Okay, JUNO lovers: while we ponder why Roland won’t reissue some of its classic JUNO models, you can get your fix from some very responsive indie developers, at least on Windows.
VST U-NO-60 from Togu Audio Line
Before we get into the specific features of the plug-in itself, let’s talk about the features of the developer: 1.) they’re giving this gem away free, 2.) they’re getting involved with the community of people actually using it, who have already created some terrific demos of its sound capabilities, and 3.) they’re very responsive to user comments. Best of all, they’ve done what seems to be a really terrific job.
Sasa writes us:
“Check this plugin out, sounds incredible and it’s free. The developer responds incredibly fast to people’s comments. See this thread at KVR:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=179588&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
There are almost daily updates and bugfixes. I think it deserves a place in CDM. Your readers will appreciate it.”
I agree. Now about the plug-in itself: it’s a simplified version of the JUNO, as the name implies, but still with some important features for making it useful, sonically speaking.
- Six-voice, polyphonic, band-limited oscillators
- One syncable LFO with five different waveforms
- 24 dB lowpass filter capable of self-resonance (aka self-oscillation), just like the original, plus a non-resonant high-pass filter
- ADSR envelopes, smooth cutoff changes (even with MIDI, so I suppose they’re upsampling to audio rate or otherwise smoothing the data), velocity-sensitive filter envelope
- MIDI learn for everything
- 20 presets
Not bad for a freebie — not in the least. Give it a go, let us know what happens (sound samples welcome), and if anyone wants to volunteer to port this to Mac, do get in touch.
And Roland, can’t you see we’re starved for synths that either reissue the classic JUNOs or truly incorporate their spirit and not just their color scheme / front-panel layout / logo? Maybe just one short-run JUNO? Do you really want eBay and VSTs to be the only solution?