JS80P

{See video at top of page}

JS80P is a MIDI driven, performance oriented, versatile, free and open source synthesizer VST plugin.

It comes with two oscillators (and a sub-harmonic sine), and a lot of filters, effects, envelopes, LFOs, and powerful macros to shape your sound with subtractive, additive, PWM, FM, PM, and AM synthesis, complete with polyphonic, monophonic, and split keyboard modes, MPE support, MTS-ESP tuning support, analog imperfection emulation, and more.

Note: VST is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH.

Features

• 64 notes polyphony.
  • MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE).
• Last-note priority monophonic mode. (Retrigger or smooth glide.).
• Polyphonic and monophonic hold modes to keep notes ringing without a sustain pedal.
• 2 oscillators with 14 waveforms and an additional noise generator:
  • sine.
  • sawtooth.
  • soft sawtooth.
  • inverse sawtooth.
  • soft inverse sawtooth.
  • triangle.
  • soft triangle.
  • square.
  • soft square.
  • variable pulse width:
    • pulse.
    • soft pulse.
    • bipolar pulse.
    • soft bipolar pulse.
  • custom.
• 2 filters for each oscillator, 7 filter types:
  • low-pass.
  • high-pass.
  • band-pass.
  • notch.
  • bell (peaking).
  • low-shelf.
  • high-shelf.
• Sub-harmonic sine wave for oscillator 1, distortion for oscillator 2.
• Adjustable oscillator pitch inaccuracy and instability, for analog-like liveliness and warmth.
  • Optional synchronization of inaccuracy and instability between the oscillators within each polyphonic voice.
• Microtuning support via the MTS-ESP tuning protocol by ODDSound.
• Portamento.
  • Glide from the last note or a set amount.
• Wavefolder.
• Split keyboard.
• Amplitude modulation.
• Frequency modulation.
• Phase modulation.
• Built-in effects:
  • various distortions.
  • 2 more filters.
  • basic tape simulation (saturation, tone coloring, noise, wow and flutter, slowdown stop, fast-forward).
  • chorus.
  • stereo echo (with distortion, side-chain compression or gate, and reversible delay lines).
  • stereo reverb (with distortion and side-chain compression or gate).
  • volume controls at various points of the signal chain.
• 12 DAHDSR envelopes with customizable shapes, freely assignable to most of the the oscillator, filter, and modulation parameters.
• 8 low-frequency oscillators (LFO) with optional amplitude envelope and polyphony.
  • Variable pulse width waveforms in 4 of the LFOs.
• Filter and envelope imperfection settings for analog-like feel.
• Freely assignable MIDI controllers and powerful macros.
  • Ability to override the primary function of the sustain pedal, and use it as a toggle switch for various parameters and macros.
• Channel pressure (aftertouch).
  • Optionally with semi-polyphonic aftertouch emulation (even with MIDI keyboards that don't have polyphonic aftertouch):
    • last pressed key.
    • oldest pressed key.
    • lowest pressed key.
    • or highest pressed key.
• Expressive built-in presets, including classic synth sounds as well as emulations of real instruments.
• Random preset generator to help explore the capabilities of the synthesizer.
• MIDI learn.
• Logarithmic or linear scale filter cutoff frequencies.
• Tempo synchronization for envelopes, LFOs, and effects.
• Use the peak level at various points of the signal chain to control parameters:
  • oscillator 1 output.
  • oscillator 2 output.
  • volume control 1 input.
  • volume control 2 input.
  • volume control 3 input.
• Route external audio into the effects chain of JS80P (in host applications which support it).

Changes

What's New in v4.1.1

• Bugfix: resolved an issue that broke state persistence and preset saving in certain DAWs (including Ardour, FL Studio, etc.) when the plugin was used on a system with a non-English locale. (#46).

What's New in v4.1.0

• A random preset generator has been added to help explore the sounds of JS80P.

What's New in v4.0.2

• Various small CPU usage optimizations were done.

• Bugfix: using the 10th harmonic of the Custom waveform could cause unwanted noises and aliasing distortions if the oscillator's frequency was moving (e.g. via the Fine Detune knob or the Oscillator Instability setting, etc.). This has been fixed. (#41).

• Bugfix: when both the VST 3 and the FST version of JS80P were loaded in a host application on macOS, or when JS80P and MPE Emulator were both loaded on macOS, then a name collision of an internal resource could occur between these plugins, resulting in various warnings or error messages, depending on the host application. This collision has been resolved so that now any combination of the latest versions of these plugins can be loaded on macOS into the same process without any warnings and error messages. (#42).

• Bugfix: when using MPE, envelope generators with dynamic update modes failed to properly update once the envelope reached the sustain stage. This has been fixed so that envelope update modes are now respected when using MPE as well. (#43).

• Bugfix: switching note handling modes could result in Note On messages being dropped. This has been fixed, so now notes will properly make the configured sounds after changing the note handling mode. (#44).

• Bugfix: note states were not properly reset when loading presets, resulting in envelope generators not respecting the configured update modes. This has been fixed. (#45).

What's New in v4.0.1

• Bugfix: when the VST 3 plugin received a Note On and a subsequent Note Off event with the exact same timestamp (e.g. while editing MIDI in a piano roll UI), the note got stuck until a plugin reset or an All Notes Off event occurred. This is now fixed. (#39).

What's New in v4.0.0

• JS80P now runs on macOS as well.
• New oscillator and LFO waveforms with pulse width modulation (PWM): pulse, soft pulse, bipolar pulse, and soft bipolar pulse.
  • Backward compatibility: Most projects and patches that were saved by older versions of JS80P should keep working without any changes, however, there is one exception to backward compatibility: if the waveform parameter of an oscillator or an LFO was assigned any kind of automation (e.g. MIDI controllers, macros, etc.), those automations may need adjustments in order to take the four new waveform options into account.
• New distortion types, including sin(x), sqrt(x), etc.
• New presets: 16 Beats Riser, Ambient Pluck, Chiptune, Octave Bass, Tremolo PWM Bass.
• The GUI is now resizable which should also fix various font sizing problems.
• Renamed badly named old presets.
• Improved VST 3 event processing order consistency.
• Bugfix: logarithmic scale parameters were not saved correctly if their value was not modified after switching to logarithmic scale. This is now fixed. (#38).
• Bugfix: the plugin will handle out-of-range parameter values sent by certain DAWs more gracefully.
• Bugfix: in certain cases, the noise generator of the oscillators could turn on slightly ahead of Note On events. Now it's made sure that noise generators won't make any sound before they are supposed to.
• Bugfix: VST 3 bundles now use the correct structure.