TAL J-8 is a realtime software synthesizer created and maintained by Togu Audio Line. It aims to be a faithful emulation of Roland's Jupiter 8 hardware synthesizer from the 1980's -- with a few extras to boot. It's a commercial VST2 - VST3 plugin available for the linux platform in 64-bit architecture. A demo version can be downloaded from the website (see link below) and it's only limitation is an added white noise signal every minute.
The TAL J-8 provides two synth engines (panels) nominated Lower and Upper. These can be stacked together using the "Dual" mode button, split at C4 using the "Split" mode button, or used independently using the "Whole" mode button. There are also Solo, Unison and two Poly modes available.
There are two oscillators (VCO 1 provides triangle, saw, pulse and square waveforms, VCO 2 provides sine, saw, pulse and noise waveforms), and each of these has range detuning settings. VCO 2 also has semi-tone and fine-tune adjustment capability. Cross-modulation and sync are provided, and VCO 2 can be used as an LFO.
The filter section has a low pass filter with 24dB/oct and 12dB/oct slopes, as well as a high pass filter. Of the two ADSR envelopes available in TAL J-8, either can be used for the filter, whereas the amplitude is hardwired to envelope 2. The filter depth is bipolar, as are the two ADSR envelopes and related Key Follow functions.
The TAL J-8 has a dedicated LFO which includes sine, saw, pulse and random waveshapes. LFO rate can be set from zero to 20 Hz. It includes a delay time setting, and has trigger and sync-to-host options. There is also a VCO Modulator section which allows to modulate VCO 1, VCO 2, Both or Cross-Modulate, by means of the (bipolar) LFO Mod depth slider or the Envelope 1 depth slider.
Unlike the original hardware synth, the TAL J-8 also includes a Panel with the following sections: Main, MPE, Unison and Calibration. These sections are dedicated to the current panel only (Upper or Lower). The Calibration area controls the overall sound of the filter, providing a timbre more reminiscent of the historic Juno-60. The VCO knob controls the brightness of the sound, and the Reso knob allows the filter to reach self-oscillation. The Env knob provides a slower envelope decay roll-off.
The TAL J-8 includes a dedicated arpeggiator for each Panel, each with four modes: Up, Down, Up and Down, Random. It has a range of up to four octaves.
The panel on the left side of the GUI controls overall aspects of the sound, except for the arpeggiator rate which is independent for each Layer. Portamento can be set to affect just the Upper Panel, and Auto provides legato portamento behavior. Both the Pitch and Mod Wheel controls can be adjusted in this section as well.
The TAL J-8 allows for microtuning, and full MIDI Learn capability is provided. An interesting addition called Service Control (SC, at the top of the GUI) allows to detune the pitch, cutoff, envelope and pan settings for each voice, in order to obtain an even more realistic analog-type sound to the synth.
TAL J-8 Manual at TAl-Software.com available HERE.
Some preset banks for TAL J-8 (free and commercial) are available HERE.