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.

[lectro_wind]

Created in Ableton exclusively with instances of the JS80P synth. NuEVI wind controller and ROLI Seaboard Blocks used to record track midi. Stock Ableton controls along with Melda MEqualizer TDR Nova, both free. https://soundcloud.com/user-948835355/b ... al_sharing

[Nd6829]

https://soundcloud.com/nd-6829/osc-209
Personally, I found this month's synthesizer work difficult.
I struggled to shape the sounds exactly the way I wanted.
I look forward to listening what kind of tracks you all create.

- JS80P × 11
- GarageBand
- dearVR Pro 2
- Channel EQ
- GarageBand Limiter
- Raum
- Ozon12 Eq

[attilammagyar]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

Developer here, thanks for choosing my little plugin for OSC 209, and thank you all for the feedback!

I'm sorry for joining the conversation this late. I'll try to respond to every question and bug report that I can.

How do I fix/set the phase of the Oscillators (not LFOs)?

I'm afraid you don't at the moment. I'll consider adding it in an upcoming release, but I'm afraid I won't be able to do it in time for the OSC 209.

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.

I've been planning to release an AU version some time this year, sorry for not being able to deliver it in time for the OSC.

It seems like the voice handling in POLY mode isn't actually polyphonic. The envelope doesn't retrigger if a note is played before the release of the previous note. If I put it into BPM match it sort-of fixes it

It's the intended behavior in POLY mode (i.e. it should allocate a new voice for every note if there's one available, regardless of whether the same note is being released on a different voice). But not when retriggering is turned on: that's a bug (https://github.com/attilammagyar/js80p/issues/48), so I'll look into it, but I can't promise delivering a fix in time for the OSC 209. 

However, it has nothing to do with envelope BPM sync. That just changes the time unit for the envelope from seconds to beats, so e.g. at 120 BPM, it halves the delay, attack, hold, decay, and release times.

I noticed that setting attack time to zero leads to inconsistent short/long attacks. More often long.  Bug, no doubt. Set to anything but zero, I'm getting perfectly consistent results. Another envelope bug: decreasing the release time from 0.010  leads to an increasing ( though very small ) zero amplitude delay on note-on.  Inspected in MONO mode, Windows AVX version, Reaper.  I assume individual POLY voices will act similarly. It does sound like it.  Voice stealing above 64 voices is a total mess of voices dropping out completely. Which presumably is another bug. Though with 64 voices that one seems tolerable. To me, anyway.

The random long attacks with zero attack time is indeed a bug (https://github.com/attilammagyar/js80p/issues/49), I could reproduce it in POLY mode as well.

The short delay before note-on in MONO mode appears to be caused by the synth trying to fade out the previous note smoothly before starting the new one.

Voice stealing: indeed, if all 64 voices are engaged, note-ons are dropped, there is no voice stealing.

Should I be able to see the synths parameters for modulation in Ableton?

No, only MIDI-CC-mapped parameters are exposed - but you can use those for automation. E.g. if you assign CC 16 to a knob in the synth, then you can automate the CC 16 parameter.

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...

What operating system and DAW are you using where dragging the window is slow and the space bar is swallowed? (I frequently test in Reaper on Mac/Linux/Windows and FL Studio on Mac/Win, occasionally in Ardour and Cakewalk Sonar on Windows, but I've never run into these problems.)

Btw. I tried your vibe coded GUI on Windows (v4.1.1-vibed) - thanks for the effort, it indeed looks nice. However, it doesn't seem to be a drop-in replacement, and it's not just that some parameters aren't shown. I made a single instance demo track back when I released v3.0.0:

• Here's how it's supposed to sound (rendered with the v4.1.1 SSE VST 3 bundle on Windows in Reaper v7.19): v300_demo-orig.flac (https://athoshun.eu/tmp/v300_demo-orig.flac).

• Here's how your plugin renders it in the same environment: v300_demo-jucegui.flac (https://athoshun.eu/tmp/v300_demo-jucegui.flac).

(Assets: the MIDI file (https://attilammagyar.github.io/js80p/demo/js80p-v300-demo.mid) and the preset (https://attilammagyar.github.io/js80p/demo/js80p-v300-demo.js80p).)

Also, rendering is somehow approximately 1.5 times slower with this version. (It's either overhead from JUCE, or the result of different compiler options, or something else. Either way, IMO it seems to be a little too high - I wonder what's going on with that.)

One thing worth mentioning is that JS80P deliberately works differently from most other synths, which indeed can be frustrating if you expect to use it with the same muscle memory. E.g. even though it doesn't have a traditional mod matrix or traditional modulation (you can only assign a single controller to each knob and then it will have exclusive control over that knob), what it has can be used in pretty powerful ways, especially when it comes to making the sound react to your playing. 

Lastly, a small administration request: I'd really appreciate if you could please remove my name from the copyright header comments of the vibe coded new source files in order to avoid confusion, since I didn't author them. As far as I know (I'm not a lawyer), those are either yours or are uncopyrightable, depending on how you directed the AI and used its outputs. (In the latter case, integrating them into a GNU GPL licensed project may be challenging.)

[z.prime]

I'd really appreciate if you could please remove my name from the copyright header

Will do

The dragging issue: Windows 10, Bitwig 6.0.6 -- I've never seen anything like it. It takes multiple seconds to move the window: almost as though it is running at 1 FPS: so 1 second later it appears somewhere along the path I was trying to drag it and it takes a few more seconds to get it to land where I want. The plugin animates normally when not being dragged.