monophreak EMMY1OH1 Software Editor for the Roland EM-101 Preset Desktop Synthesizer

via Monophreak

"With the right firmware mod (that’s right – no mysterious hacky soldered in dials) for old board Roland EM-101 machines, the EM-101 is no longer a preset machine. Often billed as a cutdown Juno 106 restricted to just 24 presets, this box previously had some interesting uses but didn’t really deliver as an anlogue beast in my arsenal. It was too restricted. Until now. Due to the amazing work by Ryan (Plutoniq), the EM-101 has been give a new lease of life and transformed into a strong addition to my music making and since the parameters can now be controlled over midi CC, I have written an editor to load in presets from the Juno 106 and MKS-7, extended to a new Roland EM-101 format with naming and created a preset saving system and librarian for patch recall. It’s not a Juno 106 but it is a very nice sounding a machine with it’s own character sharing a lot of parallels. If I have understood correctly (there could be inaccuracies!), it has a M5232RS tone generator chip with 36 (I think) waveforms that are beautifully shaped by Roland analogue fitters. A good example is the IR3109 VCF filter, found in a the Jupiter 8 or M5241L VCA found in the MKS-70. If you look at the chip list, there are lots of shared electronics that overlap between Junos, Juipter and other quality Roland gear of it’s time, giving it character. Notably, the MN3009 and MN3101 chorus chips shared by the Juno 106 chorus. It has interesting analogue effects on board but the chorus particularly shines due to the much greater CC control (as you can see from the screenshot). That chorus is gorgous, adds that analogue sheen and processing. I spent last night building up a preset bank for the EM-101 to release with the editor (and check bank functionality) and got lost inside this little beauty."

If you forget the EM-101 you can find some pics and demos in previous posts.

This one is in via monophreak in the comments of this post and this post.