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

[z.prime]

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

The video was just obviously recorded using it live in a fairly ad-hoc manner (sorry for the awful loop!). I've actually tried pretty much all the functions and haven't seen any crashes yet, which, to be perfectly honest is a little surprising. But using JUCE has some benefits of well tested and widely used libraries that have good compatibility and stability without a lot of typical C++ crashing behavior as long as they're "used right". And there is a lot of training data on "using them right"... we shall see -- full transparency: I'm definitely going to use this version!

[Dexter US]

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

The video was just obviously recorded using it live in a fairly ad-hoc manner (sorry for the awful loop!). I've actually tried pretty much all the functions and haven't seen any crashes yet, which, to be perfectly honest is a little surprising. But using JUCE has some benefits of well tested and widely used libraries that have good compatibility and stability without a lot of typical C++ crashing behavior as long as they're "used right". And there is a lot of training data on "using them right"... we shall see -- full transparency: I'm definitely going to use this version!

playing it in an add hock manor live could be bad... would be a cool challenge though to find that..

[lectro_wind]

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


Super cool and helpful. Thanks a lot.

[Mechanought]

SNIP

This is really cool! Unfortunately I've been bashing my head against this GUI so much that I've thrown in the towel and started another single instance entry. That said, I'm really looking forward to what you come up with!

[MattCable]

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.

This is a life-saver! It looks great and I was just thinking how it's nice to have all the envelopes and lfos, but it's overwhelming having them take up all that real estate. I'm actually one of the people that wanted to stay off discord but decided to give it another go for the sake of OSC. When I click the link though, nothing happens. Do I need an invite to the discord? This skin looks so essential, you might want to host somewhere else just so it could be linked in the OP as an alternate.

[z.prime]

... I'm actually one of the people that wanted to stay off discord but decided to give it another go for the sake of OSC. ...

Hmm there's usually an invite link in the forum post, but you can use this one if you want (I hope I got that right). Discord is a lot more active than the forums.

I also posted the releases on GitHub along with the code now, so anyone can download them. And here are direct links to the macOS and Windows builds.

P.S. I think they are working properly (these are slightly different than what's on Discord because they were built on Github -- you can see the logs, etc.). There was some weirdness with the plugin ID not matching the original because of switching to JUCE that I think is all sorted out now but do let me know if you run into any problems. Remember: you can only have one installed: the original or the updated GUI due to this same plugin ID and it being a drop-in replacement.

[MattCable]

... I'm actually one of the people that wanted to stay off discord but decided to give it another go for the sake of OSC. ...

Hmm there's usually an invite link in the forum post, but you can use this one if you want (I hope I got that right). Discord is a lot more active than the forums.

I also posted the releases on GitHub along with the code now, so anyone can download them. And here are direct links to the macOS and Windows builds.

P.S. I think they are working properly (these are slightly different than what's on Discord because they were built on Github -- you can see the logs, etc.). There was some weirdness with the plugin ID not matching the original because of switching to JUCE that I think is all sorted out now but do let me know if you run into any problems. Remember: you can only have one installed: the original or the updated GUI due to this same plugin ID and it being a drop-in replacement.

Thank you! Unfortunately I just finally got something going so will have to stay with the OG skin, unless I want to try saving a few patches and seeing if they load into the new one. To anyone jumping in, my guess is this one is a good place to start, as the default grows on you but is pretty intimidating at first.

You guys on the discord really are over there dropping the real knowledge. Taron's video was a great walkthrough. There were a few little things he showed, like the osc 1 amp envelope not having a release unless assigned, that clicked for me (although I like the sudden drop/glitch on sometimes).

This synth has already been a wild ride. I went from hating it to really liking the sounds! So much, I'm starting to think may even use your skin after the challenge and keep the JS80 around. It's such a strange playground and you find unexpected things. The naming is unconventional at times, the modulators are way overdesigned, the ranges for everything are insane, the reverb can do some wierd lofi things. I'm still finding it's personality, but I'm finding I think it's definitely in there.