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JX-3P Roland Cloud

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Ah ok, stand corrected. Having built internally available preset conversion tools would explain the sheer number of Zenology presets available.

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"For now… a bit like a fish on the floor"
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Deep Forest Second Twilight Pad for JD800 Model Expansion, can somebody help me to get this parameters?Is this a preset?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovy7mmptqnw

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Another comparison of the JD-800 expansion by Ben Simpson of Pro Synth Network with his original hardware JD-800.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K8yY0sMa4

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One thing that I've noticed on the Zenelogy patches is that the filters don't seem to open up as much as the original hardware. This isn't a knock against it so much that I think the JD800 was a bit overly sensitive in terms of velocity.

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Iirc the jd 800/990 topped at 12 Khz , all the later romplers ( including zencore engine using the tvf filters ) topped at 11khz
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Soul calibrating ..frequencies

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Try to get this filter resonance out of the jd 800 zenology ,not even possible
This is what made the jd800-990 filter so good after all these years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUqmhBrDdZA
Last edited by gentleclockdivider on Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
Eyeball exchanging
Soul calibrating ..frequencies

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gentleclockdivider wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:17 pm Try to get this filter resonance out of the jd 800 zenology ,not even possible
This is what maked the jd800-990 filter so good after all these years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUqmhBrDdZA
crossing my fingers for a DCB version!

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gentleclockdivider wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:17 pm Try to get this filter resonance out of the jd 800 zenology ,not even possible
This is what made the jd800-990 filter so good after all these years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUqmhBrDdZA
The JD-800/990 had the best filter among all romplers.

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Well well, now this is getting interesting... I'm usually not the one to spend my energy on stuff like this, but since JD-800 is such a special synth for me, why the heck not!
bluesawsq wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:39 pm Looks like they have intentionally changed the 'Hearts of Space' parameters a bit and renamed it to 'Slow Bell Pad'. You can get the original 'Hearts of Space' by changing the TVF cutoff values to 46, 44, and 42, for Partials 1, 2, and 3. Those are the correct values from JD-800 factory sysex dump.
Heh, thanks for noticing that! Getting more and more curious. Going through the patch names, I found these changes (original vs Zenology):

Crystal Rhodes = Crystal EPs
Stratomaster = ST Master
Sci-Fi Groove = Pulsating Pad
Hearts of Space = Slow Bell Pad
Clavinut = MIDI Clav
Vocostrat = Voco ST
Sunday Best = Doo Organ
Metallic Rhodes = Metallic EPs
Chinkvox-Bass = Metal/Vox/Bass

Getting rid of brand names is an obvious change (Rhodes, Strato, I guess Clavinut & Chinkvox too...?), but some others are more puzzling. What was wrong with Sci-Fi Groove, Hearts of Space or Sunday Best? The new names are a bit more descriptive, but there are still a lot of patch names left that sound more like given names than descriptions of what the patch is doing. Especially the Hearts of Space change is strange, since it seems to be one of the most fondly-remembered patches for many (including me). There are some other things called Hearts of Space in the world, and the conspiracy theorist in me thinks it could also be a copyright issue... but that seems very unlikely. But why also tweak the sound itself just a little bit? Arrgh... Mysterious Mr Brian of the High Council of the Roland Cloud, please tell us!
bluesawsq wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 2:05 pm ACB (Analog Circuit Behavior) is not needed because JD-800 is a digital synth.
JD-800 is the first fully digital Zenology emulation, right? There's no reason why it couldn't sound exactly like the hardware (except maybe some small differences caused by the D/A-converters, but basically everything in the digital domain could/should be exactly the same?). I mean, why _not_ use the exact same algorithms?
gentleclockdivider wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 9:17 pm Try to get this filter resonance out of the jd 800 zenology ,not even possible
This is what made the jd800-990 filter so good after all these years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUqmhBrDdZA
It's kind of hard to say when you don't know exactly what is happening in the video. We should have the exact same patch settings for the Zenology JD-800, and then compare. I tried my best to create similar sounds in Zenology, based on just what I can hear and see in the video, and to me the filter & resonance sound just fine... but I really should have my good old hw JD-800 here (oh how I miss you) and/or know the exact state of the JD-800 in the video, _and_ play the exact same notes to do any meaningful comparisons. Not saying that it _is_ possible to make sounds like that in Zenology, maybe there is a difference, I'm just not ready to admit it just yet. :D
Synthient Sound wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 4:44 pm Another comparison of the JD-800 expansion by Ben Simpson of Pro Synth Network with his original hardware JD-800.
<span class="skimlinks-unlinked">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0K8yY0sMa4</span>
Interesting! I put the video in Final Cut and aligned the clips so that I can quickly jump back and forth between HW & Zenology versions of the same patch. In most patches, I can hear a small difference in overall frequency response, the hw version is slightly darker. In some patches, there are bigger differences, but it's kind of hard to say what causes them.

I spent a long time comparing the legendary Classic Sweeper, which should highlight any differences in filters and resonance. There is indeed a difference, especially in how the resonance moves from the highest position to lower frequencies: in HW JD-800, it stays at the top position for a moment before it starts moving down, maybe it's hitting some limit and JD-800 is capping it there? In Zenology version, it starts moving down right away. Moving the filter cutoff from 0 to 1 on layers one and two kind of does the same behaviour in Zenology. But once the resonance gets moving, I think it sounds very similar in both.

Another one is Killer Pad, which sounds quite different in the video between HW & RC. I openend the patch in Zenology, tweaked the filter a little, and got it a little closer to HW. To me it seems the differences might be in how the filter cutoff & envelope work in Zenology, possibly not the filter algorithm itself. But it makes you wonder, why is it different at all?

Anyway. Let the speculation, hearsay and guesswork continue!

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Like I said , the highest filter cut off point in the jd800-990 is 12 Khz , all the other tvf filters that came afterwards topped at 11Khz , including the Tvf filers on zenology pro .
That's why at full resonace the filter will sound brigher , there is also thegain amount that was different on the jd800 , the filter was easily overdriven .
Roland adjusted this later on with a wave gain parameter per partial (-6 -->+12 db) , but the filters never sounded that good.
Nobody mentioned the fact that Roland made a lot of poohaa about their DCB ( digital circuit behaviour ) for the srx boards and d50 plugins and how it modelled the circuits , but when they release a zencore modeled synth the dcb is of no relevance anymore :lol:
Eyeball exchanging
Soul calibrating ..frequencies

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It's a taste and we're all looking for the whole pie. The ZenCore engine is ultimately a distinct and different engine than the one running through the JD800/990. However authentic it is or they say it is, it ultimately will only go so far because it's meant to be a platform for all sorts of models. It's essentially the same as the "Anthology" series that Roland Cloud used to do, but with much more expanded sound-design options.

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I like the ZenCore and its model expansion sounds (JP, Juno, JX, SH & JD). I'm a RC core member, so I calculated how much I'd need to pay to get all the ZenCore stuff including Zenology Pro. About $1,000 including the JD-800 expansion. For additional $250, I could get a used Jupiter-Xm and the JD-800 expansion. And as a bonus, I'd get the XV-5080 and RD-800 inside the Xm as well as a nice piece of hardware, and would free up CPU usage. At least for me, RC doesn't seem cost-effective.

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I compared some more JD-800 Model Expansion presets to the original JD-800 factory sysex dump.
It looks like most parameters are 1:1 mapped but there are also many differences, especially in filter cutoff and filter envelope amount values. Maybe the filter values in those presets were just adjusted by ear to get close to JD-800 hardware sound, and there isn't really any modeling of the original JD-800 filter.

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Captain wrote: Mon Mar 08, 2021 8:46 am Well well, now this is getting interesting... I'm usually not the one to spend my energy on stuff like this, but since JD-800 is such a special synth for me, why the heck not!
bluesawsq wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:39 pm Looks like they have intentionally changed the 'Hearts of Space' parameters a bit and renamed it to 'Slow Bell Pad'. You can get the original 'Hearts of Space' by changing the TVF cutoff values to 46, 44, and 42, for Partials 1, 2, and 3. Those are the correct values from JD-800 factory sysex dump.
Heh, thanks for noticing that! Getting more and more curious. Going through the patch names, I found these changes (original vs Zenology):

Crystal Rhodes = Crystal EPs
Stratomaster = ST Master
Sci-Fi Groove = Pulsating Pad
Hearts of Space = Slow Bell Pad
Clavinut = MIDI Clav
Vocostrat = Voco ST
Sunday Best = Doo Organ
Metallic Rhodes = Metallic EPs
Chinkvox-Bass = Metal/Vox/Bass

Getting rid of brand names is an obvious change (Rhodes, Strato, I guess Clavinut & Chinkvox too...?), but some others are more puzzling. What was wrong with Sci-Fi Groove, Hearts of Space or Sunday Best? The new names are a bit more descriptive, but there are still a lot of patch names left that sound more like given names than descriptions of what the patch is doing. Especially the Hearts of Space change is strange, since it seems to be one of the most fondly-remembered patches for many (including me). There are some other things called Hearts of Space in the world, and the conspiracy theorist in me thinks it could also be a copyright issue... but that seems very unlikely. But why also tweak the sound itself just a little bit? Arrgh... Mysterious Mr Brian of the High Council of the Roland Cloud, please tell us!

Hey, Captain! Brian from Roland Cloud here. To answer your question about patch names, yes, a few of the names have been changed, but the sounds are still the same. Thanks!

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Brian.McClelland wrote: Thu Mar 11, 2021 1:11 am Hey, Captain! Brian from Roland Cloud here. To answer your question about patch names, yes, a few of the names have been changed, but the sounds are still the same. Thanks!
This reminds me of the joke involving guys in a hot-air balloon getting lost and asking where they are, and a guy on the ground telling them they are in a hot-air balloon, leading the guys in the balloon to deduce he must be a mathematician (because the answer was 100% correct and completely useless). We must be talking with GPT-3 here?

On a more serious note, I understand that some companies wish to keep certain things to themselves, and have a sort of buffer between the core teams and end users. Nothing wrong with that. I'd just wish slightly more transparent and less "big corporation" -esque communication to us users. You don't have to go all u-he where we can actually talk with the guys who make the synths, but we are also not stupid, and we can handle some tech talk and serious low-level discussion. I don't really mind if the Zenology JD-800 sounds slightly different from the HW JD-800, or if some patch names are different... but as a big fan of Roland synths and especially JD-800, I'm also interested in the reasons and stories behind everything, like why there are any differences at all.

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