I've been a fan of the Roland Juno line for many years now. I've owned three Juno boards and I still have my 1982 Juno-60 in perfect working condition. I pre-ordered this board from Zzounds sight unseen (literally) just based on my prior experiences with the Juno line of keyboards. When I ordered the Juno DS there really wasn't much out there in YouTube land to look at or listen to as far as demos go so I took a chance. I'm happy of the choice I made taking that chance. This board does not disappoint. At the time of writing this review I've only had the board less than 24 hours (two days earlier than predicted by Zzounds - Yay Zzounds!!!) but I am pretty impressed with what I see it can do so far.

Sound
Fantastic sounds on this board, especially the organs. I mean really WOW on the organs, they are fantastic! This board has some really nice vintage sounds on it as well. Decent clavs and 'moogish' sounding leads make it a lot of fun to play. Roland already has 3 new sound packs that you download (for free) for this board as well.

Features
I plugged a microphone into it last night at band practice and I have to say that the built in reverb/delay for the mix through vocals is quite nice. I only played with the vocoder feature for a short time but it sounded pretty awesome. My band mates were super impressed with that. I LOVE the usb stick memory feature. So much easier than saving to tape like… read more on my Juno-60. :p

Ease of Use
I don't anticipate having to tweak this board much. There are a boatload of very useful sounds in this thing. The 'Favorites' feature will definitely come in handy, I just have to get used to using that part. Moving from one sound directly to another intended sound should be easier once I master that. Editing can be as expected for a non-touch screen keyboard. It's a lot like programming the Korg Triton-Le; a lot of cursor moves here and there but you can get the job done. I have yet to work with USB/PC sound editor yet. I downloaded it and installed it but haven't fired it up yet.

Quality
It is built quite well which is very surprising for being such a lightweight keyboard (only 11 lbs.). The sliders and faders are really good quality and don't feel cheap. The only downside is the key bed. It feels like the keys are a tad bit 'shorter' than most and they have a shorter depth of 'key press' but in some odd way it 'feels' okay with most of the sounds.

Value
WELL worth the value. This board is great for live performances and it would be very useful in the studio as well. The USB out also allows to be a DAW controller which you can specify your DAW software in the utilities section of the board (very nice).

Manufacturer Support
I have dealt with Roland support many years ago with my old D-20 and they were decent back then. I just hope I don't really have to find out how good or bad they are now.

The Wow Factor
WOW on the earlier than expected delivery and awesome service from Zzounds (my wife is becoming increasingly suspicious of my love for Zzounds as each day passes). Wow on the organ patches! And a big WOW on how cool this keyboard looks! The touch pads light up and you can even change the default colors on them in the settings. This thing looks pretty cool in a dim room so I imagine it will look awesome on stage as well.

Musical Background:
Professional musician/recording artist

Musical Style:
All styles read less