Introduction
SX1000 is a faithful emulation of the JEN SX1000, a vintage Italian synth released in 1978. The SX1000 was one of the earliest affordable analog synthesizers, designed for musicians seeking hands-on control without breaking the bank. Audiothing have carefully emulated the SX1000’s M110 chip, and also expanded its capabilities.
SX1000 is available for MAC, PC, and LINUX (VST, VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP, 64-bit only) from Audiothing’s website typically priced at 69 Euros. Activation can be done online or offline, note that Audiothing do not use iLok. It is also available as an AUv3 and standalone for iPhone / iPad on the app store.
Summary
Background
The JEN SX1000 Synthetone is an analog monophonic synthesizer introduced in 1978 by the Italian company JEN Elettronica S.r.l. It holds the distinction of being one of the first affordable synthesizers widely available in Europe, making analog synthesis accessible to a broader range of musicians during a time when such technology was often prohibitively expensive.
At its core it is a monophonic synth with a single oscillator capable of sawtooth, square and pulse waveforms, complemented by a noise generator with white and pink sources.
Overview
Audiothing have expanded the sonic possibilities by adding features like full polyphonic mode, a sub-oscillator (down to -3 octaves) and additional controls for legato modes. They’ve also integrated an arpeggiator borrowed from a vintage classic polysynth and enhanced the sonic possibilities with four effects featuring flexible routing.
The filter section features a 24dB/octave resonant low-pass filter, with a very distinct and organic sound and with classic self-oscillation. It includes basic modulation capabilities: an LFO for vibrato, tremolo, or filter modulation, expanded with additional waveforms and sync mode.
It also features two ADSR envelopes for controlling the volume and the filter.
GUI
The interface pays homage to the original in terms of the layout, a nice touch is using the same colour caps.
The top of the display has the menu bar with the presets as well as save, delete and randomise options. There’s also news / updates, a power button and hamburger menu giving access to a number of options including oversampling, preset copy/paste, enable notifications, swap mouse buttons, enable GUI acceleration, graphics controls, window size, registration, online manual and version information.
The VCO controls are in the top left, there are tune, octave (pitch range in octaves – 32′, 16′, 8′, 4′), vibrato, waveform (saw, square, pulse), pulse width modulation, glide and level controls.
In the middle you have the LFO and to the right there are the VCF controls with frequency (cut-off), resonance, LFO (depth of LFO modulation on the filter), env. Level (amount of envelope modulation on the filter) and attack, decay, sustain, release controls.
Below these are noise type (off, white, pink) and level and next to this the VCA section has output volume, attack, decay sustain and release controls for the synth.
Below these are the sub-oscillator octave (off, -1, -2, -3 octaves) and volume controls; velocity selection which controls the amount of volume and cut-off affected by velocity; keyboard section has controls for note priority (highest, lowest, or last played), bend range (pitch bend range 0 – 12), enable polyphonic mode, enables legato playing and enable glide only when playing legato; Extra section has controls for LFO waveform (sine, triangle, square, saw up, saw down, sample & hold), saw shape (saw wave shape), key tracking (controls how much the filter cutoff follows the keyboard pitch) and enable noise generator based on the MM5837 chip.
Tabs toward the bottom of the screen allow you to access the keyboard, arpeggiator and effects. The arpeggiator has controls for mode (Up, Up & Down, Down, Random), bar reset (every 1, 2, or 4 bars), range (1–4 octaves), rate, velocity (whether each note’s velocity is used individually or taken from the last), note order (sequence or pitch), enable chord arpeggiation (requires Polyphonic mode to be active), hold and an/off control.
SX1000 has 4 in-built effects – Tape Echo, Spring Reverb, Wave Folder and Flanger. These can be turned on and off individually and can be rearranged in any order.
In Use
A great way to get an idea of the sort of sounds it can produce is to listen to the presets. These are arranged in 3 banks: Basses, FX, Keys, Leads, Pads, Sequences.
SX1000 has an impressive range of sounds. For example the basses include plucky, wub-like to great sounding acid-type sounds; FXs include sweeps, sci-fi, bleepy, bloopy; Keys include stabs, organs, electric pianos, chiptune type sounds; There are great string sounds and excellent variety of sequences.
It’s also very easy to dial in your own sounds and the randomise function is an excellent way to get a starting point to work from or you may be lucky and get a sound you like straight away.
I’ve used SX1000 to create the demo song embedded at the top of the post. I’ve used multiple instances of SX1000 with no external effects to highlight some of the sounds it can produce. I’ve also used SR-88 for the drumbeat and a processed spoken recording.
