit and behavior modeling techniques to provide unparalleled accuracy to -- and exclusive compatibility with -- the original hardware
Highly optimized, massive dual-layer voicing architecture with 16 polyphonic voices per layer. Keyboard split and stacked layer modes allow two simultaneously playable layers, with separate per-layer controls for all parameters, including synthesis, modulation, patterns, and effects
Two oscillators per voice for each layer deliver thick, vibrant tones with classic waveforms, sync, and accurate exponential FM cross-modulation
Triangle, ramp, sine sawtooth, noise, and square or variable pulse waveforms with pulse width modulation
High-pass and resonant low-pass filters for each layer faithfully recreate the legendary Jupiter curves, with 12 dB and 24 dB slope options
Two full ADSR envelopes per layer with velocity, independently assignable to filter, amp, and modulation for expressive control and dynamic sound shaping
Tempo-syncable LFO for each layer, with retrigger option
Analog Drift and Condition Controls to fine-tune the "age" of the synth from pristine new to unstable vintage, with adjustable VCO, VCF, VCA drift, and envelope slop
Solo, Unison, Poly-1 and Poly-2, Multi, and single-key Chord Memory assign modes
Multi-voice mode that adds adjustable "mini synth" trimmers to provide subtle or extreme voice variation in pitch, panning, filter, and envelopes to tones and patterns
Repurposed "digital display" interface with clickable access to extended features such as trigger and note priority, unison voices, multi-voice modes, condition, and drift
Over 600 out-of-this-world presets by ten sound design pros, along with the precise recreation of the 64 original JP-8 factory patches (with enhanced versions) and the eight factory setups, all accessible in a convenient preset browser. Also included are template presets that serve as ideal starting points for sound design in Mercury-8, and a MIDI controller mapping compatible with the Jupiter-X hardware synthesizer
Comprehensive modulation matrix with four slots and simple click-to-assign functionality: 25 sources and 43 destinations with optional "Via" controls, including Mercury-8's integrated effects
Syncable and transposable arpeggiator for each layer with Arp, Leap, Order, and Random modes, and Swing, Chance, and Feel to add degrees of randomness to arpeggiated patterns
Syncable and transposable 16x4 polyphonic step sequencer for each layer with Start, Stop, Auto Start, and humanize options, with accurate DAW clock and step synchronization
Three independent customizable chains of effects, one for each layer plus a global layer, with an individual effects modulator for each layer
20 studio-quality effects that can be arranged, saved, and recalled within their effects chains, which are compatible and can be shared with Cherry Audio's Trident Mk III synthesizer:
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.
Persistent mini UI Effects controls for on/off, solo, bipolar modulator amount slider, and dry/wet mix for each effect. Global FX on/off, level, and stereo expand
Utility panels to easily copy, paste, swap, and move layers, effects chains, and sequencer data between presets
Directly import original JP-8 patch bank SysEx data (Encore Electronics format) via drag-and-drop
Export Mercury-8 preset data to SysEx data (Encore Electronics format)
Standalone virtual instrument and plug-in versions included
User-adjustable oversampling control
Complete MIDI control and DAW automation for all controls, with easy-to-use MIDI learn and mapping (Preset and Global)
Cherry Audio's popular Focus zoom-in feature, as well as standard UI zoom and resize via drag
Complete documentation available directly online from the instrument or in downloadable PDF format
Even more astounding sounds are available with The Grid Preset Pack for Mercury-8, available exclusively from Cherry Audio for just $9.99. Created by synthwave producer Michael Oakley, this collection of 100 additional presets draws inspiration from the melancholic aspects of retrowave, blending analog and digital elements to create a unique and captivating sonic landscape. With lush pads and dynamic arpeggios and sequences that showcase the full potential of the Mercury-8's features, THE GRID will transport you to futuristic cityscapes, laser grids, and stylized sunsets—all from the comfort of the driver's seat of your DeLorean.
Mercury-8 is available in AU, VST, VST3, AAX, and standalone formats, and a free 30-day demo is available.
macOS Requirements: 10.13 or above. macOS 13 Ventura supported. 64-bit required. Native Apple M1 or greater processor support, including Ultra. 3.4 GHz Quad-Core or M1 CPU with 8GB of RAM is recommended. Hard disk space: 155 MB
Windows Requirements: Windows 7 or above (including Windows 11), 64-bit required. Quad-core computer with 8GB of RAM is recommended. Hard disk space: 155 MB
An internet connection is required for product activation.