One Synth Challenge #209: JS80P by Attila M. Magyar

[MattCable]

Should I be able to see the synths parameters for modulation in Ableton? I'm not seeing parameters so that I can assign midi controls, and in track lanes I don't see parameters to manually draw in automation either.

[Bovvy]

Many, Many thanks for the Drum patches...you saved my sanity (and ears)

[Bovvy]

A few simple one oscillator drums from my fiddlings tonight. Suitable key range is included in the filename. All rather rough, but maybe they can help get you going. There's plenty of room for tweaking of filters, envelope times, pitch env depth, application of distortion, adding of second layers, effects, etc. Horrible envelope knobs for drum tweaking though, ctrl/cmd is very much needed for finetuning times. Taking a good look at the signal path in the manual is highly advisable, btw. It will help putting filters and fold/distortion to good use. And do avoid those envelope bugs mentioned above.
Drums.zip

Many, Many thanks for the Drum patches...you saved my sanity (and ears)

[Nd6829]

Hi, what should people who use AU plugins do for OSC-209?
I won't be able to participate this month?
I'd be glad if you could tell me if there is anything I can do for free instead.
Thank you.

[doctorbob]

Check the links after the list of prizes on the first page?

dB

[Vospi]

I really wanted to stretch my wings on something complex and capable, but combining capable with no phase lock and envelope issues... I'll probably pass

[cerulescent]

I'm unaware of any free VST3 hosting AU plugins for Logic Pro.

I've never used this one, but this is supposed to work, I think.
https://kx.studio/Applications:Carla

Thanks for the recommendation! Unfortunately Carla is the opposite of what I need. It's free open-source VST2 and LV2 plugins that can host AU plugins as well as VST3, VST2, LADSPA (including LRDF), DSSI plugins.

[cerulescent]

I'm unaware of any free VST3 hosting AU plugins for Logic Pro.

Plugin Buddy by Modalics is free. But I haven't tested it yet.

Thanks for the recommendation! I did try it, and while Plugin Buddy by Modalics is free it's a bit scary in that requires registration it and tries to connect to the internet. Modalics emails you a license file for offline registration. After it's registered, the plugin says that you've used up 1 of 3 installs. This is somewhat intrusive for a free plugin and makes me wonder what I just installed.

Feature wise, it works. It does let Logic Pro 11.2.2 run VST3 plugins on Apple Silicon including JS80P.

[cerulescent]

The developer(s) of JS80P aren't providing official builds of AU plugins for MacOS (only VST3). Thus is isn't possible to use JS80P with any version of Logic Pro natively.

Thus, I'm requesting 2 exceptions to the rules this month:

(1) for those with coding skills: allow custom builds of JS80P by enabling the VST 3 - AudioUnit v2 Wrapper features of the VST3 library.
(2) for those without coding skills: allow commercial VST3 hosting AU plugins such as Blue Cat's PatchWork

I'm unaware of any free VST3 hosting AU plugins for Logic Pro.

EDIT:

(1) I was unable to modify JS80P to enable the the VST 3 - AudioUnit v2 Wrapper

(2) Blue Cat's PatchWork works, but is commercial (not free). No clarification if this is an acceptable exception this month.

(3) Vospi recommended Carla. Carla is free and open-source, but the opposite of what's needed. It hosts AU plugins in a VST2 plugin.

(4) LazcaMusic recommend Plugin Buddy by Modalics. Plugin Buddy is free and works, but it requires registration, uses emailed license keys , connects to the internet, and tells you how many times you've installed it. The plugin seems to have a limit of 3 installs.

(5) My preferred option so far is ivicamil's AU-VST3-Wrapper. It's free and open-source, but the problem is that there aren't any official builds. Since it's uses JUCE, it's easy to build locally with JUCE and Xcode.

[cerulescent]

Hi, what should people who use AU plugins do for OSC-209?
I won't be able to participate this month?
I'd be glad if you could tell me if there is anything I can do for free instead.
Thank you.

I'm assuming you're a fellow user of Logic Pro? If so, I feel your pain. You can read my posts about this issue in this forum. Currently the best solutions are either
(1) Plugin Buddy by Modalics if you don't mind their aggressive registration system with limited installs
(2) ivicamil's free open-source AU-VST3-Wrapper if you know how to make local builds with JUCE and Xcode.

[Nd6829]

Check the links after the list of prizes on the first page?

dB

I didn't realize them, thank you for teaching me.

I'm assuming you're a fellow user of Logic Pro? If so, I feel your pain. You can read my posts about this issue in this forum. Currently the best solutions are either
(1) Plugin Buddy by Modalics if you don't mind their aggressive registration system with limited installs
(2) ivicamil's free open-source AU-VST3-Wrapper if you know how to make local builds with JUCE and Xcode.

Thank you for your reply. Your suggestions were really helpful. Since programming takes a long time, I downloaded Plugin Buddy for now. I don't know how to use it yet, but I'll give it a try. If it works out, I'll see you at this month's OSC! Thank you so much.

[onerob]

You could try Element by Kushview. The free version is fully functional, just not the latest build. It can be run as an AU and host VSTs.

https://kushview.net/element/

[z.prime]

Hiya !

I tried this synth but immediately hit some very impactful bugs: dragging the window around was extremely slow and space bar was swallowed and since I frequently needed to drag the window to get at the play button, this became really irritating. Table-flipping level irritating. Coupled with the relatively difficult to use modulation system, there was no chance I would use this thing...

... but of course Taron posted some lovely sounds and I had a thought: this synth is open source. What if I left the synth engine exactly the same with all the quirks and limitations and made a drop-in replacement that only had a new GUI? And if I used JUCE it would surely fix the irritating space bar bug... There are lots of open source JUCE examples... I wonder how far I could get more-or-less vibe coding this... Could I even make something usable given the way the modulation system works?

Challenge accepted!

It turns out that with some opinionated handling of envelope, modulation, and LFO assignments you can make a GUI that "feels" a bit like many of the popular synths and even keeps multiple modulators in sync as you edit them! I present you the stupidest idea I've had in a long time: pointlessly vibe coding an alternate GUI for a synth I probably will never use after this month. Here is an example of some very quick sound design with a very repetitive and awful loop (maybe skip ahead to ~55s, KVR doesn't seem to honor the timestamp):



Richard had a quick test of it and given it doesn't change the synth engine, and even should be a drop-in replacement, this was deemed to be allowable to use.

If you choose to use this, I want to point out a few important things:

• Some (very few) parameters are not available in the new GUI and you must click the MATRIX tab to get to them, which actually loads up the original GUI in all its glory (I forgot to put this in the video)
• Because of the opinionated handling of the modulation there are some things that won't show up quite right if you load existing patches, use the random function, or change them with the original GUI. For best results click the INIT button, save a default patch, and go from there.
• And, most importantly: this is heavily vibe coded and I have not even looked at much of the code at all. I've done some profiling and it seems there are no memory leaks but I can't guarantee that there isn't some bug that will hit you later. Preliminary testing looks good, but...
• If everything goes wrong, patch export/import would be a reliable fail-safe.

This synth has a lot of sound design potential but it's hard to see much of it due to the cumbersome workflow. If you're the developer reading this let me know if if you're interested in this.

TL; DR: I vibe coded a much nicer* drop-in replacement GUI and there are macOS and Windows builds available on Discord at the link. If someone isn't on Discord, or really doesn't want to be, PM me and I'll figure out a better place to put these.

* this is my opinion

P.S. since this is JUCE, it would be easy to make an AU build, but I have not since there is no AU version available of the official version.

P.P.S. if someone needs a Linux build, I should be able to easily make this, too.

[Dexter US]

would be interesting to film live to crash test it..

[RichardSemper]

TL; DR: I vibe coded a much nicer* drop-in replacement GUI and there are macOS and Windows builds available on Discord at the link. If someone isn't on Discord, or really doesn't want to be, PM me and I'll figure out a better place to put these.

Just to confirm I checked this out. Seems to work well on Windows 10, and the vst3 is interchangeable both ways with the original on my system.
If anyone wants to use this for the OSC feel free, as it is still the same synth with the same capabilities, just looks a lot better (imo). Nice job z.