Softube Model 84 (Juno 106)

[ghettosynth]

I don't get why you'd want a 106. It's the most boring and simple Roland synth. Unlike other simple synths from that era it doesn't offer any quirks or unique features. Most ppl kept it around for the same reason as i did : it was a nice midi keyboard

I guess Softube made this one especially for their modular system.

I think you and Bones are completely mistaken. That synth sounds excellent, still fine enough for classic synth sounds. The intro of the video made by the Jamiroquai guy proves that. He could record an entire album using only that plugin for all synth sounds.

I wish that I still actually had the audio, but, I recall being blown away by a track from a user submission to FM mag, IIRC, that was just an FB01 and a D110, These were two synths that I pretty much loathed at the time. I think that we lose sight of, frankly, how easy it is to have such a wide variety of quality sounds today and forget that there is potential in all instruments to create something worthwhile.

[e-crooner]

I don't get why you'd want a 106. It's the most boring and simple Roland synth. Unlike other simple synths from that era it doesn't offer any quirks or unique features. Most ppl kept it around for the same reason as i did : it was a nice midi keyboard

I guess Softube made this one especially for their modular system.

I think you and Bones are completely mistaken. That synth sounds excellent, still fine enough for classic synth sounds. The intro of the video made by the Jamiroquai guy proves that. He could record an entire album using only that plugin for all synth sounds.

I wish that I still actually had the audio, but, I recall being blown away by a track from a user submission to FM mag, IIRC, that was just an FB01 and a D110, These were two synths that I pretty much loathed at the time. I think that we lose sight of, frankly, how easy it is to have such a wide variety of quality sounds today and forget that there is potential in all instruments to create something worthwhile.

Yep, all it takes is talent and effort

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Yep, all it takes is talent and effort

I'd rather have synths that made really obnoxious atonal noises over loud beats. Makes it much harder for people to notice the lack of talent over all the racket.

[ghettosynth]

Yep, all it takes is talent and effort

I'd rather have synths that made really obnoxious atonal noises over loud beats. Makes it much harder for people to notice the lack of talent over all the racket.

Right !?! Guitarists have known this forever, if you can't play, just add more distortion. If you really can't play, then add even more distortion, ,make sure that everything feeds back, then pile on some delay and reverb and combine with a suitably dour look...worn at all times.

[AnX]

worked for hendrix

[ghettosynth]

Well, true to form, they modeled the VCF without including a linear FM input making the modular module quite a bit less useful. Still, with their generous demo I'll give it more of a spin over the weekend to see if I care enough.

[planetearth]

Well, true to form, they modeled the VCF without including a linear FM input making the modular module quite a bit less useful. Still, with their generous demo I'll give it more of a spin over the weekend to see if I care enough.

What are the demo's limitations? I couldn't find anything on Softube's page announcing the plug-in, and they require an account before you can even get to the option to download a demo. I don't mind that, but if I could find out what the limitations are beforehand, it would be helpful.

Thanks.

Steve

[ghettosynth]

Well, true to form, they modeled the VCF without including a linear FM input making the modular module quite a bit less useful. Still, with their generous demo I'll give it more of a spin over the weekend to see if I care enough.

What are the demo's limitations? I couldn't find anything on Softube's page announcing the plug-in, and they require an account before you can even get to the option to download a demo. I don't mind that, but if I could find out what the limitations are beforehand, it would be helpful.

Thanks.

Steve

It's a typical iLok demo. You just get to use the product for 20 days, which I think is pretty generous. The only downside is that Softube wants your name and address as well as your iLok account ID. I'd prefer only the latter, but it's not that big of a deal. I'll take some time to think about whether I want some or any of their products. I had an account with them from way back in the gobbler days, but at that time they only needed your iLok account to deposit your licenses. So, I had to setup a full account. Oh, and sorry, no Softube, I don't want to receive marketing and I unchecked that box.

[planetearth]

Well, true to form, they modeled the VCF without including a linear FM input making the modular module quite a bit less useful. Still, with their generous demo I'll give it more of a spin over the weekend to see if I care enough.

What are the demo's limitations? I couldn't find anything on Softube's page announcing the plug-in, and they require an account before you can even get to the option to download a demo. I don't mind that, but if I could find out what the limitations are beforehand, it would be helpful.

Thanks.

Steve

It's a typical iLok demo. You just get to use the product for 20 days, which I think is pretty generous. The only downside is that Softube wants your name and address as well as your iLok account ID. I'd prefer only the latter, but it's not that big of a deal. I'll take some time to think about whether I want some or any of their products. I had an account with them from way back in the gobbler days, but at that time they only needed your iLok account to deposit your licenses. So, I had to setup a full account. Oh, and sorry, no Softube, I don't want to receive marketing and I unchecked that box.

That seems reasonable, yes, and thanks for the heads-up on the other stuff they want. The thing is, I already have stuff from them showing in my iLok account, but I don't appear to have an account with them. Guess this will remedy all that.

Steve

[BONES]

In the second half of the 80s you could buy many analog synths for peanuts. That's not an argument for anything other than tastes were different at the time.

It had nothing at all to do with "tastes", it was all about necessity. Nobody argued endlessly about the minutiae of which Odyssey Rev had the best filter or any of that stuff, you bought what you could afford, the things that let you do what you wanted to do. If all you could afford was a Juno, you bought a Juno, but as soon as you could afford something better, you got rid of it. THAT is why they went for peanuts used, because nobody wanted them once better synths became more affordable. Good synths like the OBs, Prophet and Odyssey still went for decent money, it was just the budget trash that went cheap. I still saw people using OBs well into the 1990s.

For a pure lowpass with that delicious resonance, the 6/60/106 filters are generally thought of as superior to the Jupiter 6.

Are you kidding me? Roland synths never had nice filters, they all sound quite generic compared to the competition. Korg were always the filter kings of Japan, with Yamaha not too far behind.

I don't want you to take my word for it though, even though it's been well documented for decades.

Who cares about the technical aspects of it? All we're interested in is the sound and the reality is that Roland filters always sounded tame, long before the DX-7 was around.

There's a reason that Juno 6/60s command far more than they should based purely on their features, for what they do, they sound great.

The trouble is, they don't do anything. They have about two sweet spots, then you're done. I loved the sound of the JU-06, which is why I bought it, but it took me less than a week to be bored with it. At least it took me a month to get bored with the JP-08. In both cases I should have known better, Roland synths never sounded very good, but I got carried away by the form factor.

Well, if you don't care about that kind of subtlety, and judging by your comments on the JP6, I don't think that you're familiar enough with the details to understand the consequences, then you're right, it won't matter to you.

It's not that it doesn't matter to me, it simply doesn't matter. You've lost sight of the purpose of these things, which is to make music. In the context of making music, those subtleties are of no consequence whatsoever. You're like someone who buys a $2million, limited edition Ferrari, puts it in a garage and never drives it - you've missed the point of the thing!

That said, their early analog designs sounded great and your simple feature driven analysis doesn't change that.

Early Roland synths sounded way worse than their competitors, across the board. I owned several of 'em - SH1000, SH101, TB303 (x 2) - and they couldn't hold a candle to the other synths I owned at the time - ARP Axxe, Korg Delta and MonoPoly. I only used the Rolands to fill out my arrangements, the Delta and the Axxe did all the important work (I never really used the MonoPoly because it had no patch memory). I never used the TB303s as synths at all, terrible sounding things they were. They were my first sequencers, with a TR-707 providing the master clock. So I do have some first-hand experience, I don't need "experts" to tell me what to think.

And yet, because of the simplicity, I can pull up any type of sound in a second. Pianos, pads, bass, flute, oboe, you name it, this thing will do it - quickly.

Yeah, if you are into lame, sad sounds. Honestly, I don't think there is anything more cringeworthy than a Juno trying to do any of those kinds of sounds. If you want to make anything worthwhile, then there are about two sweet spots and that's it. Compare it to a SEM, which wasn't even conceived as a synth in its own right, and it's useless. Even Korg's Poly800 could do more and it was absurdly limited.

Yes, you are right, it is ridicuously simple, but its bigger than the sum of its parts.

No, it's not. Trust me on this. Prophet V, the OBs and Odyssey are synths that are definitely much more than the sums of their parts but with the Junos, they are exactly the sum of their parts and no more. There simply isn't enough there to give them a chance to hide their deficiencies.

By the way, a guitar is very simple as well.

Yes, and they sound f**king awful without a Marshall stack and a good pedalboard.

I think you and Bones are completely mistaken. That synth sounds excellent, still fine enough for classic synth sounds. The intro of the video made by the Jamiroquai guy proves that. He could record an entire album using only that plugin for all synth sounds.

Yeah, an album of lift muzak. The range is so narrow, even after listening to the 5 minutes of sound demos at the end of the video. There is nothing that even comes close to any sound I could use, it's like a rundown of all the worst aspects of 70s and 80s music (which, I suppose, sums up what Jamiroquai is all about).

[ghettosynth]

In the second half of the 80s you could buy many analog synths for peanuts. That's not an argument for anything other than tastes were different at the time.

It had nothing at all to do with "tastes", it was all about necessity. Nobody argued endlessly about the minutiae of which Odyssey Rev had the best filter or any of that stuff, you bought what you could afford, the things that let you do what you wanted to do. If all you could afford was a Juno, you bought a Juno, but as soon as you could afford something better, you got rid of it. THAT is why they went for peanuts used, because nobody wanted them once better synths became more affordable. Good synths like the OBs, Prophet and Odyssey still went for decent money, it was just the budget trash that went cheap. I still saw people using OBs well into the 1990s.

Everything went for peanuts used. People sold Prophet 5s for not too many hundreds of dollars to buy M1s. It was about "tastes" and while what was available drove people to make certain kinds of music, renewed interest in analogue in the 90s quickly sorted out what was preferred and what was not.

For a pure lowpass with that delicious resonance, the 6/60/106 filters are generally thought of as superior to the Jupiter 6.

Are you kidding me? Roland synths never had nice filters, they all sound quite generic compared to the competition. Korg were always the filter kings of Japan, with Yamaha not too far behind.

I said that one Roland filter is superior to another Roland filter. We're having a conversation about subtle differences that you, by your own admission, cannot hear.

There's a reason that Juno 6/60s command far more than they should based purely on their features, for what they do, they sound great.

The trouble is, they don't do anything. They have about two sweet spots, then you're done. I loved the sound of the JU-06, which is why I bought it, but it took me less than a week to be bored with it.

Maybe you don't know what you're doing?

Yes, and they sound f**king awful without a Marshall stack and a good pedalboard.

You might consider that people think that what you do with synths sounds awful. At the very least, you can hardly be considered an expert on subtlety, no?

[penfever]

I'm more a lurker than a poster, but I'm hoping someone at Softube reads this.

I'll be honest, I was super disappointed when I received the email from Softube about this synth. In the past, they have made some really interesting choices with their emulations -- Mutronics Mutator, OTO Biscuit come to mind. I loved their Buchla modules for their modular. And now we get ...

ANOTHER FREAKING JUNO?

We have Roland's Juno. We have Arturia's Juno. We have Diva. Cherry Audio. TAL. Syntronik. UVI. Plus about a thousand other synths that kinda sorta want to be a Juno.

VST devs, please, please, PLEASE ... get off the bandwagon. It is so very far PAST being full. No more Juno whatever, no more Jupiters (unless it's a Jup-6, which STILL hasn't been emulated well by ANYONE, which shows you how narrow-minded all of this is). No more Obies either. JUST STOP. IT IS DEAD. THE HORSE IS DEAD. STOP. BEATING. THE. HORSE.

How about a Korg Poly-800? A Microwave? A K5000?

Or if you must do a classic VA, how about a Memorymoog or a CS80? No one has even TOUCHED the true potential of the Memorymoog in an emulation. Or something like the Sonic Core synths, or a Hartmann Neuron -- how great would THAT be with a touchscreen?

There's a world of cool vintage (and modern!) hardware synths. No one needs to play that Duran Duran riff on yet another copycat.

[melomood]

Juno
I think you might be on to something there,penfever

[ghettosynth]

Juno
I think you might be on to something there,penfever

And yet, look how excited people get over another Juno.

[BONES]

That's more a reflection on the sadness of people than anything good about yet another Juno emulation, I think.

It was about "tastes" and while what was available drove people to make certain kinds of music, renewed interest in analogue in the 90s quickly sorted out what was preferred and what was not.

But not in any rational way. The absurd popularity of the TB303 being a good case in point. That thing sounds f**king awful and it only became popular when someone thought to run it through a distortion pedal to obscure how awful it really was. But, because of that, these days you can't say a bad word about it without people jumping down your throat. It's sheep mentality.

I said that one Roland filter is superior to another Roland filter. We're having a conversation about subtle differences that you, by your own admission, cannot hear.

And I said "who cares" because it's like discussing your favourite flavour of vomit.

Maybe you don't know what you're doing?

That might be a reasonable hypothesis if I had ever heard anyone else get a decent range of sounds out of it. But I haven't. So it's not. It's not alone in this, the PolySix was just as limited but, to my ears at least, is more deserving of the reverence shown to the Junos. It has more of the MS-20s mongrel in it so it can do all that soft stuff, like the Jamiroquai guy does, but it can also be a bit nasty when you want it to be, which broadens it's appeal and makes it more useful to more people.

You might consider that people think that what you do with synths sounds awful.

I hope they do, we're not about pleasing anyone but ourselves.

At the very least, you can hardly be considered an expert on subtlety, no?

Or maybe I am such an expert that you don't even notice it?