Dolphin bassline
by Signaldust
by Signaldust
4.1 / 5
(14 votes)
Win32
Win64
VST
This little monophonic synth is a proof-of-concept toy inspired by a well-known silverbox from the early 1980s. Emphasis is on "inspired" as calling it a model would be something between a joke and a lie. It should still do techno.
It has an oscillator, which you can ask to output either saw-waves or square-waves. The output of the oscillators goes into a variable frequency filter with optional resonance. Finally the output of the filter is multiplied by a slow, fixed-time envelope. Tweaking the knobs is suggested.
The oscillator will simply track the latest MIDI note-on message, so you'll probably want to sequence it. MIDI note-off messages matching the current note will gate the amplitude envelope. Overlapped notes won't retrigger the envelopes, and will cause the oscillator to slide to the new pitch. Notes with high velocity (about 101 and up) will trigger "accents" (these can be sliding notes too, or even half-way through the same note if you manage to convince your host not to send note-off in the middle), which will temporarily set the filter envelope timing to minimum and depending on the accent knob (and for slides also the remaining level of the filter envelope) boost volume and cutoff a bit (but see here).
Other than the tuning and accent knobs, the rest of the knobs conspire to modify the behaviour of the filter in somewhat chaotic way. In theory the cutoff will manually change the cutoff, the resonance will improve the filter quality factor, the env mod will control how much the filter envelope modifies the cutoff and the decay will change the decay time of the filter envelope.
It has an oscillator, which you can ask to output either saw-waves or square-waves. The output of the oscillators goes into a variable frequency filter with optional resonance. Finally the output of the filter is multiplied by a slow, fixed-time envelope. Tweaking the knobs is suggested.
The oscillator will simply track the latest MIDI note-on message, so you'll probably want to sequence it. MIDI note-off messages matching the current note will gate the amplitude envelope. Overlapped notes won't retrigger the envelopes, and will cause the oscillator to slide to the new pitch. Notes with high velocity (about 101 and up) will trigger "accents" (these can be sliding notes too, or even half-way through the same note if you manage to convince your host not to send note-off in the middle), which will temporarily set the filter envelope timing to minimum and depending on the accent knob (and for slides also the remaining level of the filter envelope) boost volume and cutoff a bit (but see here).
Other than the tuning and accent knobs, the rest of the knobs conspire to modify the behaviour of the filter in somewhat chaotic way. In theory the cutoff will manually change the cutoff, the resonance will improve the filter quality factor, the env mod will control how much the filter envelope modifies the cutoff and the decay will change the decay time of the filter envelope.
Downloads
Win 32 VST
(0.6 Mb)
Win 64 VST
(0.6 Mb)
(4 / 5)
The best free 303 VST I've tried, sounds great and very tweakable. Like John Burns said it's a little iffy if you're trying to play it with a keyboard but that's not a problem for me since I'm just drawing MIDI into my DAW. It would be cool to see a distortion be built into it but obviously I can just throw on another plugin to get that.
(2 / 5)
Doesn't play well with my keyboard. Seems to treat half the notes I play as a sustain of a previous note and half the notes as a new note. Might work ok if you are programming with a mouse instead of with a keyboard.
(5 / 5)
Square is shit but saw is great, this sounds like FREEBASS Hardware Rack unit
thumbs up G
(5 / 5)
I love this VST, it sounds good.
(5 / 5)
I dismissed this VSTi at first because it does'nt look like much and because there is'nt the typical Roland 303 interface, and that it should be used with a piano roll, I thought I could'nt do "ties" and "accents"... I was so wrong... this VSTi can do ties and accents while using the more user friendly interface of a piano roll, and it sounds really great. The cutoff and resonance are really very close to a real 303.
(5 / 5)
really cool sound with a soft overdrive :-)
(5 / 5)
CPU wise is not effective, but sound is! And it's free. What else could we ask for? And yeah the dev have seem to have disappeared , but fortunatly vst4free stores all these nice gems. Thanks guys!
Hi, is this an updated version? web page seems doesn't work.
(0 / 5)
Sorry but if you need a lightweight Bass Synth take TAL-Bassline. Dolphin takes too much RAM and CPU for being such a little thing.
(5 / 5)
A lot of Bang for no Buck. Cheerio!
(5 / 5)
Cracking for acid stuff :) https://soundcloud.com/slippytin/dolphin-demo
(4 / 5)
THIS IS VERY GOOD BUT NEED UPDATES
(5 / 5)
This Synth is freaking amazing for Techno Basslines! It has a very clean sound, and a warm sounding filter. Try it out ;-)