This video, via Autodafe, offers a first look at JADE, a new Roland JD-990 software emulator developed by The Usual Suspects.
The video covers a quick overview of the project, how to get access to the current alpha, and a preview of the sound.
Here’s a set of demo songs played back through JADE:
Official details for JADE are to come.
This is brilliant and works beautifully even in this early Alpha 🙂
Absolutely love Usual Suspects work and as always it is free again…
aren’t the pcms copyrighted?
My thoughts exactly. Roland will flag it sooner or later.
No they will NOT.
Roland never “flagged” their absolute ROMS as copy right.
It is and always was freely available directly from Roland website for anyone to use.
Making a firmware or ROM available for download is not the same as granting unrestricted rights to copy or redistribute it. Unless Roland explicitly licensed the ROMs for that purpose, they’re still protected by copyright, and Roland’s own software license states that the software remains Roland’s copyrighted property with restrictions on copying and distribution.
TUS aren’t distributing the actual ROMs themselves.
There’s your legal loophole.
PCMs would be the samples on those ROMs and expansion cards made by Roland. Which surely are copyrighted.
A pleasant surprise.
Hell yeah!
Ho yeahhhh !!!!
I don’t see myself buying a used hardware synth to legitimize using the firmware for a software version. Duh, sort of. The whole idea has a big legal crack through the middle. I’m impressed by the engineering, but there are numerous better ways to land a quality synth.
Cherry Audio linked with Creative Technology (Ensoniq IP owners) to develop a potent ESQ-1 hybrid. If TUS ever goes that way, I’ll leap on a couple of their offerings.
Cherry Audio partnered with Creative on their ESQ-1? They ought to work with them to make a Proteus 2500, with the ability to load custom wave files into the oscillators, I’d buy that in a heartbeat.
You don’t need to buy hardware to use software LoL
Rubbish
You don’t need the hardware. The plugin emulates the hardware. Much the same way as you can run old 16bit console game ROMs in emulators. You do however need the OS and the ROMs that the original hardware used. These are readily available if you know where to look.
I owned one of these for years, had to sell it because of a move, and thought it would be trivial to replace the sound. Was I wrong, and I guess a lot of people agreed with me, as used hardware is now running for ridiculous prices – $1200. I paid a little over a couple of hundred new.
Like other discontinued hardware (and orphaned software) that TUS support, I think they and other people should have every right to reproduce the code in emulation running in totally different hardware given the reality of the situation when it comes to the original maker making money from the original invention.
Roland makes nothing from these crazy hardware prices, and they no longer make the original product, and copyrights are designed to reward creators, not second-hand salespeople.
I very much miss some of the sounds, & I’m very excited for this new release, and yes, I’ve checked out current Roland software offerings looking for the sounds I love, and they weren’t there (but a lot of other stuff was, lol, most of which I didn’t really like that much.)
i’ve always wanted one since they came out. a couple years back EBM act Wumpscut put his JD-990 on ebay for about 300€ iirc. I didn’t have enough space at the time but given today’s prices and the synth’s origin i still regret not getting a piece of music history.
The question is, will Roland allow this?
Why is everybody raving about the jd990? I had one and didndt like it.
Al those roland rompler synths la bla bla are the same
I’ve been sitting on one of these for years, trying to decide if I should sell or keep — now Jade comes along and may make the decision easier, but how in the heck am I supposed to get the ROM out of this thing?
Roland would not have any claim for cease and desisting this, as long as the developers follow the precedent of not redistributing Roland’s copyrighted code.
Just for the record, I’m all for Roland designs in general. I had 3 different hardware Junos and scads of their effects, both as Roland and Boss. I play the Cloud D-50, which has a ton of Roland’s best in it.
As an E-mu lover, I’d be happy to see the basic framework as software. Their various Proteii are damned good, with a mod matrix system that was several decades ahead of the pack. I still use a lot of their sounds. The B-3 and orchestral material are mostly outclassed now, but the techno side is still useful fun. Above all, the percussion is killer.
Hopefully at some point Roland et al will get on board and ‘sell’ the ROMS for use with emulators for people who want to use this legitimately. Roland are however selling these type of sounds (possibly made from the original wave ROMS) as part of Zenology/Roland Cloud…so maybe not…