Design 808-Style Bass Drum Sounds With The BD-808 Pro Plugin

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You may remember that I reported some time ago about the free Synsonic-Instruments BD-808, a free plugin that can create great 808-style bass drums. This a very good and simple plugin to design these specific kick sounds, but is somewhat limited by the character. To offer more options here, the developer has released a Pro version with new features.

The new BD-808 PRO features additional compression on the envelope, drive as well as glide. Beside this this developer added also support for extended midi-control that allows you play more dynamically the BD-808 plugin.

BD-808 PRO Features

Compression: The envelope can be compressed, resulting in a louder sound.

Drive: Distortion enhances the 808 sound to achieve a dirty bass drum sound. By activating the drive envelope the distortion is only present during the attack phase of the overall sound. This behaviour may sound more natural, as a real drum also has more distortion at the initial hit.

Glide: By turning up the glidetime, the pitch smoothly varies when different notes are played. Three different glidemodes (Up, Down, Up/Down) allow for different gliding behaviour.

Extended MIDI-Control: To allow more dynamic playing, one can influence the amount of Accent, Decay, Compression, Drive and Tone dependent on the MIDI velocity. E.g. a strong hit on the keyboard can set the drive higher than if the key is hit weaker. Turning the MIDI-SYNC knob of a parameter to the right leads to a positive relation between MIDI velocity and the parameter (indicated by a yellow ring outside the knob). Turning the MIDI-SYNC knob of a parameter to the left leads to a negative relation between MIDI velocity and the parameter (indicated by a red ring outside the knob).

Synsonic-Instruments BD-808 Pro is now available for 10€ for PC & Mac (VST & Mac). BD-808 is also available as free version with less features.

More information here: BD-808 Pro 

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