The art
of sound design
Different Waze
Dave Polich
I wanted to create these classic vintage synth sounds from the beginning. Once I got the beta version of Jup-8 V I knew I could do it. It’s as much a question of authentic oscillator sound and authentic filters as it is anything else, when you’re doing these vintage synth recreations. Jup-8 V has that ‘authentic’ Jupiter sound, but not only that - the filters and envelopes behave exactly as they do on the real Jupiter-8. For the ‘Separate Ways’ preset (which I titled ‘Different Waze’) you need two sawtooth oscillators, each tuned to the same range, and detuned enough so that you get this glossy shimmering tone. Then you have to create a filter envelope that closes the cutoff frequency, similar to the way a piano’s filter envelope closes down, in time with the song’s tempo, and you have to tune the filter resonance so that it is ‘shiny’ and ‘juicy’ in the same way as the sound on the original record. The amplifier envelope has to have a high level of sustain, though, unlike a piano which only has decay, so you can play lead lines with the sound as well as comp chords. The opening synthesizer riff for the Journey song is the most memorable part of it, it instantly tells people what song it is, and therefore you need to mimic the envelopes exactly...which I was easily able to do with Jup-8 V.
Dave Polich - on Jup-8 V
The aspect of Jup-8 V that most surprised and excited me was the sound...first, it sounds vastly better than Arturia’s previous Jupiter emulations. Second, I think it is the best sounding Jupiter emulation currently available! I used a Jupiter-8 back in the ‘80s, and Jup-8 V sounds just like I remember - you never forget that sound.
To be honest, I wanted to recreate as many of the “famous” vintage Jupiter-8 sounds as I could. You know, most people would ask, ‘Can you play Duran Duran songs on the Jup-8 V?’ The answer is yes! I set out to program an arpeggio preset that would work for Duran Duran’s song ‘Rio’, which is probably their most well-known use of the synth, and I feel I nailed the sound for that. Another ‘famous’ Jupiter-8 vintage sound is the one Jonathan Cain of Journey had for the hit song ‘Separate Ways’. I was able to recreate that sound exactly on the Jup-8 V.
Babylonian Astronomy
Simon Gallifet
My goal is to create presets that can be used directly in a track - my creation process is mainly to recreate existing track sounds.
Simon Gallifet - on Jup-8 V
This Synth sounds cash from the word go!
The modeling is far superior to the previous version, totally new. The identity of this Synth, in my opinion, lies in the PW and the ‘cross mod’, both sound really fat. The developers have chosen not to add too many additional features which allows you to get straight to the point, no questions asked.
Sweet Cheek
Twolegs Toneworks
"My personal favorite is a relative simple brass chord sound, which besides a Rhodes piano is my favorite go-to sound for creating lush jazzy chords for my Deep House tracks. It has both the lush depth that is such a huge part of the deep sound but also the fullness when the filter is opened up."
Twolegs TONEWORKS - on Jup-8 V
There are several things about the Jup-8V that were a nice surprise to me. It's packed with all sorts of modulation possibilities and a very good sounding filter. Especially the modulation possibilities made it possible to create sounds that would've been otherwise impossible to create with the original hardware. What I particularly enjoyed about the synth was that it's oscillators can sound full and lush even before adding any chorus or other effects. It was a struggle to not just program pads exclusively as this is just something the Jup-8V completely owns.
My usual approach is to get a feel for what the synth can do. This involves a lot of just playing around. In this process I usually have a palette of standard signature sounds I usually make with every synth I work with, although they typically don't get included in my soundbanks. For factory libraries the sounds should usually show as much of the synth as possible - and then I focus on creating something new - something inspiring - for the coming users of the synth.
Down Not Out
Tom Hall
My personal favorite preset is ‘Down Not Out’. To be honest I was going for dark but as I pushed deeper into this preset I couldn’t believe the movement I was able to achieve - I particularly like the ebb and flow of the harmonics. There's actually not really any special back-end tweak to this preset, most of the movement is achieved through the modulation on the front panel, much like the original hardware.
Tom HALL - on Jup-8 V
The new Jup-8 V plugin from Arturia is incredibly versatile. Not only does it capture some of that classic warmth from the hardware as well as the grit, but the addition of the advanced controls and sequencer make this a very capable instrument for a large variety of music.
To be honest my approach to sound design is broad and often shaped by how I feel. On days I set out to produce something more subdued and ambient, other days more aggressive and percussive.