Sub808

What it does

A single-purpose 808 bass instrument. One oscillator with four flavours, smooth sine through tape, gritty and nasty, feeding a filter, a drive stage with its own mix and a choice of nine saturation characters including soft clip, bitcrusher, tube and cassette. A punch control shifts the body from loose to tight, and there is glide plus a simple attack and release envelope. Fifty factory presets are included, and parameters are exposed for host automation.

In the demo

Jade plays it through a track she made for her walking series, then works the controls one at a time on held notes so each change is audible at sub frequencies. She runs all fifty presets and finishes with iZotope Trash on the output.

Worth knowing

Held notes build in level, so it wants a limiter after it. Jade notes the filter responds slowly to fast sweeps. Everything here is bass, so it does nothing above the low register.