Hi,

I would like to buy a new TB303 emulated VSTi. Currently I own Muon Tau Pro v.1.1 and I have been quite pleased with it.

At the moment I'm putting up a live setup so Muon Tau Pro isn't enough for me anymore. I need a TB303 VSTi that responds to the PROGRAM CHANGE messages. If someone knows any good please let me know.

JanneP

Sorry, but the Tau Pro is by far the best 303 emulation out there. But why do you need it to react on programchanges? You can control allmoast everything with normal midicontols.

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You can control allmost everything with normal midicontols.

Yes, almost everything. In Muon Tau Pro it's not possible to tweak all the cc values (for example VCO1, VCO2 modes).

Quote:

But why do you need it to react on programchanges?

I'm looking for the best possible TB303 VSTi to be used in live situation. I need to able to change program presets as fast as possible and then tweak them with CCs.

JanneP

Trinangle ll can make 303 sounds perfectly and has alot more options and for free

Claw at www.refx.net is free and supports program-changes as well as MIDI-CC for all parameters.

Regards,
Mike

As this is a subject I'm familiar with, thought I'd pop my cherry and post for the first time, thus ending a long period of just lurking in here

As far as the 303 emulators go, there's plenty of choices. None yet really satisfy when it comes to sounding like the real thing - talking as a person who used to owned several of them in the past (regretting none of them are in my possession anymore).

Let's see...

Muon Tau - close enough to end up in my setup, but not really there. Sounds nice but misses some of 303's idiosyncracies. Hopefully in the near future this is remedied, as Dave has been working on improving it And he's doing it the right way, analyzing how the real one works and how exactly the real one sounds

Muon Tau Pro - don't own this one. But judging from hearing it a lot in other people's music, it can get a tad closer, thanks to the accent section.
But sonically, not really "there" either (sounds amazing though, something to purchase finally in the near future).

PPD Tritium - in the same ballpark but not really there. I guess you can coax some nice sounds out from this one, but sonically, it really doesn't make anyone think they're hearing a 303.

ReFX Claw - I feel the same way about its sound as I feel for Tritium, it's in the same ballpark but not really there.

E-phonic Sawbox - the little it does, it does it well. Lacks so much, and I for one hoped he'd continued developing this one. Sounds really nice, but no 'square' waveform (as if it was 'square' in the original anyway ), no accent (the thing Sawbox does in the beginning of a note is something like an attempt at the accent, and sounds nice, it's just not controllable).

There are a couple more SynthEdit based things that are generally considered to belong to this category, such as TB-unknown... but they generally miss the mark of sounding close enough for me to even consider them as 303 emulators... not to say they don't sound good (I'm using about every single one of them, including the aforementioned TB-unknown and Quacker)

As for the other choices... Groovecube's Exciton sounds like it could make a sweet emulation or two, thanks to the way its filter sounds (one of the only VSTis with that squelching, chirpy Roland filter sound of the era when 303s were around... even closer to the filter found in amongst other things JX-3P). As for programming it, might take quite a lot of tweaking to keep it sounding like a 303 (you know, keeping cutoff, resonance, envelope modulation etc within the ranges the original possessed). Good old Vaz sounds sweet, perhaps a skilled person can whip up some usable emulations from this one (I think someone posted an mp3 about his 303 emulation done in Vaz+/2010/Modular on the forum a while ago, it sounded rather good indeed).

There still isn't a 'definitive' 303 emulator as a VSTi. There are good choices in the non-VSTi world though - Freebee, CreakBox and ReBirth included. ReBirth I'd still consider getting closest to the real thing, but with that ugly resonance (what is it, 16 discreet levels of resonance instead of a smooth control?)... Freebee doesn't run on any machine I've tried, then again, only tried it on XP so no surprise. The audio clips produced by it made me smile though - it's the best emulation at the moment. CreakBox is 'about as good'. Afair Bioroid started working on a VSTi version of it a long time ago, but time as passed and no-one knows if and when it will finally come out... when it does, that'll do it for me.

Almost forgot, Bazzline in Orion is very good too. It doesn't squelch enough, but it's in the same class as ReBirth, if not even a tad or two better (testing it with certain idiosyncracies in mind, I was satisfied with the results... another thing I wouldn't mind seeing as a VSTi).

As for trying to emulate a 303 in other synths... surely I'm not familiar with all the VSTis out there, especially all the big commercial ones... but my ears tell me that nothing gets you there, at least not easily. And using free ones, such as RGCaudio's things, LinPlug etc... there's plenty of good sounding ones, but nothing really gets to the 303 ballpark - the filters, the waveforms, slide, accent ... some of these can be reached but not enough of these characteristic features to make it work...

The best we can do is pray for Bioroid to finish that CreakBox and hope that Dave finds time in his busy schedule to finish the updated Tau

jmh

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E-phonic Sawbox - the little it does, it does it well. Lacks so much, and I for one hoped he'd continued developing this one. Sounds really nice, but no 'square' waveform (as if it was 'square' in the original anyway ), no accent (the thing Sawbox does in the beginning of a note is something like an attempt at the accent, and sounds nice, it's just not controllable).

Invader (get it from my site) has the same modified oscillators as the SawBox.
So you can create the exact same sound as in the SawBox and even more (this one got a "Square" oscillator).
Automation, MidiCC, modulated delay... and so on. No accent

Just turn off all modulators, FM, Sync, Ringmod and OSC2.

Regards,
PJ

e-phonic, any thoughts at taking another stab at 303 emulation? :->

jmh wrote:

I think someone posted an mp3 about his 303 emulation done in Vaz+/2010/Modular on the forum a while ago, it sounded rather good indeed). jmh

That might have been me??

oh, and it was done with Vaz 2010 although the same patch can be programmed in VazPlus2

Alex wrote:

Is Vaz phat or what? http://www.artistcollaboration.com/~alex/vaz%20plus%202.mp3

EDIT 1: Oh, and please excuse the dull kick drum. I didn't want to take away the limelight from the 303 or overwhelm you with my excellent drum programming skills

EDIT 2: Oh, and jmh --> Welcome

Quote:

e-phonic, any thoughts at taking another stab at 303 emulation? :->

I could easely add more features to The SawBox... Maybe I will.
If I only had the time for that, after work, eating, making music, cleaning the house, ..... man where does all the time go?!

What features do you like me to add?

PJ

tape-delay

Fruity TS-404

Also, Bioroid has been working on Creakbox for ages now...

Alex - thanks And that sounds just... kickass

Gotta mention though, I've been reading KVR since day one, followed oh so many arguments and so many trolls during this time, but somehow managed to butt out from those even though the temptation has sometimes been hard to resist... this I couldn't resist, due to being something 'close to my heart'

PJ - doh, Invader has been installed as soon as it was released (and naturally updated). Hadn't even thought of testing how it works for simplistic monophonic bass things. Anyway, your SynthEdit works are simply awesome. Drumatic went to my autoload setup right away, and now rests there along with its updated version But please - PRETTY PLEASE WITH SUGAR ON TOP - find the time to continue working on SawBox. I love its sound, and prefer these kind of simpler solutions to using synths with kazillion knobs, dozen oscillators and two modulation matrices

In case you do continue... that 303 'square' waveform. Perhaps the longest decay value could be even longer. And perhaps the filter cutoff could me modified so that the whole sound doesn't get eaten by the filter... sigh, had to tweak it in order to comment it and now I can't stop
SawBox -> CamelPhat free -> MDA dub delay ... eargasm.

Smart - 404 is ... to use the ballpark metaphor ... standing at the gate. It's not really 303 sounding, albeit it's an unappreciated synth capable of doing tons of things well.

jmh

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But please - PRETTY PLEASE WITH SUGAR ON TOP - find the time to continue working on SawBox. I love its sound, and prefer these kind of simpler solutions to using synths with kazillion knobs, dozen oscillators and two modulation matrices In case you do continue... that 303 'square' waveform. Perhaps the longest decay value could be even longer. And perhaps the filter cutoff could me modified so that the whole sound doesn't get eaten by the filter... sigh, had to tweak it in order to comment it and now I can't stop SawBox -> CamelPhat free -> MDA dub delay ... eargasm.

When i got the time for it, I will continue this plugin. The things you mentioned are on my main consern.
The filter is far from good. The only thing that looks/sound like it (without filter, on a scope ) is the osillator.
I'll let you know when i got something

PJ

it's still kinda cool though for those types of sounds.

I do really like the sound of Claw though more I think

Creakbox VSTi rox. I have been using it for months. I just have been too busy with work and all to get things finalized for release but it should be out in the near future (next few months).

In my personal opinion, if a TB-303 "clone" doesn't have a sequencer then it's not a true clone. Half of the magic of the 303 comes from the sequencer. Those who don't understand never used one or can't tell the difference.

bioroid

good I can't wait!

Alex wrote:

jmh wrote: I think someone posted an mp3 about his 303 emulation done in Vaz+/2010/Modular on the forum a while ago, it sounded rather good indeed). jmh That might have been me?? oh, and it was done with Vaz 2010 although the same patch can be programmed in VazPlus2 Alex wrote: Is Vaz phat or what? http://www.artistcollaboration.com/~alex/vaz%20plus%202.mp3 EDIT 1: Oh, and please excuse the dull kick drum. I didn't want to take away the limelight from the 303 or overwhelm you with my excellent drum programming skills EDIT 2: Oh, and jmh --> Welcome

Alex - is that Vaz patch available anywhere or is it on sale or something - sounds great.

Quote:

In my personal opinion, if a TB-303 "clone" doesn't have a sequencer then it's not a true clone. Half of the magic of the 303 comes from the sequencer. Those who don't understand never used one or can't tell the difference.

That's why Propellerhead's ReBirth has the best TB-303 emulation, IMO. I know it's not VSTi but if you use Cubase, Sonar, Muzys, or Traction it's just as good.

e-phonic. Just skip cleaning the house for a coupla months.

e-phonic I use saw box often but a distortion would be fantastic as a 303 is not a 303 without distortion

cheers

a 303 is not a 303 without distortion ...?????

I know what you mean, as a 303 certainly lends itself to distortion, but the fact that a 303 emulation can sound good without distortion is the true test of it. The original 303s didn't have distortion, but could be made to sound like they were (all part of the wonderful Curtis filters). If you need to put distortion on a VSTi to make it sound like the real thing, then it doesn't sound like the real thing!

Nitpicking, I know, but that's why so many people go on about 303 sims - many of them don't have the true 18dB/Oct Curtis squelch and rely on added distortion to give the real feel. I've seen 303 emulations that use 24dB/Oct filters! There is no way this is going to sound anything like a 303.

Personally I like Claw the best - without its distortion, it can do the best "sucked in" square wave sounds, but you have the added bonus that you can keep the bass content (which isn't true to the 303, as it lost bass content quite dramatically when you swept the filter up.)

And as for the 303 sequencer.....hmmm...still undecided on that one - I never really liked it, but admittedly it did make for some happy accidents in programming. I still own my 202 and I hate it every time I try to use the onboard sequencer.....unyet, I often get better results that way than by using my PC sequencer... strange huh?

aMUSEd wrote:

Alex - is that Vaz patch available anywhere or is it on sale or something - sounds great.

There are a couple of 303 emulations available in this Vaz 2010 patch bank (along with a few other patches you might like if you are a Vaz 2010 owner )

http://www.artistcollaboration.com/~alex/AH_VazPatchCollections.zip

Enjoy!!

PS: Some of the patches are a bit silly (e.g. plane overhead, wasp etc.) ...please ignore these as these were designed for a specific purpose. They may be of use to someone though which is why they have stayed in there

Here's a demo of the Square 303 patch for anyone who doesn't have Vaz 2010

http://www.artistcollaboration.com/~alex/VazSquare303.mp3

Cheers Alex.

.............how about making a TB-303 with the Devil-fish implementation on it

i'm surprised that the 303, 808, and 909 in rebirth haven't been reissued as vstis...i'm sure they would sell well and they are still the best ones out there i think. it seems like propellerheads is stubbornly against the vsti world.

Have a look at my tb303 sample cd inspired by a similar discussion on this very forum. Available for Soundfont (Reason, Orion etc) , Gigasampler, Vsampler, and Kontakt with velocity triggering as many as 99 samples each at a different cutoff level (over 3 octaves). If you are looking for a tb303, this sounds EXACTLY like one.

Increasing the velocity of the notes increases the cutoff giving sweep virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. There is a short mp3 here :-

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sealed/nextbestthing/511mpwsweep.mp3

There are 92 tb303 presets and 50 from the mc202, which are only 2mb, 4mb or 8mb in size. There are also a few from the mam mb33 II

The Halion version can now be controlled by a keyboard modulation wheel or other controller for total hands on operation. This really is the dream of a midi controlled tb 303 for a nominal price. Both notes and filter can be played back and recorded by a sequencer unlike the original.

Several satisfied customers, one of whom prefers using this cd to his real tb303 - much easier to operate.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sealed/nextbestthing/web303Sober.htm

Go to KazaaLite.com and download it.

Then search for ReBirth.


Download the motherfucker - beats the shit out of the other crap - Claw is a joke.

Reg

Reg, you're an angel. Always there with a kind word and sage advice. Might I recommend the Propellerheads site? They have a downloadable demo there.

http://www.propellerheads.se/

The one thing I do not like about ReBirth is that the drum machines are not stereo. Sure, the origionals were not stereo, but that would be a welcome improvement.

Robert

Hi everyone, I've been lurking around this website for a long, long, time and never actually posted anything.

Regarding the TB303 emulation, I don't think no one mentioned Rubberduck by d-lusion, it's been around for ages and has it's own character, can't tell if it's an accurate replica of the TB303 sound but their website says it's based on it:

http://www.d-lusion.com

m|7o

Downloading Rebirth on Kazaa would be illegal, right? Or are you just talking about downloading a demo?

If you don't care for rewire or midi control then you can get ReBirthOne still for £19.99 in PC World.

IMHO the best software emulation of a tb303 is FreeBee, a freeware software emulation of the beloved little silverbox. (I own a real tb303 myself so I do know how a real one sounds.)

You find it at: http://user.it.uu.se/~mija7327/vintage.html

sincerely
Lars-Erik

jmh, I'm surprised you can be so forgiving about Tau. That's not a slag against you but, rather, a testament to a generous spirit.

The real 303 doesn't distort, it saturates the filter giving it a pleasent of sparkle & compression. I'd personally rather use a sample over any of the VSTi's if that was the sound I was after.

If Freebee is a labour of love, something that musicians did simply because they wanted that sound, maybe one of the devs here could contact them to get that source code into a VSTi... hint hint hint!

roland is making a vst of the original tb 303
if i new how to upload pics i would uploaad a pic of it[/img]

Uncle E - all I really said was that it ended in my setup

For clarification, all the free ones are in constant use. None of the commercials are - without calling them bad or unusable, they're just not close enough to pay for them... and none, free or commercial, really delivers (I really have owned several 303s in the past, including one that was found boxed, brand new, lying on a store shelf... in 1993 =) And when ever possible, I utilize a Kenton retrofitted 303 which I'd buy instantly if the owner was willing to sell it )

For the same reason I don't own ReBirth either - it sounds passable in a mix all right, but as a musician, I'm the one tweaking that resonance knob and wishing "if I only I could get a tad less resonance... oh, by moving the knob enough, it jumps to less resonance... too less, darn".

(Interesting tidbits from the past... a friend of mine back in the day mentioned purchasing a homebuilt rack box that contains two 303s and one 808, slammed together. Also included a small mixer... when I first heard about ReBirth, it sure sounded like a weird coincidence =)

Orion's Bazzline is a workhorse for me for clean, undistorted 303 lines. It's the only one that sounds decent no matter what you do with it, unlike all the others than can handle one characteristic thing but don't deliver at all when you aim for something else, ie. does nice low cutoff saw rubbery lines but stinks at high resonance, open filter stuff... decent doesn't mean identical to the real one, naturally.

I hope so much that Bioroid finds the time to finish Creakbox - and I so hope it finds a proper GUI as well. Perhaps something in silvery plastic style with shiny chromelike knobs...

FWIW, there has been quite a few threads on KVR about 303 emulations, did some searching yesterday. Interesting stuff to read...

Mercury - it wouldn't really make sense for Propellerheads to sell them in VSTi form... after all, limiting it to ReBirth makes ReBirth sales, and they have their own 'competing' connection thing to plug.

Sealed - velocity layered cutoff changes... sounds usable - but how about all of them resonance settings... slides... accents... I'm sure that in limited use a sample cd pulls it off nicely, but most of us are accustomed to tweaking all of those 303 knobs for that acid orgasm stuff

m7|o - Rubberduck... now that would be an instant purchase if it resurfaced in VSTi form Not that's it any closer to sounding like the real thing, but that wasn't its forte. (Do a search here on KVR, one of its developers posted about looking into making it a VSTi . Anyway, Rubberduck does some lovely squelchy filter stuff nothing else does - perhaps VAZ with its fat crunchy filters...

acixxx - Roland is making it for VariOS, judging from information on a couple of sites. We can of course pray for them to deliver it in VSTi form, I know I'll mention it in my prayers from now on

kritikon - Curtis filters? Ahemm... Perhaps opening up a 303 might reveal something about it... or reading any of those 303 fan sites?

Suggested reading for everybody (despite the odd pieces of misinformation):

http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/dfish/ - Devilfish (contains some detailed technical information if you put some effort into finding it)

http://www.tb-303.org/ - it's almost dead now, the site I mean... still, some good links at least

http://303.techno.org/ - now there is something worth reading indeed, about the waveforms and filter behavior etc. I wouldn't necessarily agree on some terms used, and I'd warn in advance that all the graphs aren't accurate (it's all in the disclaimer and the geek page what I mean).

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~concuss/borg.htm - The Borg modification for 303... (search that bit on KVR about Dave analyzing the real thing for improving Tau...)

I've heard perhaps 3 or 4 software emulations so far that sounded rather nice. Freebee sure is sweet if it only worked for me... the two others I can recall were DOS and not realtime. Still, they did some nice sounds. I'm rather convinced someone will sooner or later pull it off in software and deliver it in VSTi - Bioroid and Dave, this is your cue

jmh

Oh, almost forgot to mention when talking about software emulations.
If you're a Buzz user - or FL user for that matter, there are a couple of 303 emulators available as Buzz generators. I'd go as far as saying that they're above the current VSTis, almost at ReBirth level (as long as you don't hope to make those nice woofing accent things )...

Definitely worth checking out if you can use them.

Oh... and hi to RegPhoenix You're one of my all-time favorites on KVR - I was afraid we'd have to do something really low or rude to get your attention to this thread - luckily we didn't have to resort to such means

jmh

btw, I put up a track the other day that has a bit of 303 in it:

http://www.jrrshop.com/eric/Gypsy_Junk.mp3

It's not a real one, I used samples from a 303 I used to have & stuck a UAD-1 mod filter on it (admittedly not a great filter but, y'know, it was there ). This isn't the final mix, either, but the only thing I'm really going to do more is pull down the low-end with the Avalon.

Anyone who wants to check out yet another cheesy VSTi 303-emulation, but with an included step-sequencer: feel free to try out Screamer (Windows only):
http://tobybear.phreque.com/screamer.zip

Source code for the 303-clone and the step sequencer is also provided.

Some people seem to have issues with their CPU though, ie getting any sound from the plugin or strange crashes, but I could not reproduce that on my machine.

So even if you don't like the sound/interface, any feedback if it works or not is welcome (mail to tobybear@web.de)

Cheers

Toby

www.tobybear.de

Also, just FYI. If any of you all are thinking of trying out the rubber duck demo, it contains spyware, I don't know if its removed when you register it, but any developer that puts spy ware in their software should be looked at as the equivalent of an end user who uses warez.