The Roland JD-990 Editor of His Dreams (Open Source)

video upload by Marc Renton

"I finally built the Roland JD-990 editor of my dreams – and it's open source.

SoundDiver is dead, Patch Base never felt right, and the JD-990's front panel only lets you scratch the surface of what this 90s synth can really do. So I built my own editor: a native Mac app (made with JUCE) that puts every parameter at your fingertips – touchable envelopes, a full effects page, a library editor and a performance view for stacking up to 24 voices across multiple MIDI channels.

My philosophy: the editor is the source of truth. Your patches live on your computer – with version control and proper backups – instead of on a 30-year-old battery.

▶ Source code: https://github.com/andremotz/foton-jd990
There's no prebuilt download. Grab the code and let an AI agent like Claude Code, OpenCode or Codex build it for you – or adapt it for Windows, a VST plugin or even the JD-800. Pull requests welcome!

CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:19 Why I built my own JD-990 editor
1:07 The problem: only scratching the surface
1:33 Patches on a battery – backups matter
1:48 The editor as source of truth for patches
2:25 Build your own tools
2:53 Tour: the panel & JUCE UI
3:36 Effects tab
4:00 Parameter debug view
4:09 Library editor
4:31 Performance mode
5:12 Let's play – multi-part demo
5:46 Managing the 24 voices
6:32 Open source – build it with an AI agent
6:54 What about the JD-800?

#RolandJD990 #Synthesizer #OpenSource #SynthEditor #JUCE #VintageSynth"