Sound · aka Super saw, JP-8000 supersaw
Supersaw
The supersaw is a synth sound made by layering seven detuned sawtooth waves, originally shipped as a preset on the Roland JP-8000 in 1996. It became the defining lead sound of classic trance because a single note played through a supersaw already sounds like a chord — huge, bright, and impossible to ignore in a room of two thousand people.
Before the JP-8000, producers built similar sounds by hand — layering multiple analogue oscillators, detuning each one slightly, and running the result through chorus. The JP-8000 turned that recipe into a single knob. Within two years of its release, the supersaw was on virtually every uplifting-trance record made in the Netherlands and Germany. Ferry Corsten's System F 'Out Of The Blue', Paul van Dyk's For An Angel '98 rework, and almost every ASOT-era Armin van Buuren single lean on it.
Overusing the supersaw is one of the things that eventually made post-2005 trance feel formulaic. But in 1998–2001, when it still felt new, it was arguably the most emotionally efficient sound in electronic music.