The Juno synthesizers introduced Roland's digitally controlled oscillators, allowing for greatly improved tuning stability over its competitors.

We used a one-oscillator design for the JUNO series to reduce its price, but its sound naturally ended up being thinner than say the JUPITER-8 or JX-3P, which used two oscillators.

To this end, we employed a variety of strategies, such as adding a chorus function and boosting the lows when the high-pass filter was not being applied.

He approached American engineer John Chowning about his recently developed means of FM synthesis, but Yamaha had already secured exclusive rights.

[4] With the Juno range, Roland aimed to create a polyphonic synthesizer that was less expensive than competitors, whilst also improving tuning reliability.

[3] Roland released another version, the Juno-60, in September 1982,[5] which added patch memory (allowing users to save and recall up to 54 sounds) and a DCB connector, a precursor to MIDI.

It was based around bucket brigade designs from the 1970s, such as those in the Roland DC-50 "Digital Chorus" effect unit from 1976,[9] and uses two identical circuits incorporating two ICs (MN3009 and MN3101).

[7] The Juno-60 was widely used in 1980s pop, house, 1990s techno music, and even today by acts including Enya,[10] Vince Clarke,[11] Howard Jones,[12] Nik Kershaw, John Foxx,[13] a-ha,[6] Billy Idol,[6] Fingers Inc.,[14] Berlin,[6] Eurythmics,[6] A Flock of Seagulls,[6] Cyndi Lauper[15] and Wham!.

The Juno-106 featured MIDI, had patch storage of 128 sounds, replaced the arpeggiator with a portamento effect, and introduced Roland's now-standard left/right/push performance lever for pitch-bend and modulation.

[25][26] Due to its popularity and coveted sound,[27] the Roland Juno 60 has inspired several software plugin emulations of both the synthesizer engine and chorus effect.