Rv0 gave answers to my hundreds of questions with great patience, as well as audio recordings, many of them.
At some point in time then, some guy (rv0) PM’ed me that he can record samples for me, i really didn’t expect that to happen, this 303 seemed so mythical to me. I’ve been reading whatever was available on the internet, and listening to audio samples from the few places i managed to find.Īt the Open303 thread, we were asking for someone who owns a TB-303 to record us some audio samples that we can look at. That thread soon morphed into a discussion about Ladder filters and specifically transistor and diode ladder filters.Īnd finally a dedicated thread was created for discussing 303 stuff - Open303.Īt that time i barely knew anything about the TB-303. The first “Beta” release of the VB-303 was in 2009.Īt that time, it wasn’t a very serious project, and it was rather ugly.Īfter that, i started a thread in the DSP section at KVR about my lousy filter. Aww, I can’t believe that’s the explanation, I thought it’s the filter! The individual parts are not responsible for the result, it’s the combination of them together in that little box. So while the square wave, the filter and those other things are indeed unique on their own - this doesn’t mean that you’ll instantly make acid if you take the filter from the 303 and slap it in another synth. That’s correct, the only normal thing in the 303 is the sawtooth waveform, which is more or less a pure boring old ramp. Notice how i basically mentioned every single thing on that synth. The unique 303 sound is 50% due to sequencer which controls the synth engine, and the other 50% goes between the oscillator, filter, accent, slide, and how the parameters (Tone Control) work. It’s also a common misconception that the unique sound of the 303 is all due to that filter, well, it’s not.
So, no, you just cannot substitute a 303 with any synth, you need a synth which is explicitly designed to emulate the 303.įortunately for everyone, there are quite a number of 303 clones and emulations, in hardware and software form, this here is just one of them. They are missing the point, the 303 shouldn’t be taken apart like that, it should be examined as a whole.Īnd the combination of that oscillator, with that filter, with that sequencer, and those other little details (accent and slide) working together is what makes this thing unique, and so hard to recreate with anything else. Many people think they can substitude a 303 with any synth which has saw/square and a resonant filter. Well every synth has an oscillator, filter and amp, and you have a sequencer in your DAW, no?
It’s just 1 oscillator, thru 1 filter, and VCA, controlled via a sequencer. It took me 4 years to get to here, and now i think i can see the answer. I’ve been trying to understand - WHY is it so hard to make this sound on my own? What makes it so special?
I’ve been trying to recreate this sound for 10 years, i know it’s a single oscillator thru a resonant filter, but no matter what i did - something wasn’t quite right. I am interested in using a 303, not because it emulates a bass guitar, but because of that special unique sound that comes out of it. It’s an approximation of the sound of a x0xb0x, and the sequencer of the TB-303.įor many reasons, this plugin will not be developed any further, don’t wait for updates/bugfixes. Venom VB-303 is a win32 VST made with SynthEdit/SE_SDK2.