Cherry Audio’s Mercury-6 plugin emulates Roland’s “treasured polyphonic classic”
The virtual instrument expands on the Jupiter-6, just in time for its 40th birthday.
Image: Cherry Audio
Cherry Audio has released the Mercury-6 plugin, a virtual instrument that emulates and expands on Roland’s classic 1980’s Jupiter-6 analogue polyphonic synthesiser.
The synth emulation comes just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Jupiter-6, and Cherry Audio’s Mercury-6 celebrates all of the beloved features while bringing modern enhancements.
Cherry Audio has included velocity sensitivity, improved the split mode, and added a layer mode, which is capable of stacking two different sounds simultaneously with per-layer stereo panning, detuning, and sustain. There’s a panel control that lets users navigate between these layers and includes a utility function for exchanging settings between the lower and upper layers.
The polyphony has been extended to 16 notes, so it “won’t easily run out of voices”, and it’s loaded with over 500 presets. Take a look at the video below for more:
The Mercury-6 recreation has already earned a 10/10 from us at MusicTech. In our review, we said: “the Mercury-6 is an excellent tool for sound design and electronic music and notably for scoring too, capable not just of searing techno sequences, but guttural drones, sinister high-pitched stabs and even electronic percussion.
“As is often the case with Cherry Audio, we must also come back to the price – an incredibly tempting $69 which, on launch will be just $49. Considering the sheer versatility of this instrument, that’s going to be an absolute bargain for a wide range of musicians and composers, from those working with conventional or electronic styles to people scoring TV, games or movies. If you thought these kinds of recreations of 1980s synths were of interest mostly to knob-twiddlers, Mercury-6 has more than enough firepower and versatility to make you definitively change your mind.
Cherry Audio’s Mercury-6 synthesiser is now only $49 (list $69), and you can purchase it directly from CherryAudio.com.
