Weight and bulk are two major factors in deciding on pursuing a piece of gear, and, other than drummers, keyboardists probably carry the most baggage (gear-wise, of course). And synths ain't light; I've seen a 40-pound keyboard described as "portable." No thanks. If you're a fan of thick, analog style synth sounds, but not so much hernias, the new Roland Juno-Di is a dream come true.

Juno-Di is a "mobile" 61-key synthesizer. At under 12 pounds, you'd mistake it for those toy keyboards at first impression, especially when you look at it underneath and discover a flip-open door for a battery compartment. Its set of features, on the other hand, is no joke at all. As heavy sounding as any other professional-grade keyboard, it's packed with Roland's line of high-quality Juno sounds that have impressed musicians over the years.

At over 1000 sounds, you have a wide palette to suit your needs including pianos, synths, guitars, and others. Its intuitive interface is not intimidating at all and will allow you to perform at an instant; in fact, you can even make use of its "favorite" buttons to assign the most commonly used patches for quick access during performance. Having the option for battery-powered operation, you can make use of the Juno-Di anywhere and do your stuff whenever the inspiration strikes. A battery power indicator ensures you that you won't lose power unexpectedly.

Singers have a place in the Juno-Di as you can directly plug in a microphone and sing through it. With a dedicated reverb for vocals, adding ambient effects to your vocals is possible without the need for an external mixing unit. You can also use the Juno-Di as a vocoder through the microphone input so all in all, you have a vocal effects suite that allow you to be smooth or roughly robotic. You can also play backing tracks through the Juno Di with its USB memory port and song player function. Plugging in your iPod or MP3 player is also possible through a dedicated input port beside the microphone input.

Batteries? Mic Input? Plastic built under 12 pounds? You might think that this is still just a toy. Well it could be described as a toy, but a far advanced toy I might say. Just as with some other synthesizers out there, you can have real-time analog-style control and sound shaping via the standard joystick, rotary knobs that can control ASDR envelopes and others, Roland's D-Beam controller, arpeggiator, and other expressive functions. Roland Juno-Di is as expressive as any pro synth out there. Besides the standard MIDI in/out ports, it also has a USB MIDI port so you can control your softsynths in you desktop or laptop as well as do MIDI sequencing. With all this, could still call this thing a toy?

This article cannot possibly describe all the things you can do with the Roland Juno-Di but it's good to note that it's features will support budding musicians as well as impress seasoned music veterans.

The Roland Juno-Di has an expected delivery of July 2009, and the price is still TBA.

Juno-Di rear panel