JPS Harmonic Synthesizer in the shop. $79 US

[JiggeryPokery]

v1.0.2 of the JPS Harmonic Synthesizer is now available, fixing a couple of errors that have been found since launch.

—Osc 1 ring mod signal was incorrectly using the Osc 1 amp envelope; it now ignores the envelope
—Fixed an issue with voice stealing in Poly mode when using long amp envelope release times with low Polyphony counts

[LABONERECORDINGS]

Absolute quality Re here, can't fault the work nor the sound quality of this one, definitely something we would use for layering with gnarly synths for wall of sounds that's for sure


Keep up the good work JP, from one Dev to another

[bsp]

I totally overlooked this one ("I don't need another organ synth") -- tried it last night, bought it 20 minutes later. It sounds absolutely gorgeous !

Thanks for making this!

(I especially like the ring modulated bell-like sounds this thing can do, with a touch of "osc noise" and the distortion set to "hi" + drive to 9 o'clock. The FX are all high quality. The synth can use quite a lot of CPU but that's understandable since @12 voices there are 2*16*12=384 oscillators, plus the filters and FX. The sound quality definitely justifies the CPU usage !)

[dana]

This is good. Real good.

Quirky and sounds unique.

[Shokstar]

Yes, this synth is really special and not so common like the most other 3rd party synths.

My highlight for this synth is the bit binary feat on the back, you can change the whole character of this synth.

[JiggeryPokery]

I totally overlooked this one ("I don't need another organ synth") -- tried it last night, bought it 20 minutes later. It sounds absolutely gorgeous !

Thanks for making this!

(I especially like the ring modulated bell-like sounds this thing can do, with a touch of "osc noise" and the distortion set to "hi" + drive to 9 o'clock. The FX are all high quality. The synth can use quite a lot of CPU but that's understandable since @12 voices there are 2*16*12=384 oscillators, plus the filters and FX. The sound quality definitely justifies the CPU usage !)

Thanks.

CPU use was largely why I largely used 6 voices as the default for most poly patches - enough to play a proper chord without hurting DSP usage too much.

But I intentionally didn't want to limit it to a small polyphony amount, so we allow the flexibility to go wild with it and up the poly count: while it will be the case that especially when using long release times you'll need to increase the voice number, as with Oversampling, actually you probably don't need to do that at song-writing and mixing stage, that can be done at export time as well where live playback isn't required and you're no longer bound to latency. (And indeed, this will be true of any device where you can change the poly)

[bsp]

Makes perfect sense. It definitely was a wise decision to not artificially limit the number of voices.

One optimization idea thing that crossed my mind: Apparently when a partial's volume is set to 0, it will still be calculated.
At least there does not seem to be a difference in CPU usage between a patch that uses just 3 partials, and one that uses all 16.

Maybe you could skip the unused partials to make the synth a bit less CPU hungry ?

[Shokstar]

Maybe it depends on the oversampling?

[ScuzzyEye]

One optimization idea thing that crossed my mind: Apparently when a partial's volume is set to 0, it will still be calculated.
At least there does not seem to be a difference in CPU usage between a patch that uses just 3 partials, and one that uses all 16.

Maybe you could skip the unused partials to make the synth a bit less CPU hungry ?

That's already being done, also they aren't calculated when their frequency would go above the Nyquist limit (because they'd just be producing aliased frequencies at that point). The partial calculations are pretty light (since they are all fixed multiples of the fundamental), the shaper is a bit more expensive, and then the filter. Also the trade-off between the CPU being able to stream the calculations for all 16 generators, vs. including a test to see if they need to be generated is a wash.

There's just a lot of stuff going on in this instrument.

The over-sampling, and anti-aliasing filter is one of heaviest parts. It is quite needed though. The original hardware, from which this was modeled, produced lots of ultrasonic frequencies. In the analog domain the 1-pole filter right after the harmonic generator could take care of that better because it'd continue cutting all the way to infinity, and also the rest of the signal path, down to the speakers, would also attenuate those inaudible frequencies. That's not so in the digital world. Any spectral content above the Nyquist limit flips back into the audible range, and becomes quite annoying. They only way to deal with that is to run everything at a higher frequency so the Nyquist limit is raised, and the ultrasonics can be dealt with before they can alias.

[TritoneAddiction]

Here's a track I just finished using this synth.

[Shokstar]

Here's a track I just finished using this synth.

I like it this Track reminds me on the good old NES games like Punch-Out or Zelda Thanks for sharing this track with us

[bsp]

Maybe you could skip the unused partials to make the synth a bit less CPU hungry ?

That's already being done, also they aren't calculated when their frequency would go above the Nyquist limit (because they'd just be producing aliased frequencies at that point). The partial calculations are pretty light (since they are all fixed multiples of the fundamental), the shaper is a bit more expensive, and then the filter. Also the trade-off between the CPU being able to stream the calculations for all 16 generators, vs. including a test to see if they need to be generated is a wash.

@ScuzzyEye:
For some reason I was under the impression that this is a sample-based synth, in which case it would certainly make a difference between skipping/calculating an unused partial.
(that's not to say that the usage of samples would make this any less of a synth!)

So what you are saying is that this is not the case and the harmonic generator is calculated using an algorithm where the additional partial calculations are practically for free ("a wash"), e.g. something like an IDCT.

Well, you programmed this thing, got to take your word for it!

Regarding the aliasing: Yeah, you can supersample this, or use bandlimited oscs to avoid aliasing in the first place. Whether this is feasible surely depends on the synthesis algorithm.

Anyways, cool synth, keep 'em coming!

@TritoneAddiction: Yep, nice track! I can also hear some chip and maybe even some folk music influences. Sounds very "english" to me (for a mainland european like me it's all the english island, cannot really tell whether this is english, scottish, irish, ..please forgive my ignorance:))

[ScuzzyEye]

@ScuzzyEye:
For some reason I was under the impression that this is a sample-based synth, in which case it would certainly make a difference between skipping/calculating an unused partial.
(that's not to say that the usage of samples would make this any less of a synth!)

So what you are saying is that this is not the case and the harmonic generator is calculated using an algorithm where the additional partial calculations are practically for free ("a wash"), e.g. something like an IDCT.

Well, you programmed this thing, got to take your word for it!

Regarding the aliasing: Yeah, you can supersample this, or use bandlimited oscs to avoid aliasing in the first place. Whether this is feasible surely depends on the synthesis algorithm.

Anyways, cool synth, keep 'em coming!

It's definitely an algorithmically generated synth, and based heavily on the original circuit schematics. So there are two sets of ripple counters producing a rectified sinusoidal waveform. How many levels the ripple counters are quantized to, and how much rectification is applied is under the user's control in this virtual recreation. (The original hardware was half-wave rectified, and had 32 levels (5 bits) on that positive swing.)

And thanks. I'm trying.

[JiggeryPokery]

Here's a track I just finished using this synth.

That's really lovely, with well-worked tonal changes throughout.

(I like the very Mike Oldfield-esque flute section (and I say that as someone who was never partial of MO)).

[raymondh]

I finally bought this synth. Definitely agree with the other comments about how unique and well programmed this synth is.

Well done Matt....

[JiggeryPokery]

I finally bought this synth. Definitely agree with the other comments about how unique and well programmed this synth is.

Well done Matt....

Thanks!

[JiggeryPokery]

version 1.0.3 is out, fixing an issue with that could arise in some circumstances with the distortion module when exporting a track.

[ravasb]

I am really sorry I tried this today. I had sworn not to buy anything for a while. I tried it anyway. Absolutely brilliant. Money shooting out of my wallet like a rocket.

[bsp]

I made a rather minimalistic track with this RE today (IDM style):



This is actually a live take with 8 parallel sequencers -- Took me all day !

The sound is from JP's RE, layered with a DSI Prophet 08, drums from a Machinedrum (SPS-1).

[JiggeryPokery]

I made a rather minimalistic track with this RE today (IDM style):

This is actually a live take with 8 parallel sequencers -- Took me all day !

The sound is from JP's RE, layered with a DSI Prophet 08, drums from a Machinedrum (SPS-1).

That's really nice work. Almost like ambient DnB, though it needs more B . I might be interested in doing a remix of this one.

[bsp]

That's really nice work. Almost like ambient DnB, though it needs more B . I might be interested in doing a remix of this one.

Thank you, JP!

Funny, I was this <-> close to actually labeling it "ambient d'n'b" myself ! (and yes, the lack of "B" made me decide differently)

It would be an honour if you'd remix this! The track is released under a Creative Commons license that allows "derivative works".

On the topic of this RE: I'd like to add that ZVork's Volt SL-1 RE comes in very handy for harmonic transitions !

[ravasb]

I have been using this with Ammo for modulating the CV inputs. Trippy and beautiful. I did not think I needed another synth, but as I was coming to the end of the trial period I became very sad thinking about being without it. Bought it. Totally worth it.

[PSoames]

I might as well give JP permanent access to my bank account for all the money I've spent on their products.

Like all the other extensions from them, this is unique and excellent.

[damasio]

I have to complain about the ginormous CPU-load of this soft synth. JP UP YOUR GAME. A synth that maxes out cpu with one instance at 44.1khz on a 8 core MAC!!!! Take some course on parallel programming please.
Frustrating because it sounds really nice.

[Loque]

I have to complain about the ginormous CPU-load of this soft synth. JP UP YOUR GAME. A synth that maxes out cpu with one instance at 44.1khz on a 8 core MAC!!!! Take some course on parallel programming please.
Frustrating because it sounds really nice.

I am not a RE dev, but i think a RE dev caanot use parallel programming technics. Maybe there is a bug or you have a different problem.