Roland Juno and Jupiter Series
Patches
Thor PWM Hoover by DrDist
I’m back with another emulation of one of my all time favourite synth sounds. As the title suggests, I’m here to share a few combis attempting to recreate the good old Alpha Juno Hoover sound (also refered to as “Mentasm”).
I know there’s already a hoover patch for Thor in the Factory Soundbank. But, as you may have guessed, I’m bringing up another version because the FSB patch is not very accurate, mainly because it’s made of a bunch of detuned saw waves playing at different octaves. The real hoover sound actually consists of fast PWM on two oscillators + an additional unmodulated pulse wave playing two octaves below (don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the FSB patch is bad or not interesting at all, some people might still like how it sounds. I’m just providing those combis for those who are looking for something closer).
One of the first two oscillators is the regular PWM wave you can find on most synths today, but the second one is a very special PWM saw wave which, AFAIK is only available on the Alpha Juno or the MKS-50. At first, I believed this waveform was absolutely necessary to make an authentic-sounding hoover, but I recently discovered that it can be replaced by another normal PWM wave playing one octave higher. The remaining part of the trick becomes pretty hard for me to explain, so I’ll probably have to provide some illustrations to make things clearer.
Some infos on the patches : they are divided in two main categories, one of them is the regular hoover made of the 3 waves + some chorus to thicken up the sound. The second category (the “3x PWM Hoover” named patches) is basically the same thing, except that the chorus is replaced by what I’d call the “trance lead method” which consists of stacking up many detuned oscillators (in this case, two more Thors were required since all the 3 oscillators slots are in use). Once again, I let you decide what sounds the best to your ears.
A quick description of the 3 patches available in each category :
- PWM Hoover : this is the basic monophonic patch designed for leads. There’s not much to say about it, except that the PWM rate follows the pitch. This makes the lowest notes sound a lot better, but you can change this whenever you want by simply turning down the LFO 1 Kbd Follow knob.
- Polyphonic Hoover : Well … the name sums it all ! This time however, the PWM is done with the 2nd LFO and its rate is constant across the keyboard, as opposed to the monophonic version.
- Hoover Pitch Mod : basically the same as the monophonic patch, but also uses the same pitch modulation and Amp Env settings that are used in the FSB hoover patch.
Each combi provides a few controls for tweaking the sound, which I think makes them a nice alternative to samples. Now, to be honest, this emulation is still not 100% identical to the original sound (and it obviously doesn’t replace a real Alpha Juno for that matter), but at least it sounds pretty damn close to my ears (I own the real thing so I could easily compare ). Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy them.
Alpha Juno Waves by DrDist
There’s a Line Mixer for each waveform type in the combi, you simply select the wave number by unmuting the appropriate channel. Normally, on a real Alpha Juno, only one of each can be selected (you can’t play all the 5 saw types at the same time for example), but here you can select all the waveforms if you want. Also, the PWM keyboard tracking is something unavailable on the real deal, I just though I’d throw this in to help making bass notes sound better.
About the samples : I didn’t include all the PWM samples I made because the zip file would have been way too heavy. Even with all the samples it’s still not as flexible as real PWM anyway (I wish we could import our own wavetables in Thor).
Remember that this is not a perfect recreation of the Alpha Juno architecture, there are a few other things lacking like the multi-stage envelope and chord memory, but it should at least give you an idea of what those unusual waveforms sound like.
Juno Chorus by DrDist
I’ve built a little chorus combi some times ago which is initially supposed to sound like a Juno chorus (at least it sounds like the built-in chorus of my Alpha Juno, not sure if it sounds exactly like this on the other Juno synths). It’s nothing really unusual, only 2 CF-101 units + a Spider Audio with particular settings/routing, but to my ears it sounds good on almost anything.
I’ve made a few variations of the combi, simply by adding more CF-101s to thicken up the sound even more. I’ve only assigned the modulation rate to the combi knobs because I didn’t know what else to add.
The patches only work as Mono to Stereo effects for the moment, there are some tricks to make them process stereo inputs but it requires some extra devices to work properly.
ReFills
Alpha-Reason by Zemerald Music
New from Zemerald Music, is Alpha-Reason. Alpha-Reason is like owning a classic analog synthesizer, The Roland Alpha Juno…only better because its in Reason form. This means that you can run it through all of Reasons top notch effects and processors. Need a phat analog bass? No problem. How about a warm thick pad? Its there. The sound of the Alpha-Juno was faithfully sampled to ensure top quality and is as playable as the real thing. Features 50 NN-XT patchs organized into groups such as bass, polysynths, and a drumkit, 38 Combinator patchs featuring more complex and inspiring sounds
Analogue Monsters: Roland Juno-60 by Reasonbanks
The Juno-60 is a very popular analogue synth because it sounds better (punchier) than the following Junos (eg. the Juno-106). The volume4 refill contains 11 NN19 instruments, 25 NNXT instruments, 4 rex loops and 126 wav samples.
Analogue Monsters: Roland Jupiter4 by Reasonbanks
The Vol.3 refill contains 12 NN19 instruments, 28 NNXT instruments, 5 rex loops and 90 wav samples.
JX-8P Complete by Chip Collection
You don’t have to buy this vintage machine to get its signature sound. In this pack is a whopping 64+ Reason Refill patches including every single JX-8p internal analog preset! This was pack was created for JX-8p Collectors and fans of the 80s/90s, Italo Disco, and original techno sound used by Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, and Future Sound Of London. This does not exist anywhere else on the net for sale. Only on Chip Collection. All samples are Stereo 24 bit 96khz sound! Full range of 8 octaves span all 61 keys of the JX-8p. Do you use something other than Propellerheads Reason? All samples are WAV format organized by their original onboard JX-8p name in folders. All multi-sample WAVs have been meticulously made, organized, and machine spliced.
Orlando JX10 by Patrick Fridh
Imagine having a classic Roland synthesizer at your fingertips – a JX10 SuperJX (the huge keyboard that also came in the form of the rack-mount MKS-70. Imagine having more sounds than it could ever hold in memory (it had a memory of 50 user sounds, 50 factory sounds and 64 patches – which combined the 100 tones in memory). Imagine having things it never had – like multi-timbral operation, no limit on simultaneous sounds and voices, built-in effects and more. This ReFill gives you a total amount of 444 synth sounds, as well as 25 drum kits. The sounds are sampled from unique patches made by Patrick Fridh as well as a couple of classic factory sounds.
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I agree with you. This type of projects should be encouraged and I think that these type of projects are the projects for the future.