Hey i really like the 8P i'm not saying different. I'm just saying that in my case (and probably other's) we didn't sell it ONLY because we only ever used presets! I've also got stashes of great custom sounds + some found on the net that a really great, but my point remains that many of those sounds I found do-able across a combination of my SY77 (powerhouse) and VSTs - due in part to the very digital nature of the 8Ps filter. It has zero ballz in the resonance even though it's a very versatile synth, it's just not a hard hitter or a fast player like many older synths are.
But it sure had some great sounds yes. One patch I programmed had a slow evolving filter that lasted seems like a minute! (ok was more like 30 seconds) and it was this beautiful string sound that welled up and died down with little aftershocks - sound quite jupiter 8 ish in some respects but in the end it was first to go when I compared basic sounds between that and my polysix and jx-3p. If i wanted to keep more synths then yeah I'd have kept it cos they don't sell for much.
3P sounds similar in some ways but completely different in a tonal capacity, it simply sounds way more alive than the 8P - more analog! - the 8P sounds like VERY warm digital (when I had the D-50 I could compare them and often preferred the D-50 for certain things which was also a warm synth for digital) - the 8P has this very epic/classy tone esp in the lower octaves - can sound very electric and deep (and no I didn't use that horrible chorus on everything - another thing where the 3P sounds nicer imo - it may have the same chorus chips I'm not sure but when it's layered on top of an IR3109 vs an IR3105 filter it sounds very very nice. And the basic tone of the 3P when you hit the sweet spot - it makes you go 'wow' - again almost jupiter 8 ish in some regards). 8P never 'wowed' me it was always just a 'nice sounding synth' and I used to play it's sounds for my pleasure rather than for making songs with!
Both synths overlap and yet remain tonallly distinct partly why I wanted rid of one of them, the 8P is the 'super synth' of the pair with all those bells n whistles, screen, velo, at, cart, 2nd env etc and yet I still kept the 3P over it because in a song the 3P imparts personality and edge, where the 8P just kinda sat in the back basically doing sounds that had been overused a fair bit in the mid 80s (if you stick to pads) something in it's sound... and when i went to leads or rhythmic stuff it could sound fairly nice, but wasn't stunning for that! 3P cut through pleasently and adds a shine to other synths (layers great with FM) but 8P was either all in the back sounding like the cure or all in the front sounding late 80s 'synth effects'. I owned it for 3+ years and it was the synth I used most as a controller board - I compared it to Ajuno (and i'm not juno fan even though I've had 4 of them inc 3 ajs) but the AJs vivid punch and sheen made the 8P sound slow and dated in some regards.
Track down some custom patches on the net with patch names like 'airship' IIRC, they sounded great and I enjoyed noodling but again - found it hard to get them into MY music and ultimately had these other edgier/more unique sounding synths (P6, 3P and AFM in the '77) to replace it with.
Also the FREE VST is 90% there - I A/Bd it before getting rid of the hardware and you could tell the VST was a tad more plastic in the filter and not quite as 'warm' but aside from that it sounded like an 8P - esp in a mix - and when hardware can be so easily replicated in VST it's the first to go for me, and considering it was my least used for it's own sounds... etc
What it is though is a very decent sound board that can give many varieties of 'ok' sounds and some stunning pads, bass is not it's strong point and it's filter isn't anywhere near as gorgeous as the IR3109. It's basically as digital sounding as analog (DCO) has ever sounded in my opinion - and for that there are warm/old digitals out there than can run rings around it (D-50, SY77 to name 2)
