EightyEight - A vintage Jupiter-8 emulation that sounds awesome!

[Matt67]

Granted, mixing beta and free can be confusing to consumers, and vendors should be careful with this. I think that Uhe does a great job of this making it clear that the beta has an expiration date. Everyone should do this, expire your betas, no phone home necessary.

That’s all I asked for: a clear explanation of what’s what. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s why I also mentioned another Morphoice product here, namely “Unstable.” It’s listed on KVR as “free” (see my screenshot above). I searched for it for a very long time and even asked about it here in the forum. I couldn’t find a free version anywhere. That’s what I mean by misleading information.

I have absolutely no intention of attacking the developers or anything like that. But I use almost all add-ons in public productions. And for that, I need clarity on what I’m allowed to use and what I’m not. What’s free and can be used without restrictions, what’s just a beta, and what I have to pay for in order to use it. And if everyone else thinks that’s clear, I guess I’m the exception. But is it really just me?

[Teksonik]

Granted, mixing beta and free can be confusing to consumers, and vendors should be careful with this.

For over two and half decades people have been releasing free plugins here without restrictions, without conditions, without expiration.

This is what people have come to expect when they hear "free".

There have of course been "free for a limited time" plugins but when they are no longer free (become payware either again or for the first time) they generally keep working. I can't think of an example where a free plugin stopped working by design.

I think the confusion here is a new developer who should probably be using the term "demo version" rather than "free" since it is basically a demo with some restrictions (ten minutes per session in this case):

Unstable 1.png

Hundreds of plugins have demo versions and they're never called a "free" plugin even if they don't expire (I believe the aforementioned U-he is a good example).

I don't wish any ill will towards the developer and genuinely hope his side business is a huge success but if one wants respect from the forum then one needs to respect the forum and its commonly accepted nomenclature.

[Echoes in the Attic]

The license is quite cheap and seems like good value. Seems strange to do false advertising as free when it’s so cheap.

[donato]

It's free (for money). What a joke.

[tumface]

I was taking it at face value when he said it worked for free and the license was optional, but might not be optional in the future. Seeing what Teksonik just posted, that's a lot worse than I imagined.

[Morphoice]

As I just posted in the other thread: You asked for it, so here it is.
The free, pay-what-you-want model is ending. Not because it wasn't working technically, but because of the reception it's had here. Rather than being taken as what it was — years of work given away, with support entirely optional — it's been repeatedly framed as sketchy, as exploiting testers, as something to be suspicious of. If a free model draws that, then there's no reason to keep it.
EightyEight and EightyTen will be priced at $49 on final release. From that point it's unambiguous — a paid product with a limited free trial, the same way Unstable works. No more debate about what's free and what isn't.
Beta versions will no longer be supported once the final releases land, and will be withdrawn.
Until then, the $10 lifetime license offer stands, which is a considerable bargain for anyone who wants in before the change.
I won't be following this thread going forward. Support for licensed customers continues as always through the ticket system on my website, and you're very welcome to use it — I'm always happy to help anyone who's bought in.

Best of luck with all your future productions, whatever you end up making them with. No hard feelings. Morphoice out.

[tumface]

I think that's actually a great idea and I hope it works out for you.

[D-Fusion]

I think all the confusion started with that it first was a pay what you want and then some flip flopping started from the creator with talk about payed version and then it went back to a Pay what you want + a "Free version" which actually is a demo version and not a fully free version at all.

It is a demo version and not a free version If the free version product have the typical demo limitations built in and will stop working at some point.

I think your last idea will be the best and won't leave people confused so i would recommend that you stick to your plan this time

[suthnear]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but I can't be bothered to wade through all the price and ethics discussions. The filter cutoff slider on this hardly opens the filter. It can only fully open with env mod at max. I haven't touched a j8 in years but from what I remember it was a pretty bright sounding synth (and a few YT videos seemed to confirm this memory). Is this the final state of the filter? Or will this still be adjusted during the beta process?

[Morphoice]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but I can't be bothered to wade through all the price and ethics discussions. The filter cutoff slider on this hardly opens the filter. It can only fully open with env mod at max. I haven't touched a j8 in years but from what I remember it was a pretty bright sounding synth (and a few YT videos seemed to confirm this memory). Is this the final state of the filter? Or will this still be adjusted during the beta process?

This should be expected behavior as the filter cutoff also depends on the filter envelope intensity slider. Move it and the cutoff behavior changes.

[suthnear]

Thanks for getting back to me. I tried to copy Starsky Carr's demo of the j8 filter -

- and couldn't get near it. In the video, the filter is pretty much wide open with these settings, but with your plugin it's a fairly dull clicky sound. Similarly with Matt Johnson's demo:

Although you can only see part of the synth so I didn't try to copy this as I might be missing something important. However, you can see him move the filter env decay and sustain and it does not change the sound nearly as dramatically as doing this on your plugin.

For an analogue polysynth with the cutoff knob fully open and no filter modulation, I would expect to hear largely unfiltered oscillators, particularly for notes above 220Hz. However, with the 24db filter and no other filter modulation applied to your plugin, playing a 440Hz sawtooth wave, the 10kHz harmonic is down to around -170db. If I force the filter as fully open as the plugin will allow it by setting envelope mod to maximum and an organ like envelope shape, the harmonic at 10kHz is around -60db. That's a very large difference. But this may very well be the case with your J8, which is why I am checking that this is expected behaviour.

I then downloaded another plugin version of the j8 and its behaviour was much more like what is shown in those videos and much more in line with my expectations. Copying the approach I took with your plugin, there's about 4db drop off at 10kHz (and about 15db at 20kHz). My analogue polys (not classic rolands, though) behave in a similar fashion. I.e you need env depth to get that last bit of sparkle, but the cutoff knob or slider will get you most of the way there...

[Morphoice]

Thanks for the report. I can't rule out that a wrong value has slipped in somewhere. I assume you're on 0.9.1 though, and a fair bit has changed since — 0.9.3 just went up. Grab that and let me know if it persists; if it does, I'll happily run some measurements this weekend to track the issue down.

In general please use the ticket system on my website for bug reports, it helps me track things and respond quicker. I don't constantly monitor every forum. Have a great night!

[suthnear]

Ok, will check it out

[suthnear]

0.9.3 is indeed much better in this regard.

I don't have time for formal beta testing, sorry, but here are a few things I found in 0.9.3:
- the main tuning knob isn't working: it doesn't change the tuning of the synth. In fact, it doesn't do much of anything until about 70% and then it gets steppy and glitchy and the sound of the synth becomes quite distorted. In a good way Maybe whatever is going on here can be extracted to another control, though, when the tune control gets restored. There's definitely something interesting happening here.
- the pitch modulation sends are (mostly) backwards: vco-1 send affects vco-2 and vice versa. I say mostly because sometimes it stops working altogether and the send depth needs a nudge to get it going again. Initially I thought oscillator sync wasn't working but it worked just fine once I realised I needed to reverse the send. Sync (and pwm) both sound good.
- filter cutoff is a bit steppy but Starsky Carr said the same thing about his j8. Envelope mod of the filter is smooth, though, so it's a pity that manipulating the slider didn't sound and feel the same even if this isn't entirely accurate. Maybe this could be tied to the vintage knob.
- oh, and cross mod feels like it could use more depth but this may well be authentic. I have no idea what the j8's cross mod sounded like and haven't been able to find a demo.

I think I will wait for an official release and have another look then but it seems like you have a solid base.