Have Your Korg & Roland Too: JP-BOOO Super-Saw Oscillator for Korg’s Multi-Engine Synths

Roland have this funny tendency to stumble into developing things that end up being legendary. Their TB-303, TR-808 and TR-909 models of the ’80s get spoken about a lot, but another one that’s become more recognized in the last few years is the 1997 JP-8000 synth — more specifically, its signature Super-Saw oscillator. Now, thanks to Edouard Digital, you can now have that Roland sound in your Korg Minilogue XD, Prologue or NTS-1.

The Super-Saw oscillator was basically 7 digital sawtooth oscillators stacked, with a slider control over Detune and Mix. The result was a harmonically rich, lively signal that could sound absolutely monstrous and became the go-to sound for Trance music producers in particular. Fast forward to 2020 and many synths and software manufacturers have added a super-saw type oscillator to their synth products, but many maintain the original is unmatched. Edouard Digital took to the task of recreating it for the Korg Multi-Engine platform with an impressive level of attention to detail.

It is not possible to sound anything close to the Super Saw oscillator with a sawtooth wavetable, as emulations mostly do, because doing so is band-limited and lacks the aliasing that creates on the original this very bright and airy tone thanks to a lot of additional high frequencies. JP‑BOOO takes this into account.

The aliasing, because it creates both high and low frequencies, is selectively limited on the original oscillator by applying a high-pass filter that dynamically filters out frequencies below the fundamental harmonic frequency, leaving the welcomed high-frequency aliasing content intact. This filter generates a very distinct smooth waveshape that doesn’t look like a linear sawtooth anymore. JP‑BOOO takes this into account.

Roland were so oblivious to what they had in the Super-Saw that it wasn’t even mentioned in the official promo!

There is much more detail on the Edouard Digital website here, safe to say that running an accurate JP-8000 super-saw recreation through the analogue filters on a Minilogue XD or Prologue is an exciting prospect! Unfortunately for us, the demos are all in French at this point, but the below video has some great sounds at the 10:30min mark.

The JP-B000 custom oscillator is available to purchase now – edouard.digital/jp-booo/