I made the craziest thing and, inspired by Halogenix (damn him) I bought myself a Super 6, keyboard version. Now, I’m really a noob at synthesis and I want to instantly turn myself in to the nerd police, asking for forgiveness and a bit of compassion.
When I was in uni I owned a Juno 106. I later sold it due to the fact that it was gradually dieing by ageing (loads of repairs/services to keep it functional). Spectacular mistake. On that synth, I loved factory patch number 68. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_0KoCXnpcw&list=RD5_0KoCXnpcw&start_radio=1
Now, I really feel I did a lot of damage selling it. Could you please help me recreate the patch on my Super 6, so that I can feel right with myself again?
I think that should definitely be achievable on the S6 n u could get even closer on the S8. The Super Series PWM opens up some nice tonalities that don’t seem apparent at first with the standard waves.
What I would say is you need to make some super targeted adjustments to the HPF and also the resonance. The resonance on the S6 responds quite drastically to minute tweaks to the point that you can struggle to get a particular sound only for it to be there with a tiny nudge of the resonance amount. It’s weird, it’s like you unlock more cutoff spots with the resonance. I actually still don’t understand it on my S8 either. I think judicious use of envelope amount plus picking whether you use ENV 2 or ENV1 will help.
The final thing you might need if you really want to get close is a slightly dirty op-amp/transistor based EQ. A bunch of the EQ in those type of Juno sounds actually comes from the chorus imprint.
After mishearing a harmonic in the youtube example and attempting this initially as a 3-voice sound using the S6’s LFO 1 in HF Tracking mode, I must confess, I cheated I looked up the preset on Cherry Audio’s emulation of the Juno 106: DCO-106 and this is what that sound ‘looks’ like on their panel:
So it’s two voices: 8’ pulse width modulated waveform with a little bit of a square wave sub oscillator (at 16’ / an octave below). The LP filter is set quite low in its range (around 200 Hz) with a moderate filter envelope amount. The filter key tracking is set to around 50% and there’s Chorus on setting II. The rest needs everything that Peter @RB26FET suggests, as the only thing you can take away from this are the very basic foundations, everything else will require your ears to get something similar from the S6
The Juno patch “68 - Synth Pad” maybe somewhere around here!
Things to take note of:
The ‘sub’ in this case is DDS 1 set to a square wave at 16’. We can’t access both the sub mode on the S6 and the pulse width modulated wave as they’re both functions of DDS 2. Add to taste by rolling the MIX knob all the way clockwise, and then slowly moving it anti-clockwise till you reach the desired balance. Working initially with the MIX fully clockwise, you can pin point just the right amount of PWM to apply to DDS 2
The DDS Modulator > PW slider position and the DDS Modulation > PWM amount of modulation has a huge impact on the resulting timbre. My ears tell me it’s around what’s pictured above. Yours may differ!
I added a little more ‘bite’ to the sound by introducing a little filter modulation by DDS 2 itself via the VCF > DDS 2 slider. This increases the pulse width modulation effect when applied sparingly.
Both the VCF and VCA are modulated by ENV 2. This frees up ENV 1 to further modulate the curves of the DECAY and RELEASE phases of the ENV 2 if necessary. The release of ENV1 after the half way point on its own is very sensitive to small changes. By modulating ENV 2 with ENV 1 you can make the release and decay phases either more or less convex, affecting how rapidly the sound decays.
Starting around this point and using your ears should hopefully get you well on your way to recreating your favorite Juno sound!
(Edit: just noticed I forgot to turn the device on in the picture, but the Chorus would be active in position II! I used DDS 1 at 32’ and DDS 2 at 16’ when I was trying to emulate the youtube video, but the key is to keep them an octave apart!. PPS The VCA slider for LFO 1 is not part of the sound, but adding a little binaural sauce doesn’t hurt! )
Thanks guys, I’m definitely trying to recreate this sound.
I was a bit ashamed to answer the first comment as I’m really at a basic level and I wasn’t even sure I understood it fully. The best thing is actually to have a photo of a S6 in manual mode, already set to the desired settings, just like you did.
Also, reverse-engineering it through another plugin is totally fine: I had tried to pursue a similar path but I don’t have the cherry audio plugin, I have the TAL-U No LX, and I tried to find patch-recreations online with no luck (there’s a user who claims to have done a full bank A patch recreation but it’s actually different).
I case it’s helpful, there’s a free JavaScript Juno 106 manager that comes with the factory banks. You don’t need the synth to be able to see the settings. (There’s also a beta Mac version that doesn’t need Java.)
I looked up the preset on Cherry Audio’s emulation of the Juno 106: DCO-106 and this is what that sound ‘looks’ like on their panel:
