silverfilter living

I was surprised to see this new product in the recent announcements at NAMM. It's a really different product especially considering Alesis has been early in the game with the Studio Dock type of interface products for the ipad. Seems now the only limitation is how many drum triggers you have. My only question now is how authentic the drums sounds are and if there would be more professional drum apps that can be used with this.

26

Mar

JP6K

JP6K is a synth dedicated to emulating the famous Super Saw sound, first found in the Roland JP-8000 synthesizer in 1997. It aims to capture the essence of the sound and the behaviour of the original oscillator. Even after a decade, the Super Saw is still sought after by people all around the world, and is a crucial part of such music genres like Trance.

There are several factors that make the Super Saw in the JP6K different than other synths that provide a similar sound. The original Super Saw from Roland was aliasing, thus creating a bright and “airy” sound. To prevent the sound from sounding harsh below the fundamental harmonic, a high pass filter was possibly used to remove the unwanted frequencies. The JP6K uses the same design to achieve that special oscillator waveform giving it a unique tone.

Another important aspect of the classic Super Saw, was its special detune curve. It was non-linear, which gave the user greater control over the detune amount. Even when the detune control was half way, the spread of the detune was small, which made it possible to make very smooth sounding pads. The curve then gradually increased, and at higher values, the detune rapidly spread out to maximum. This unique curve is accurately modelled in JP6K, making it nearly identical to the detune in the hardware.

The JP6K also emulates other features from the JP-8000 like the filters, key tracking and the EQ, to give it an even more authentic way to shape the Super Saw sound. The synth has been optimised to use minimal amount of CPU, so it is possible to use multiple instances.

Key features:

• 32 voice polyphony
• Two Super Saw oscillators, an upper and lower with panning
• 1 noise oscillator
• Three filter modes: low pass, band pass and high pass with -12 & -24 dB/Oct
• Three independent LFOs controlling the filter, amp and pitch
• Pitch envelope
• Glide (Portamento) / MIDI pitch-wheel support
• Built in delay and EQ
• 114 presets, which includes presets from CFA-Sound, MASCHINENBAUERMUSIC, Mikey O’Hare and Grzegorz

Screenshot:

Demo:
All sounds are straight from the JP6K. Some pad sounds use a slight amount of reverb.

Demo by CFA-Sound.

Demo:

Demo by MASCHINENBAUERMUSIC.

Download demo version:

Demo restrictions: Automation and preset saving disabled. Silence every 30 seconds. Only 40 presets.
Requirements: Win32 compatible system with SSE2 (or higher).

Purchase:

Please evaluate the demo thoroughly before purchasing!

Why no Mac and 64-bit version?
Unfortunately, SynthMaker does not yet support export to 64-bit or AU, Mac VST yet. As soon as SynthMaker supports them, the synth will be available in these formats.

Unfortunately, I can't enjoy this but to you PC users, this is worth checking out. I've had the original JP8000 and it really has a place in your productions. That supersaw made a mark in music making history especially in the boom of Trance :)

I was surprised to see this new software about to be released. I read it's also developed by some of the early developers of Ableton so I wasn't surprised to see the similarities. But somehow it's an entirely new DAW despite the similarities esp with the look.

People are interested to see how this goes against Live since a lot of people have been having issues with the syncing of Live and some hope that this is the answer... a new Live-like DAW but with better sync. And on top of that, Linux users can now rejoice because they're included!

Good thing I haven't upgraded Live yet. I'm also curious with this thing :)

This photo came from this link which I suggest you go check out to see how much gear there really is. I never bothered to read everything...

http://www.cikira.com/gear/

So!

I actually saw the link shared in one of the forums I frequent and unfortunately, as many as there were positive comments about the gear, there were equally negative ones and most were about saying all those gear over all these years but never a release from her. I even went to look for a music link on the site just to give her the benefit of the doubt but I didn't have any luck...

The reactions actually made me think about how some musicians can fall into that gear buying trap or gear collecting trap and we get consumed by it we never really produce any output.

But who am I to judge right? I mean some people LOVE to collect and maybe she's one of them and doesn't really focus on making and releasing music. I may feel that it's a waste but I don't see anything wrong if she's a collector more than a musician.

But back to my first thought, I mean we can get consumed by finding out about new gear, researching about the next big thing, or whatever when all we needed were a few basic things to create a really nice piece of music. Some people may think that having this or that or whatever instrument will help make them a better musician but if we all take step back, we'll realize that we can really STILL create something nice with the basics.

So before you splurge on the next new thing in the stores or whatever you saw online, think about how much you need it and will it add to your music-making or is it just a WANT really?

Personally, I'd love to buy a nice Nord or Access Virus but with the way I make music which is all in the box, I hardly even use my other synths so spending to get another nice synth might just be a waste of my money.

And lastly, I believe that if you get all the distractions out and just focus on the music, you will not just save money but also enjoy the process and actually FINISH something than get lost in the maze of gear releases and saving money to buy something that'll eventually gather dust... just like a lot of my synths :)