Of the four Roland emulations that have Circuit Mod (so far), I think the Jupiter-4 and 8 really benefit from it a lot, and have to admit the JP-8 was lacking a big chunk of character without it (the original "Condition" parameter doesn't do anything useful…a swing and a miss, IMO). I now dial at least a little bit of Circuit Mod into every JP-8 patch, and have updated all my previous ones to use it too.Softube bakes in voice variations in their emulations and Roland didn’t add their take on this until their V2 revision. Before Roland added this it may have sounded "too perfect" depending on your tastes.
As for the Juno-60 and 106, I think the original emulations were already excellent, and Circuit Mod, while nice to have, is not such an essential part of the sound. The (actual hardware) Juno synths — with all their circuitry integrated into voice cards instead of discrete components — don't have the same level of analog instability as the Jupiter 4 and 8. Circuit Mod lets you dial in per-voice variations that far exceed what you'd ever experience on the real Junos. It can be pretty nice though, especially when used subtly.
I think at least part of the negative opinions of Roland's plugins stems from (justifiable) resentment of the poorly conceived Roland Cloud service, and the fact that you're stuck using it for authorization even if you're willing to buy their overpriced "lifetime" keys. I really like their plugins, but I don't feel I'm getting any real ongoing value from paying $20/month for Roland Cloud, and wish they would just sell me a bundle. For that reason, I can only recommend their plugins with an asterisk, and often steer people toward Softube, Arturia, and TAL instead.
Statistics: Posted by Arashi — Mon Apr 15, 2024 12:48 am
