Tal U No Lx

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  • You can get TAL-U-NO-LX here at the App Storecan get loads of FREE Patch Banks here at the TAL soft.
  • TAL-U-NO-LX is a beefed up variation on TAL's excellent freebie. It's bigger, using up a lot more screen real estate and thus making it much easier to tweak, especially on the fly. More importantly, though, the code has been reworked from the ground up and makes use of a zero-feedback delay filter design that makes this new version sound a lot.
  • The TAL-U-No-LX is a software emulation of Roland’s popular Juno-60 hardware synth. In contrast to the hardware unit it further comes with some extra features, including portamento, additional filter LFO waveforms, and more. As I’m writing this review the plugin can be purchased for $59.49 via pluginboutique.com.
  • Description: Togu Audio Line – TAL-U-NO-LX – software emulation of the popular hardware synthesizer with a new sound engine and graphical interface. State-of-the-art zero-delay filters and carefully calibrated controllers make this synthesizer an excellent replacement for an analog device, and provides all the benefits of software.

TAL-U-NO-LX on the iPad

Let's celebrate the studio makeover with a couple of tracks played using two midi keyboard controllers (Roland A-49, Roland A-500PRO) and three emulated Rola.

TAL Software recently released an iOS version of their highly regarded Juno 60 emulation. I spoke with TAL Software founder and developer Patrick Kunz, based in Lucerne, Switzerland, to find out a little more about how he has perfected this emulation over the years.

The Roland Juno Series

The Roland Juno-6 and Juno-60

The Roland Juno series was used on many classic 80s songs and continues to be popular today as a warm analog alternative to digital sounds. For instance, Animal Collective said most of the distinctive arpeggio sequences were created using a Juno and the built-in arpeggiator on the 2009 release of Merriweather Post Pavilion. Pet Shop Boys, The Cure, Madonna, Eurythmics, A Flock of Seagulls, A-ha, Mac Demarco, Alt-j, and Tame Impala are a few artists that have used a Roland Juno across several decades.

The Juno series began with the 6-voice polyphonic Juno-6 was released in 1982 and followed up by the Juno-60 a few months later. The Juno-60 featured patch memory for 56 sounds. The last in the series was the Juno-106 released in 1984 with more presets, and MIDI. See links at the end of this article for more history on the Juno.

Tal Software

See what Patrick has to say about Tal and the TAL-U-NO-LX iPad app.

TAL stands for Togu Audio Line. Does that name have a special meaning or a story?

Tal U No Lx Vs Arturia

Togu was a fun company name a friend and I used for our hobby music projects more than twenty years ago. I just added “Audio Line” when I started to make my first VST plug-ins back in the year 2000. Today most people just call us T.A.L.

What do you like most about the Juno-60?

I like the sound, the simplicity and it’s 80’s look.

The sound of the filter has it’s own character and is not clean and perfect like a Moog filter.

Can you talk about the lineage of the Juno 6, 60 and 106 lines?

I only owned a Juno 60 and a friend had a Juno 106. I especially like the filter sound. The sound of the filter has it’s own character and is not clean and perfect like a Moog filter. Also, the chorus is a great feature.

Tal U No Lx Vst

When was the first version of the desktop version of TAL-U-NO-LX released?

In the year 2012. It was our first commercial plug-in. The first free plug-in we released was MultiFilter around the year 2002.

TAL-U-NO-LX has been around a while, anything you can say about how your emulation has evolved over those years, why it is so great?

We made a lot of bug fixes and minor improvements. The sound did not change much. Our last addition was MPE support.

How did you perfect the emulation?

Having the filter was the first step. Most of the time I spent with listening tests, spectrum and waveform analysis and tuning. I compared it with our hardware Juno-60. Especially with extreme filter settings and self-oscillation.

What were the big changes with V2

The V2 changed the filter sound a little bit. We added more nonlinear elements to the filter. So I decided to make a V2 version back then. Today I wouldn’t make another version for such a minor sound change.

TAL-U-NO-LX Oscilator Section

What makes the TAL-Chorus-LX or the Juno-60 chorus so special?

I think the biggest advantage is, that the chorus has only two settings that just work.

Tal U No Lx

What is the difference between mode I and mode II?

The modulation rate is different.

From Doug Woods review, it seems easy on the CPU. Was that hard to achieve?

There is always a quality to CPU usage compromise in DSP. Especially when using nonlinear components that introduce distortion. More powerful CPUs have helped us. Back in 2012, it was heavier on CPU usage, but today computers are much faster.

What were some of the challenges creating the AUv3 version?

One challenge was the iOS file system and sandboxing, but the main challenge, we are still working on, is the usability. It’s hard to port a mouse-controlled plug-in to the touch screen world.

How many voices does the iPad version of TAL-U-NO-LX support?

The iPad version has 12 Voices.

Are there any differences in functionality between the iPad and desktop versions?

There are some differences in how the preset handling works. Otherwise, we tried to support all desktop features.

Tal U No Lx Sweeping

SFC-60 Controller V2

Did you work with SoundForce on the SFC-60 controller for TAL-U-NO-LX?

Yes, we have contact from time to time. We added a few features for this controller. I also own the latest version of the SFC-60.

Is there a manual for the iPad version of TAL-U-NO-LX?

No, there is only a manual for the desktop version because the plug-in is identical.

TAL-U-NO-LX Controls Section

Are there any interesting ways to program or perform with TAL-U-NO-LX that may not be obvious at first?

I like especially the self-oscillation. For this, you can disable all DCO’s put RES and KEYB to the max. Now you have a wonderful sine wave with slight distortion to play.

Do you have plans to bring any of your other emulations to the iPad?

We will see. It depends on how the feedback is for our first release on iOS.

Does the LX stand for 60 in roman numerals? Anything about the clever naming of TAL-U-NO-LX?

Yes, those are the roman numerals for 60. We just didn’t want to have trouble with Roland who created the original hardware. There was a case where a company had to rename their plugins because of this.

What language(s) do you use in your emulations?

It’s normal C++ and some Objective C for OS X.

Was your background in DSP before starting TAL?

I learned some basics when I studied software engineering and IT. After that I learned the most things by myself, reading books and with google.

How did you get started creating plugins and effects?

I just downloaded Steinberg’s vst2.4 SDK and started with a wave-shaper and volume plug-in. It just had to be noisy. This was my main goal back then. Other plug-ins sounded to clean in my ears compared to analog hardware.

Your desktop plug-ins work on all 3 platforms?

Yes, the desktop license is valid for all three platforms. Our first releases were windows only, but we received a lot of requests for OS X support. We added OS X and our latest addition is Linux and iOS. Cross-platform became very important for us since people tend to own different operating systems.

The most important thing is to stay in touch with the community and users and listen to them.

What aspects of this experience have been most rewarding?

You always learn new things. The most important thing is to stay in touch with the community and users and listen to them.

How can your customers help you?

Please report bugs, annoying things and crashes to our support. Only this way we can improve things.

Links

Tal Software

The first part of this video from Reverb.com demonstrates the beauty of the Juno sound

Nice history of the Roland Juno series by Perfect Circuit

Dedicated hardware MIDI controller for TAL-U-NO-LX

Reverb Machine recreates a few Tame Impala songs using TAL-U-NO-LX

Tal-u-no-lx Serial Number

Roland’s own chronological list of their synths

Roland interview with the developers of the Juno series

Conclusion

My motivation for Synth Talk is to highlight the thought, effort, and philosophy that goes into designing a product.

There will be more articles to come highlighting the person and the process behind the products we love. Check back here or subscribe to the newsletter if you would like to hear more Synth Talk.

If you have suggestions or topics you want covered pleasecontact me. 🙂

The TAL-U-No-LX is a software emulation of Roland’s popular Juno-60 hardware synth. In contrast to the hardware unit it further comes with some extra features, including portamento, additional filter LFO waveforms, and more. As I’m writing this review the plugin can be purchased for $59.49 via pluginboutique.com*. It’s available for Windows, macOS & Linux.

Also read: The Best Vaporwave Sample Packs 2021

My First Impression

Togu Audio Line Tal-u-no-lx

My first impression of the TAL-U-No-LX was quite good. Everything looks clean and is labeled properly, so I downloaded the demo version and opened it up inside Ableton Live. I played around with it for a while and noticed that you can reset all parameters by double-click and the GUI can be resized seamlessly. All knobs work fine and if you have a basic understanding of synthesis it’s quite intuitive to use. Time to dive in a bit deeper..

The Plugin in Detail

The U-No-LX can basically be divided into 4 main sections. At the top you’ll find the presets menu. Below is the main section with all the oscillators, filters, ADSR and the infamous chorus. Next up you’ll find controls for LFOs, portamento & an arp. The last part is the keyboard, which is located at the bottom.

Preset Menu

The preset menu is straightforward and intuitive to use. The demo version (and I guess also the paid one) comes with 4 banks, which are all filled with plenty of arps, basses, leads and everything else you could possibly need. You’ll also get the common options to save & load presets, to show the presets folder and some additional stuff.

The Main Section

If you haven’t used an “analog” synth yet, the U-No-LX might look a bit complicated to you at first, because you won’t find terms like “oscillator” or “filter” anywhere. The oscillator section for example is labeled with “DCO”. However, once you played around with everything for a while (assumed you have a basic sound design understanding) you should figure out where everything is located.

The synth comes with 3 oscillators, including a square, a saw and a sub, plus extra noise. You can change the pulse’s width + modulate it using the LFO or envelope. The entire synth’s pitch can also be modulated using the LFO. Next up there is a simple high-pass filter and a low-pass filter, you can modulate using envelope, LFO and key.

Certainly there’s also an ADSR section, which can be bypassed and on the right side you’ll find the chorus, which comes with 2 algorithms you can use at the same time. This section alone should be enough to create most of the basic “analog” sounds you can hear in so many tracks.

Modulation, Additional Settings & Arp

Tal-u-no-lx Vst Torrent

Although the synth is already quite powerful by now, the guys from TAL made sure to add a bunch of additional features to it, starting with a huge display at the left side, a drop-down menu to transpose the entire synth’s key and a panic knob, which stops the output signal immediately. You can further fine-tune the LFO, make use of portamento and control the pitch wheel’s and velocity’s effects on the sound. At the right side you’ll find an arpeggiator, which comes with a useful hold function, 3 different modes and a range of up to 3 octaves. Like with most arps, the tempo can be set in Hz or synced with your host.

Keyboard

The last section includes the keys, pitch wheel, a knob to transpose the octave up or down, a global volume fader and last, but not least a fader to control the overall master tune.

So how does it sound?

Tal U No Lx

Since the TAL-U-No-LX doesn’t come with any effects built in, that could potentially muddy up the sound (except the chorus), most of the patches sound really clean. The plugin comes with everything you need to create the classic hardware synth sounds we know from the past, so if you’re into Synthwave, Vaporwave or modern pop music you should definitely consider giving it a try. In addition to the warm sound, it’s a great tool to learn analog synthesis and even if you don’t want to make your own sounds it already comes with a big selection of presets. Since TAL is offering a free demo version on their website you can check out the synth by yourself and form your own opinion as well 🙂