Roland Juno 106 Vs Juno 60 shootout.

[Thirteen]

In response to another thread on this forum, here are some audio files comparing a Juno 106 to a Juno 60, since there seems to be a mythology built up around Juno 6's and 60's, and the idea that the 106 sounds thin and plasticy. You decide. Here are some 24 bit files. Each sound I play 4 quarter notes. Each time, the first note is the '106, the second the '60, the third the '106 and the fourth the '60. Basically I alternate the synths with the 106 always being the first quarter note played. I did this so that you can hear the differences as easily as possible. Some of the files have passes in different octaves, but each group of 4 notes is both machines alternating note by note. I didn't spend forever trying to match the sound exactly, I did it by ear reasonably quickly. I put them up on .Mac, you push the little arrows on the far right to download the file.

There are 6 files:

"Raw square wave" is the sound of each synth's square wave as closely as I could match them by ear.

"Max resonance" is the sawtooth wave, with resonance control at maximim being swept by the decay control. Both machines had res. at maximum, cutoff at minimum, filter envelope control at maximum and I set the decay time as close as I could.

"All waves on full sub" Is all of the 3 waveforms on, sub at full level, open filter. The 106's sub goes much louder than the '60's.

"106 sub 50 percent" Same as the last file, with the 106's sub slider at half volume to match it with the '60 at full level.

"close as possible match" A more complex patch, matched as closely as I could between the 2 machines.

"Chorus off-1-2" Raw waveforms, filter open, no chorus, then chorus 1, then chorus 2.

[NYMo]

Hi there,

Steve... I listened to a few of the examples and yes they are very close.

I'll set a discussion up on Analog Heaven and see what they come up with ;-)

My particular reference to *plasticky* referred to build, not sound !
(translation easily lost on the net !)

Cheers

John NYMO Nyman

[Thirteen]

Hi there,

Steve... I listened to a few of the examples and yes they are very close.

I'll set a discussion up on Analog Heaven and see what they come up with ;-)

My particular reference to *plasticky* referred to build, not sound !
(translation easily lost on the net !)

Cheers

John NYMO Nyman

Perhaps it would be best to wait until I can make the files 16 bit and shrink them down a bit?

[beatmad]

It's funny because I misread the order which you recorded the samples in and I thought the 106 was the 60 in the first 2 examples and sounded meatier. They sound very close to my ears. I wonder if you can do David Lackey's tests to determine whether attack time/note-triggering is different? From my tests Juno runs very late when sequenced, about 6-8ms. Overall my thoughts can be summed up something like this:

Juno 60: sweet blackberry, blackcurrant and cherry fruit flavours are complimented by tobacco/cigarbox and chocolate/mocha characters that are finished with subtle spicy oak

Juno 106: ripe plum and blackberry fruit flavours combine nicely with hints of chocolate/ mocha, mint and spicy cinnamon notes with a background of well integrated toasty oak characters :)

[Thirteen]

It's funny because I misread the order which you recorded the samples in and I thought the 106 was the 60 in the first 2 examples and sounded meatier. They sound very close to my ears. I wonder if you can do David Lackey's tests to determine whether attack time/note-triggering is different? From my tests Juno runs very late when sequenced, about 6-8ms. Overall my thoughts can be summed up something like this:

Juno 60: sweet blackberry, blackcurrant and cherry fruit flavours are complimented by tobacco/cigarbox and chocolate/mocha characters that are finished with subtle spicy oak

Juno 106: ripe plum and blackberry fruit flavours combine nicely with hints of chocolate/ mocha, mint and spicy cinnamon notes with a background of well integrated toasty oak characters :)

I guess I could put a scope on the key contact and one across the output and try and see the time between the two....

[ChrisW]

Juno 60: sweet blackberry, blackcurrant and cherry fruit flavours are complimented by tobacco/cigarbox and chocolate/mocha characters that are finished with subtle spicy oak

Juno 106: ripe plum and blackberry fruit flavours combine nicely with hints of chocolate/ mocha, mint and spicy cinnamon notes with a background of well integrated toasty oak characters :)

Very good!

I don't care about the differences enough to download the files. Not saying it was a bad idea to put the effort in to make them, or post them here.
Not at all.
Anyway, I used to own a 60, liked it alot.
I used to work with some 106 owners. Very nice too.
At the time, the main reason people chose the 106 over the 60 was the midi.
I slightly prefer the sound of the 60 (from memory), but I think both are basically great synths.

[beatmad]

From my tests Juno runs very late when sequenced, about 6-8ms.

Oops I meant the 106 is late, I don't know about the 6 or 60.

Yeah Steve something like that test you suggested, it might show up some differences. I think David did a test by putting a contact under the key which triggered an audio spike panned hard left and then measured the difference between that and the audio output panned hard right in Soundforge.

[Futureman]

Cool, I've listened to a few..

The close as possible sample, it seems like the first synth (J106?) is meatier.. to me anyway.

But then the max resonance one, the second synth (J60?) has a better growl..

I kinda wish you had a sample of them at max resonance, while getting a nice "tie fighter" (Star wars reference) sort of growl sound.. kinda like a tuned filter, but set low. (With oscillators in there)
For me, the J106 could never do this that good, while the J60 reveled in it and had lots of warbles and nuances to it's tone.

But, through my laptop speakers, they sure sound similar.. subtle differences, but more similar than I remembered.

I've also got an Alpha Juno too.. I could sample that lol... but, the Alpha's filter does not self oscillate..

So, whats next for a synth shootout? Nothing to do with a 303 please!

Regards
Mike

[seanolyte]

Nice work Steve.

Juno's are amazing synths. No portamento on the 60 unfortunately, wish it had. 106 covers that base, but no arpeggiator.

Solution? Buy 'em all...

Vintage Roland... eccellente.

[ChrisW]

So, whats next for a synth shootout?

Soft synth vs analogue. AAArgh!
Ok, let's not go there.

[Futureman]

Soft synth vs analogue. AAArgh!
Ok, let's not go there.

Oh for the love of God, No!!!!!

[tweakeasy]

Soft synth vs analogue. AAArgh!
Ok, let's not go there.

Oh for the love of God, No!!!!!

I second that!!!!!! "KSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHT" - That was the sound of a thousand fisherman opening a thousand cans of worms at once.

[Thirteen]

Software vs. hardware shootouts are a tricky one. I have done them myself for my own curiosity. Playing a note or chord on a soft synth, and then on the hardware of which the software is a copy with the same patch only tells a small part of the story. If I thought that I could come anywhere close to the same result with a CS-80V then I would sell my CS-80, heaven knows I have had some breathtaking offers.

In their own right, soft synths can be great. People use them every day on commercial tracks, and, like any musical endeavour, some sound great and some sound lame, as usual it depends on who played it, who wrote the part, who recorded it and through what, the same as any recording. The first time that I heard a virtual CS-80, I could clearly hear that it sounded like a CS-80, it had the correct tone and sonic signature, without the expressiveness of course, as 99.9 percent of MIDI controllers lack poly-aftertouch. But when I played the same sound on the real CS-80 through the same speakers I just shook my head.

You can make a patch on a soft synth that sounds like the real thing. If a really good player plays a well written part with it on a recording, it will work, and sound great. If the player is poor, it will sound bad, again, just like any recording. As always, a great player can make an average instrument sound great. Dave Gilmour will still sound amazing if he is playing a cheap guitar. Give me a classic Strat and I won't.

The first question to ask about the software revolution in music is this: If everyone now has access to the sound of every classic synth/EQ/compressor/reverb and symphonic orchestra on their home computer, along with pristine 24 bit digital recording with near unlimited track counts, dynamics on every channel, unlimited routing and access to software emulations of every classic FX processor ever made, then we should be hearing an amazing renaissance in the quality of music. We should be drowning in an over-choice of genre stretching, lush, beautifully recorded material, with glossy, perfectly clear vocals, flawless instrumentation, beautiful dynamics and perfect mixes. Education is not an issue, there are infinite tutorials on the net and in magazines, explaining the art of mixing, compression and vocal recording, not to mention mastering, orchestration, articulation and music theory, so the songwriting should be top-notch too.

Listen to the albums from the 80's such as Slave to the Rhythm, Welcome to the Pleasure Dome, the Art Of Noise albums, Propaganda, Scritti Politti, Yello, and so on. Trevor horn and his contemporaries used primative synths and digital FX (by today's standards), low sample rate low bit depth machines: Fairlight CMI, PPG Wave, Synclavier, AMS reverb and delays, Publison Infernal Machines. All pretty low grade compared to any current digital system. Some of this was recorded on Sony and Mitsubishi digital tape machines at 16 bit 48k, and mostly on noisy old magnetic tape. Nothing special, the kid down the road can record at pristine 192k 24 bit now. So we should be hearing amazing electro music albums and songs now coming from every direction.

Clearly this is not happening. Great albums are still being made in the electronica genre as they always have since the '60's, but not in any greater quantity. Same goes for most other genres of popular music. There is still great stuff being recorded, but not as much as you would expect considering that most modern musicians have rigs that Trevor Horn, Jarre, Gary Numan, Bowie, Eno and Kraftwerk would have only dreamed of. I leave this to you to decide why.

So, back to soft synths, why use the real thing at all, when real classic synths are expensive and sometimes troublesome to maintain, and virtual synths (if you believe the magazine adverts and the internet posts by those modern musicians who only use soft synths, and some times even pay for them), are just as good or better than the classic synths that they are emulating? I can only put forward my own personal experiences, which I hasten to add, in case I upset anyone's opinions, are simply that.

I write very different music on a real analog synth that I do on a computer screen with a MIDI controller. I can sit down in front of my Mac and call up a patch on a soft synth and start recording a part that I have written, and I find that I have to fiddle with it forever to try an get in in the pocket and sounding "alive". Same goes with compressor plug-in's - they sound fine but I never stop tweaking them because they don't sound fine. Same goes with synth parts from VSTi's, I fiddle, I tweak, I come back later in the mix and do it again. I get bored doing it, and wipe the part and do it again. Come mix time I EQ it, re-amp it, compress it, put it through any number of FX. I pan it, push it up, pull it down, and waste loads of time and become uninspired.

I then get up from the chair in front of the computer, to where the real synths are behind me. I take an ARP Odyssey, or a Prophet 5, run it's mono (how primative!) output through a Lexicon Prime Time delay, a Urei 1176 compressor and into the DI input of a Chandler Germainum preamp. hit record on Nuendo. Start playing. All I can say is that the ARP sounds huge, like it is in the room with me, it is punchy, inspiring, instantly responding to it's keyboard with no latency, it howls, bends, and sounds like Ultravox, and I love it and it is the best feeling you can have in an electronic music studio. I wouldn't give it up for ANYTHING. I don't care how many pieces of software you have, unless you have played an Odyssey loud through a great system, you haven't lived. It doesn't matter what the VSTi sounds like, you will NEVER play it like the real thing, hence my statement that I write different music on real synths than on software.

A Synth plug in is always late. Latency, no matter how fast your computer is, is horrible, especially on fast punchy lead lines. It is slow, disconnected and unpleasant. Once you have played an Oberheim SEM or a Minimoog with attack set to zero and a short decay time you will understand just how much computer latency sucks on every VSTi.

A VSTi sounds like it is coming out of the speakers. A real Prophet, Odyssey or CS-80 sounds like it is in the room with you. I know because I have the real machines. You notice when you actually start playing. When you are just comparing patches the VSTi can sound pretty good, it's when you put it into gear and start driving that you realise that there is a BIG difference. It's like the difference between a hi-def video compared to 70mm motion picture stock. It's like the difference between food from the oven and food from a microwave.

The only way to compare a Virtual to the real thing is to PLAY them both. Listening tests tell only a fraction of the story. The power of the real thing is in the playing, and the ease of making the sound sit in a mix. Soft synths are fine as soft synths, but when they try to be classic analogues, All I can say is that when I want to hear Pink Floyd, I put on a Pink Floyd album, I don't put on a recording of a Pink Floyd cover band.

[beatmad]

The first question to ask about the software revolution in music is this: If everyone now has access to the sound of every classic synth/EQ/compressor/reverb and symphonic orchestra on their home computer, along with pristine 24 bit digital recording with near unlimited track counts, dynamics on every channel, unlimited routing and access to software emulations of every classic FX processor ever made, then we should be hearing an amazing renaissance in the quality of music. We should be drowning in an over-choice of genre stretching, lush, beautifully recorded material, with glossy, perfectly clear vocals, flawless instrumentation, beautiful dynamics and perfect mixes.

This is so brilliantly put Steve. With everything at our disposal I think we often forget that music is an artform that takes years to master. I studied strict counterpoint for a while and at times it was exceedingly difficult. The knowledge you gain from that kind of study is something you'll never be able to download.

I get so sick of all the marketing crap that goes along with soft synths. It always seems so obvious that it's just about selling people dreams as there is rarely any in depth discussion about the differences between them and their hardware counterparts.

Great writing! you should publish this somewhere. I'm sure there are a lot of people who'd like to read it and plenty who wouldn't too. :)

[NYMo]

Hi there,

Steve... a fantastic insight..and one that should be told more often !

As a past owner of more than 100 hardware synths I fully understand the relationship between the physicality
of a synth and the musicality of playing them as opposed to the lifeless experience that are soft synths.

Dare I say it, a softsynth generally serves as a *one finger bandit* for musicians who can't possibly rip a fast solo on a Minimoog or any real synth instrument.

(Nymo dons flameproof suit ;-)

cheers
N
Y
M
O

[ChrisW]

I'm flicking through the pre-sets on my new Omnisphere as I read this.
Nice sounds.

[Thirteen]

I'm flicking through the pre-sets on my new Omnisphere as I read this.
Nice sounds.

Spectrasonics are definitely up at the top end of the market when it comes to sample instruments, nice to see Stylus RMX being still being upgraded even this long after it's release, and a major upgrade for free with Time Designer.

[ChrisW]

Agreed.
I do enjoy using my hardware synths more. But no doubt you can do things with Omnisphere it would be very hard to do with a hardware synth...... unless you had a room full and a whole day to program a single sound.

[Sheer Noise]

I second that!!!!!! "KSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHT" - That was the sound of a thousand fisherman opening a thousand cans of worms at once.

Sounds more like a big 80s gated snare with a little too much in the high mids for mine. :P

Dave

[innerclock]

Hi Steve - Beatmad pointed me to your soft/hard article - well stated on all counts I must say - as a response and support - here is a lift from my website I wrote a while back:-

"We have all seen Ray Charles in The Blues Brothers Movie ripping it up on a beat up old Fender Rhodes and marveled at Stevie Wonder’s Arp Odyssey freestyle bass lines over countless albums throughout the 1970s. There was a time when keyboards begged to be played – once your fingers hit the keys you couldn’t leave them alone. I spent countless hours in music shops as a kid messing with Minimoogs and Arps and Oberheims – they were all way out of my price range by a million miles but I wanted them all so badly because of how playing them made me feel. Keyboards were the stuff of dreams and visions. This passion for an electronic instrument is something I feel we have lost mostly in the digital age. I don’t see the same level of player enthusiasm for keyboards or synthesizers in people generally. Not like there used to be anyway. You can call it nostalgia for retro gear or vintage sounds and memories of past experiences but I feel it is something far deeper than that.

I had a friend over the other day – he is a first rate keyboard player – he gigged as a young man using EP-200s and D6 Clavinets. He sold these in the late 80’s like most people and bought midi modules and controllers and later moved into software. I have an old 1976 Roland System 101 analogue keyboard in the studio and he asked if I minded if he had a play. No problem. Four hours later I had to pull the plug so he would go home and let me go to bed. With all his midi gear and softsynths he admitted to feeling mostly uninspired as a player to really play like he used to with same passion as he remembered and yet on this night he could not leave this beat up old monosynth alone and in his playing you could feel the passion and the pleasure coming from the monitors themselves.

Music as it should be.

We discussed the experience at great length the next day and we both concluded that the sole reason behind this renewed enthusiasm and unforced creative expression came from the simple fact that the key-to-note response time is mostly instantaneous in a lot of vintage gear. Arps, Moogs, Rolands, Oberheims – when you press a key the note sounds in microseconds and when your fingers come off the key the note ends just as fast. His natural desire to keep playing had nothing to do with the sounds of the synth or retro nostalgia – he was unaware that he was playing for nearly four hours. This instant keyboard response time is like fingers on guitar strings or hands on a conga skin – feel takes over and expression just happens. He compared the mono-synth response to that of his old D6 Clavinet and anyone who has ever played a real one will know that they almost spit at you when you hit the keys, the response time is that fast. I asked him about Clavinet patches in his midi modules and software emulations. His answer was simple – they sound authentic but the slow response time changes the way you interact with the keys and consequently the expression and feel is much poorer and he finds himself less inspired to actually play.

This is most peoples experience with computer latency and softsynths where response time is never much better than 7ms even on a very good system. I watch people play everyday on these systems and I never see that same level of passion or expression. What I see is playing with no real feel with the knowledge that it will be quantized after the recording anyway. Where is the expression in that? Where is the passion for and connection to an instrument? More disturbing perhaps is that this disapointing experience is broadly accepted as the way things are and should be graciously accepted. And it’s not all about software and computers either. Plenty of modern hardware ‘virtual’ and DSP based instruments suffer from key to note latency also. They sound good but do they begged to be played? Do they keep you awake at night because you can’t leave them alone? The answer is mostly no they do not.

Most/all music taught in schools now is software/controller/PC based. Does this mean we are fostering and indeed encouraging an entire generation that will have no experience of feeling instant key to sound in their playing? What does this mean for feel and expression in playing and composition for the future?

If the significance of this experience is lost on those of us that understand how fundamentally different it feels using these vintage instruments with instant response times, what then is the logical conclusion to this trend when all that remains are new generations of electronic musicians who only know software emulations and visit museum displays to look at the heritage behind glass?"

http://web.webhost4life.com/innerclock/ ... ge&name=36

Best - David

[Thirteen]

Absolutely. Latency and delays suck. I feel sorry for singers who have to try and sing while listening to their own voice late in a pair of headphones. Milliseconds count here, no matter what anybody tries to tell you. Same goes for drummers and percussionists.

I really want to do an experiment to measure 3 critical values: To see how long an average key press takes. From when the key starts moving to where electrical contact is made, and from when the key starts moving to where it hits the back stop, which is the tactile point where the musician subconsciously fees that contact is made and the note is "struck", and the time from electrical contact until the key hits the backstop. This last one will be the main one I think, because I believe that the musician feels that the note is struck when the key bottoms out, so the time from electrical contact to the time that the key hits the stop is delay 1. On a Pratt-Reid keyboard as used on ARP's, Prophets, Minimoogs and so on, this delay would be very small.

The next delay is processing delays. On an Odyssey or a Minimoog they would be infintessimal. On a Prophet or a Jupiter 8 they would be longer as the keyboard is scanned by computer. On a plug- in They would be glacial by comparison. Since Dave is the master of figuring out processing delays, I would like to put a probe on a key contact and a sensor on the backstop and a 3rd on the synth output, and measure the actual time for the whole process on an Odyssey and a Prophet.

[innerclock]

Hi Steve - you are so on the case - I started doing some response testing late last year but got bogged down in other things - piezo pickups taped to key assembly on the very top of the key and one at the bottom of the travel and these into trigger amplifiers and then into Soundforge - Compare these to the Audio Output to measure key strike to sound response times.......

As you can imagine - SH-101, System 100 etc - within 1 sample at 44.1kHz - Weighted Key Midi Devices - 40 samples and over, Softsynths over good ASIO - 400 samples plus..... as far as feel goes you may as well play with boxing gloves on.....

Make of those numbers what you will but I firmly believe player emotional response and performance quality is directly proportional to an instruments key-sound response time.

I'm not going to publish new gear figures though - I nearly ended up in a body bag over the Elektron timing debate....:)

D.

[tweakeasy]

I second that!!!!!! "KSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHT" - That was the sound of a thousand fisherman opening a thousand cans of worms at once.

Sounds more like a big 80s gated snare with a little too much in the high mids for mine. :P

Dave

Very insightful of you! The shorter version (kssht) is indeed a 909 snare! I'm impressed... and a little intimidated at how you knew that. :(

[rachelp]

How about we have a shootout of the Roland Jupiter 8 12bit vs 14bit DAC? ;) Which one is fatter?!


Why do many musicians say the Jupiter 6 is a weak sounding synth?
I have heard many people say they were disappointed by the JP6.
I have a feeling it is because they do not understand how to mix the oscillators.

It is very easy to get phase issues on some synths and the JP6 seems especially
good at letting you line 2 oscs up just so they are cancelling one another out, right
in the same band as getting a rich warm tone. I also note the same thing with the System 100
when in Hard Sync mode - the phasing is such that the 2 osc's only allow a limited range of
warm tones when driven in this mode. Driving them apart as independant oscillators
certainly gives a much bigger and hotter sound. So I think some "warmth" issues with
many synths is down to this effect. If you look at the SH-101, it is a very simple synth but
it has a lot of "sweet spots" where it is hard not to get a good sound. Roland looked
at this synth very carefully and designed it to be idiot-proof.

(edit) I forgot to add the point I was leading to - is that the Juno series are single oscillator, multi waveform synths.
The waveforms that you can layer in lieu of more oscillators seem to be a good combo that blocks out the phase
issues. The Juno's share the same sort of paradigm as the SH-101 and I think (may be wrong) share very similar components.
So for some reason it is also hard to get a bad sound on the Juno's. I Think arguments DCO vs VCO are a bit naff. The DCO is
just an analogue osc with a digital clock, if I understand correctly. The waveforms will be regular, but still prone to analogue variation.

In the end, everyone who owns a Juno <insert> will run it with chorus on - us Jupiter users, we have 2 oscillators so we don't need no steenking chorus ;)


rachel

[Futureman]

.... we have 2 oscillators so we don't need no steenking chorus ...

hehe.. The roland chorus is pretty good.. guitarists have been buying up CE-1 pedals for ages for that exact reason.

And don't forget the Jup4... single oscillator on that one + Chorus.

I've got a few vintage samplers, I'll be fine sampling a know WAV into them and playing em back and uploading the result.. That is if people are interested.
(S700,S950, Prophet2002, Emulator1,Emulator2, Mirage)

[tweakeasy]

In the end, everyone who owns a Juno <insert> will run it with chorus on - us Jupiter users, we have 2 oscillators so we don't need no steenking chorus ;)

Being a peasant chorus on will do me fine. ;)

[rachelp]

I was just trying to be funny.... ;) I have the SBF-325 and SDD-330 to warm up the JP-6 and so on. How the chorus works is really integral
to the sound - the VP-330 doesn't sound half as good without ensemble turned on. THe VP has a vey lush sound that is hard to describe,
but to me it's "etheral". THE SDD-330 does the same thing but even smoother. And then you get that amazing lush sound of the polysix....



rachel

[tweakeasy]

the VP-330 doesn't sound half as good without ensemble turned on. THe VP has a vey lush sound that is hard to describe,
but to me it's "etheral". THE SDD-330 does the same thing but even smoother. And then you get that amazing lush sound of the polysix....

You have a VP-330... I hate (read envy) you... :(

[NYMo]

Hi there,

Futureman...the only one on your list I haven't had is the 2002 and I ALWAYS wanted one of them !

Do miss my E 11 though (gotta a thing for blue synths ;-)

Cheers
N
Y
M
O

[rachelp]

You have a VP-330... I hate (read envy) you... :(

It is very much a one trick pony, but it is a good trick.

It is a player's synth - there is a knack to making it sound good because of the envelope
strategy, otherwise your blissful scene is marred by cuttoff decays and jarring chords!
I don't even use the vocoder much though - I love the syn-vox and string lushness.


rachel