Every now and then I get the opportunity to be involved in the release of a new softsynth, and it’s always a fun experience.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Patrick at Togu Audio Line as he wanted to tell me about a new synth he was releasing: a brand new emulation of Roland’s Alpha Juno, inspired by their own MKS 50 synth module (a rack version of the Alpha Juno). It’s not a synth I know very much about. My knowledge of Junos is limited to the 6, 60 and 106 (the latter I have in my studio).

But I’m a big fan of TAL’s previous releases. Their existing emulations of Roland’s Juno 60, Jupiter 8 and SH-101 are really great, as is their TAL-Sampler. So I was very keen to check out this new emulation.

I was very quickly making patches with it; far more than the amount Patrick had asked for as factory patches. TAL-Pha, and the Alpha Juno synths it’s based on, has some very interesting little quirks. It has much in parallel with the rest of the Juno line. There are two oscillators, plus a sub and a noise oscillator; there’s a nice Roland filter; LFO and envelope modulation; a lush chorus effect; a rich unison mode; a nice, basic arpeggiator.

TAL have added the same nice reverb and delay effects that have already appeared on  U-NO-LX 2 and J-8.

Where the Alpha Juno and, by association, TAL-Pha veers away from the traditional Juno line is with the oscillators and the envelopes. On the face of it you have a saw and a pulse oscillator, so far, same deal. But… wait a moment. Both oscillators have a number different “wave states”. The saw has five selectable waves, which gradually add more harmonics to the original plain saw. The pulse has four; two add harmonics, one has PWM (with separate mod controls) and… a saw wave state. Yes.

Now, a PWM pulse wave is nothing surprising, we’ve seen them all before. But have you seen a PWM saw wave before?! No, me neither! That’s where the Alpha Juno throws something new into the arena. You can really create some extraordinarily rich tones with those two osicllators. And that’s before we even get to oscillator sync!

Another interesting feature of the Alpha Juno is the envelope. Instead of having the traditional four ADSR stages, it has seven stages. As well as controlling the shape of the envelope, you can now control the levels of each point in the shape, creating a more detailed and creative envelope. This is especially fun and useful for controlling the filter with more fluid movement.

Oh, and it has a chord memory feature as well, which is nice.

As I say, I made a large amount of patches with it, testing and exploring its features and controls. I quickly realised that I was going to have a complete soundset to release at the same time the synth was released.

On the whole Omnia is, by and large, a cinematic collection of sounds, fuelled by TAL-Pha’s analogue-modelling synth engine. I’ve looked for ways the synth would naturally fit into contemporary film, TV and game scoring. However, the Alpha Juno’s natural home, in the world of techno and house music, has also crept into this soundset. It’s a cinematic view of techno, the electronic sound of Kiasmos, Rival Consoles and Max Cooper.

Because it’s a new synth, I’ve organised with Togu Audio Line to make sure there’s an extra discount on TAL-Pha for my customers that buy a copy of TAL-Pha Omnia.

I hope you’ll enjoy this new synth and my sounds for it.