Black Corporation's ISE-NIN is a modern reimagining of the legendary Roland Jupiter-8, built from the ground up with fully analog circuitry and contemporary control standards that the original 1981 synth simply couldn't have. It's a rare thing to see a classic design get this kind of thoughtful evolution rather than just a nostalgic reissue.
The core architecture stays true to its inspiration: eight voices, each with two voltage-controlled oscillators, a highpass filter, and a dual-mode lowpass filter that can run at either 12dB or 24dB per octave slopes. Every oscillator delivers triangle, ramp, square, and pulse waves, plus noise, spanning a full 10 Hz to 12.5 kHz range. You get hard sync and cross-modulation between oscillators for those characteristically thick, slightly aggressive tones, and each voice includes pulse width modulation that can be controlled manually, via the LFO, or via envelope. The signal path is 100% analog, which means the creamy, organic filter response that made the Jupiter-8 legendary is still very much here. Dual ADSR envelopes handle amplitude and filter modulation, while a single LFO per layer provides modulation to pitch, pulse width, amplitude, and filter cutoff. The panel layout is clean and direct, with an OLED display for menu navigation and preset management rather than the original's rainbow buttons, giving you 1280 preset slots across ten banks.
Where ISE-NIN really steps into the modern era is its control implementation. Full MIDI support includes polyphonic aftertouch and MPE compatibility, meaning per-note pitch bends and per-note control changes work exactly as you'd expect. Velocity sensitivity and aftertouch can modulate nearly every parameter on the synth, and you can configure the eight voices across three key modes: Whole (all eight voices as one layer), Split (four voices each for two independent synths), or Dual (four voices per layer, layered for bi-timbral sounds). The ISE-NIN also supports alternative tuning systems through ODDSound's MTS-ESP standard and Scala files, opening up just intonation, microtonal scales, and non-Western tuning systems.
