One Roland JP-8000 patch converter writes the original effects settings into a comments field because the synth on the receiving end has no matching effects section. That is the honest solution. The information survives as text, and the sound does not.
Conversion is not file translation. It is a mapping between two architectures that were designed years apart by different people, and every parameter without a twin on the other side has to be approximated, ignored, or written down somewhere for you to rebuild by hand.
Importers get rewritten as that mapping improves. The rewritten Synth1 and JP-8000 importers in Corona 7 are a recent round of exactly that work, covering the 8080 as well. Better mapping narrows the gap. It does not close it.
The better converters know this. The JP-80x0 converter interpolates curves rather than mapping them linearly, specifically so the result matches how the hardware responded, and it leans on macro controls to hold onto the fine-tune resolution of the second oscillator in wide mode.
It also copies behavior that looks like a bug. The LFO fade control deliberately leaves the LFO pan alone in the converted patch, because that is how the original behaved. Choices like that are why two converters can process the same bank and hand you two different sounds, with neither one broken. Play the same note in both, hold it, and listen to the decay rather than the attack, since taper mismatches show up in the tail first.
The effects are just as awkward. Every Synth1 patch includes a chorus and flanger with one, two, or four stages, a tempo-synced delay, and a parametric equalizer with its own frequency, level, and Q. Move the patch, and you move a synth voice while leaving a small mixing chain behind. Its two LFOs add another wrinkle, with smoothed random among the waveform options and volume among the targets, neither of which every modern synth offers.
The Roland side has its own gaps. The JP-8000 offers nine oscillator waveforms including triangle modulation, a feedback oscillator, sample and hold, and the super saw, which stacks seven detuned sawtooths inside a single voice of its eight-note polyphony.
Direction matters more than people expect. Every JP-8000 patch loads on a JP-8080, and the reverse is not true, because the rack added a vocoder, a distortion effect, an extra noise waveform on the second oscillator, and three times the patch and performance slots. A bank pulled from an 8080 can reference all of that, and an importer shaped around the 8000 has to decide what to do with the parts it cannot represent.
Levels are the next surprise. Testers reported some converted patches arriving very quiet, so before you decide the import sounds thin, check the output gain against a preset you know.
Then there is the setting you turned on yourself. Corona 7 holds chorus, delay, distortion, and limiter settings across preset changes when Effects Lock is engaged, which is excellent while you audition and misleading right after an import, since every converted patch arrives wearing your effects instead of its own.
Library structure is the last piece. Synth1 organizes 128 presets across 10 banks for 1280 slots in total, so converting a complete collection hands you a naming and ordering job long after the sound has stopped being the hard part.
Conversion is not file translation. It is a mapping between two architectures that were designed years apart by different people, and every parameter without a twin on the other side has to be approximated, ignored, or written down somewhere for you to rebuild by hand.
Importers get rewritten as that mapping improves. The rewritten Synth1 and JP-8000 importers in Corona 7 are a recent round of exactly that work, covering the 8080 as well. Better mapping narrows the gap. It does not close it.
Knob values are the easy part
A number is easy to copy. The problem is that the same number means different things on two synths, because a cutoff knob at halfway travels along a taper the designer chose, and that curve is rarely the same twice.The better converters know this. The JP-80x0 converter interpolates curves rather than mapping them linearly, specifically so the result matches how the hardware responded, and it leans on macro controls to hold onto the fine-tune resolution of the second oscillator in wide mode.
It also copies behavior that looks like a bug. The LFO fade control deliberately leaves the LFO pan alone in the converted patch, because that is how the original behaved. Choices like that are why two converters can process the same bank and hand you two different sounds, with neither one broken. Play the same note in both, hold it, and listen to the decay rather than the attack, since taper mismatches show up in the tail first.
Some parameters have nowhere to land
Synth1 gives you two oscillators plus a sub, ring modulation, oscillator sync, an FM mode where the second oscillator modulates the first, and unison up to eight voices. It also carries four filter types and a diode ladder low-pass modeled on the TB-303. A patch built around that ladder filter has no obvious destination in a synth that never modeled one.The effects are just as awkward. Every Synth1 patch includes a chorus and flanger with one, two, or four stages, a tempo-synced delay, and a parametric equalizer with its own frequency, level, and Q. Move the patch, and you move a synth voice while leaving a small mixing chain behind. Its two LFOs add another wrinkle, with smoothed random among the waveform options and volume among the targets, neither of which every modern synth offers.
The Roland side has its own gaps. The JP-8000 offers nine oscillator waveforms including triangle modulation, a feedback oscillator, sample and hold, and the super saw, which stacks seven detuned sawtooths inside a single voice of its eight-note polyphony.
Direction matters more than people expect. Every JP-8000 patch loads on a JP-8080, and the reverse is not true, because the rack added a vocoder, a distortion effect, an extra noise waveform on the second oscillator, and three times the patch and performance slots. A bank pulled from an 8080 can reference all of that, and an importer shaped around the 8000 has to decide what to do with the parts it cannot represent.
Bank files fail for reasons that look like nothing
Not every file circulating as a patch bank follows the specification it claims. The author of that JP converter found user-sourced sysex and MIDI files with byte orders that do not match Roland's spec, and a single field holding an out-of-range value is enough to stop a whole bank from loading.Levels are the next surprise. Testers reported some converted patches arriving very quiet, so before you decide the import sounds thin, check the output gain against a preset you know.
Then there is the setting you turned on yourself. Corona 7 holds chorus, delay, distortion, and limiter settings across preset changes when Effects Lock is engaged, which is excellent while you audition and misleading right after an import, since every converted patch arrives wearing your effects instead of its own.
Library structure is the last piece. Synth1 organizes 128 presets across 10 banks for 1280 slots in total, so converting a complete collection hands you a naming and ordering job long after the sound has stopped being the hard part.
