TAL-J-8: Roland’s Jupiter-8 captured in a new emulation
We all love the Jupiter-8 and TAL Software has released a new emulation of the classic synthesizer for your consideration.
TAL-J-8
Moments after getting lots of attention for their TAL-U-No-LX collaboration with Soundforce and the SFC-60 V3 controller, TAL Software drops another big emulation on us. It’s a Jupiter-8 in all its authentic glory. But can the TAL-J-8 compete with the likes of the newly updated Jup-8 V4 from Arturia or the plug-in and ZenCore versions from Roland themselves? I think you can probably spin yourself in circles with those sorts of debates.
What we do have is a software emulation based on their own hardware Jupiter-8 with everything modelled and calibrated to precisely match the machine in front of them. And that’s another point to make is that Patrick Kunz from TAL aims for authenticity and doesn’t embellish with too many additional bells and whistles except for perhaps the inclusion of MPE support. And the calibration section where you can tune the resonance and overdrive. There’s also a VCO based Unison mode with stereo spread option and a sull stereo signal path. So, you know, we all like a little bit of tweaking.
There are no video demos about at the moment, although I’m sure that will change, but you can download a demo version right now and try it for yourself. I have to say that the presets are excellent, immediately interesting and surprising. The creative use of panning and Upper/Lower splits is really nice. Even the rising noise that’s introduced into the audio in the demo version is pretty cool and could become a feature in its own right!
TAL-J-8 is available now as a 64-bit VST and AAX plugin for the fabulous discounted price of £59.66 which is a lot cheaper than the Arturia and Roland alternatives. Worth giving it a go I think.
More information
- TAL Software website.
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2 responses to “TAL-J-8: Roland’s Jupiter-8 captured in a new emulation”
An iOS version of this would be killer.
I’ve no idea how close to a real Jupiter 8 this is – and I’ve no plans to spend £10k to find out! – but as a virtual analog VST in its own right, it’s easy to use, has a pleasant scalable interface and sounds really good. 10 mins after downloading the demo, I was convinced & bought it. I do own 2 x Boutique JP08’s, so it’ll be interesting to compare. Might even make a YouTube video.
I hope TAL don’t come under any pressure from Roland to change the interface (as I guess Arturia might have been prior to moving to a less authentic pallet set some years back?).