Diva - classic synths that deserve emulating?

[Urs]

JD-800. Oh, those filters!

Really?

Oh, yes!

Really!??

JD-800... I had one visiting once and I found it very harsh and even erratic sounding...

You're not by any chance confusing it with a JP-8000?

In any case... I'd like to hear an mp3 example...

[EvilDragon]

JD-800/990, they have a really awesome sound. But yeah, you have to take care about mixer gain and resonance...

[rockin1]

I must confess to never having used one directly, but I have come across some *very, very beautiful* pad samples taken from JD-800. I think they are in the UVI Synths Anthology: http://www.ultimatesoundbank.com/uvisc2 ... c=overview. It is possible that they were quite enhanced by post processing so I suppose it's hard to say what they raw pad sounds were like...

[osiris]

[EvilDragon]

There's D-70, too:

[osiris]

Every other demo I can found is played live with ambient noise and recording hiss.

[ryandfl]

I'm sure HZ wouldn't mind a small part of his 'wall' being preserved for posterity.

He offered.

I will spend some time with his stuff in LA in January. Howie will be there too, so we can discuss a lot of these things.

That's so cool!

[rockin1]

Unfortunately the pad sounds I fell in love with are not in this demo. If I remember right they were a variation on detuned and chorused sine waves, but somehow exquisitely beautiful like no others I have heard. I don't have Synths Anthology installed right now or I would go find the sound and post a sample.

Some of the sounds in this demo are very nice, especially some of the breathy / airy sounds. Does anyone know if Jonn Serrie used JD-800 at all?

[hakey]

Hmm, do Roland's s+s digital synths really make a good fit with Diva's paradigm?

[Bronto Scorpio]

The JD-800/990 are awesome synths but there is nothing which should be emulated. It's like the D-50, Wavestation, SQ-80 etc. The character of these synths is based on the "lofi" samples/wavetables. Nothing which should end up in Diva (wouldn't be possible anyway).

And by the way: Most of the über synth nerds I know have the opinion that the JD-800/990 has the worst filter ever
That doesn't change that it's THE synth for cold gital pads though
But nothing Zebra cant do better.

Cheers
Dennis

[rockin1]

The JD-800/990 are awesome synths but there is nothing which should be emulated. It's like the D-50, Wavestation, SQ-80 etc. The character of these synths is based on the "lofi" samples/wavetables. Nothing which should end up in Diva (wouldn't be possible anyway).

And by the way: Most of the über synth nerds I know have the opinion that the JD-800/990 has the worst filter ever
That doesn't change that it's THE synth for cold gital pads though
But nothing Zebra couldn't do better.

Cheers
Dennis

So maybe some "lo-fi" wavetables with this character for Zebra are in order then?

[Bronto Scorpio]

The JD-800/990 are awesome synths but there is nothing which should be emulated. It's like the D-50, Wavestation, SQ-80 etc. The character of these synths is based on the "lofi" samples/wavetables. Nothing which should end up in Diva (wouldn't be possible anyway).

And by the way: Most of the über synth nerds I know have the opinion that the JD-800/990 has the worst filter ever
That doesn't change that it's THE synth for cold gital pads though
But nothing Zebra couldn't do better.

Cheers
Dennis

So maybe some "lo-fi" wavetables with this character for Zebra are in order then?

Place a VCF in "SR Decimate" mode with 100% keytracking and/or a shaper in "Crush" mode after an osc which has a digital wavetable loaded and you can already get nice lofi wavetables

Cheers
Dennis

[EvilDragon]

The JD-800/990 are awesome synths but there is nothing which should be emulated. It's like the D-50, Wavestation, SQ-80 etc. The character of these synths is based on the "lofi" samples/wavetables. Nothing which should end up in Diva (wouldn't be possible anyway).

And by the way: Most of the über synth nerds I know have the opinion that the JD-800/990 has the worst filter ever
That doesn't change that it's THE synth for cold gital pads though
But nothing Zebra cant do better.

JD-800/990 aren't exactly "lo-fi". They had the best piano sound of the 90s, save for Kurzweils.

[rockin1]

Place a VCF in "SR Decimate" mode with 100% keytracking and/or a shaper in "Crush" mode after an osc which has a digital wavetable loaded and you can already get nice lofi wavetables

Thanks for the tip! Yet I am not aware of breathy / airy wavetables for Zebra that have the richness of the JD-800. I'm sure they are possible but I don't know that they have been created yet. Do you know if I am just missing them somehow?

[Bronto Scorpio]

The JD-800/990 are awesome synths but there is nothing which should be emulated. It's like the D-50, Wavestation, SQ-80 etc. The character of these synths is based on the "lofi" samples/wavetables. Nothing which should end up in Diva (wouldn't be possible anyway).

And by the way: Most of the über synth nerds I know have the opinion that the JD-800/990 has the worst filter ever
That doesn't change that it's THE synth for cold gital pads though
But nothing Zebra cant do better.

JD-800/990 aren't exactly "lo-fi". They had the best piano sound of the 90s, save for Kurzweils.

Yep that's right. The term "lofi" might not be the best one. But when people talk about the "JD-800 sound" they are not talking about the filters or something. The samples are the biggest part of it's character.
There is nothing in this synth which would be worth emulating
And don't get me wrong: I LOVE the JD-800!

Cheers
Dennis