Drum synth

The drum synth.

Every sound is generated from its settings. Along with oscillators, noise and filters, each patch has a bank of five tuned resonators that can make a hit ring like a drum shell or like a bell.

14 synthesis engines

Kick, snare, closed hat, open hat, tom, clap, crash, clave, cowbell, rimshot, woodblock, shaker, clank hat and mech hat each have their own synthesis algorithm. Every patch runs on one of them.

Up to 13 layers in one hit

Five pitched oscillators, three noise layers and the five resonators can all play at once. The noise has its own filter, which you can set separately from the main one.

The factory sounds aren't samples

Every sound is rendered at 44.1 kHz from its parameters. When you change a setting, it's rendered again with the new value.

Sound Oracle

Not sure where to start? Try Sound Oracle.

Tap the wand in the Drum Synth and answer six questions about the sound you want, like which drum it is, how long it should ring and how hard it should hit. It then gives you three sounds to listen to.

Pick one and adjust it with simple controls like MUD REDUCTION, BODY, AIR and DRIVE. You can ask for three more based on that one, or open it in the Drum Synth and edit all 60 parameters.

The lineage question changes the sound the most. 808, 909 and SIMMONS each start from their own engine settings.

Full spec

Every synth
parameter.

359 factory patches in nine categories, with no reverb baked in. Reverb is a send in the mix. Every parameter below can be edited and is saved with the patch.

Oscillators

Body
5 waveforms: sine, triangle, saw, square and pulse
Oscillator 2
Independent wave, ratio across seven octaves (0.125×–16×), detune a full octave either way
Sub
Sine an octave below the body, with soft saturation
Metallic pair
Two square waves at 3.17× and 4.16× for a metallic tone
Anti-aliasing
PolyBLEP / PolyBLAMP band-limiting on each edge

Noise & resonance

Noise layer
4 colors: white, pink, blue and crackle
Noise slope
2-pole or 4-pole noise filter. 2-pole sounds more open, 4-pole tighter and darker
Click
High-passed beater transient, tunable cutoff and length
Snap
Band-passed mid burst
Modal bank
5 tuned two-pole resonators, 20 Hz–8 kHz
Modal timbre
Morphs harmonic 1·2·3·4.2·5.4 → inharmonic 1·2.76·5.4·8.93·11.34

Filters

Types
Lowpass, highpass, bandpass, notch, peaking
Cutoff
20 Hz – 20 kHz
Resonance
Q 0.1 – 20
Envelope
Dedicated amount and decay
Noise path
A second filter just for noise, set separately from the main one

Modulation

Pitch envelope
Two stages from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, with hold and an exponential or linear curve
Pitch LFO
Free rate, depth to ±1 octave
Drawn LFOs
Two, each a shape you draw with up to 32 nodes. Loop at 0.1 – 50 Hz or play once, into pitch (±24 semitones), the filter (±5 octaves) or the volume
FM
Operator per oscillator, ratio across seven octaves (0.125×–16×)
Ring mod
20 Hz – 20 kHz
Hard sync
Oscillator 2 restarts its cycle with oscillator 1
Amp envelope
Attack, hold, decay up to 6 s, release and curve shape, or a volume curve you draw, 20 ms to 4 s long

Drive & dynamics

Distortion
5 curves: soft, hard, fold, asymmetric and parallel
Oversampling
4× around the waveshaper
Bit crush
Continuous, pre-filter
Punch
Shifts the balance between the attack and the body, over the first 12 ms
Glue comp
Per-voice, auto makeup gain

The FX rack

Equalizer
Five bands you drag on a graph, with Q on the three middle bells. Low and high cuts at 12, 24 or 48 dB per octave, a tilt around 1 kHz, a polarity flip on tracks, and a fader that moves the whole curve up or down. Ten presets, TELEPHONE among them, and you can save your own
Compressor
DIGITAL, VCA, FET and OPTO circuits, threshold, ratio from 1:1 to 30:1, knee, attack, release with auto, make-up with auto gain, a needle meter or scrolling graph, and an output limiter and distortion
Side chain
A compressor can listen to another track instead of itself, so the kick can duck the bass. A muted track still works as the trigger
Strike
Turns the front and the ring of each hit up or down, however loud the hit is, with an optional clip at -1 dB
Filter
Low-pass, high-pass or band-pass with resonance and drive, on a curve you drag, at 12 or 24 dB. An LFO synced to the tempo, an envelope follower that can listen to another track, and a step sequencer for the cutoff. Song FX blocks sweep it too
Tape Saturation
Drive, bias, head and mix, with three tape types and speeds of 7.5, 15 and 30 IPS. Wow and flutter make the pitch waver like a worn machine
Saturator
Five stages: TRIODE, PENTODE and PUSH-PULL tubes, a TRANSISTOR for tight, fuzzy bite, and a HARD CLIP. Drive up to +30 dB matched in level so louder never just sounds better, bias, tone and mix, run 4× oversampled. The tubes give a little on loud hits; the hard clipper never does. The window draws the circuit, its transfer curve and harmonics 2 to 7
Harmonic Exciter
Adds new harmonics instead of turning anything up. HIGH builds fresh top end above its frequency; LOW adds the overtones of the bass so a kick or 808 still comes through on phone speakers. EVEN, ODD or BOTH, and LISTEN plays only what it adds
Noise Gate
Threshold, range, attack, hold, release and hysteresis, with a key filter so it opens on the drum you want. Cleans the bleed between hits in sliced and recorded audio
Stack
A guitar amp into a speaker cabinet. Three amp voices and six cabinets recorded from real speakers, from a 4x12 down to a phone. Move the mic across the cone, and turn up SAG so loud hits pull the drive down and the drums pump. Drive and mic can be stepped in time
Flanger
CLASSIC and ZERO modes, free or synced rate, depth, manual and feedback, and feedback can go negative
Phaser
4, 6, 8 or 12 all-pass stages swept around a center frequency, free or synced rate, feedback that never makes it louder, VINTAGE for a looser older sound, and SPREAD to part the left and right sweeps. Seven presets
Sonic Decimator
XY pad. X adds drive and clipping, Y lowers bit depth and sample rate, and positions can be sequenced
Fracture
Stutters, rolls, pitched repeats, reverses, tape stops, crushes, gates, dropouts, freezes and shuffles, painted on a one-bar grid, with CHAOS for random breaks
Anvil
Tuned resonators that every hit strikes. Pick a root note and a set of partials, and step the note in time so a snare plays a melody
Shear
A wavefolder with fold, symmetry and tone. Fold and symmetry can be stepped in time
Deadlock
A limiter built to be pushed too far: CRUSH, CRUNCH, DARKNESS, slow or fast release, and a LOCKED lamp for when it holds the level still
Chorus
Modulated delay for width and thickness
Void Gate
Gated reverb triggered by each hit, so the tail cuts off cleanly. Another track's hits can open the gate
Delay
Echo timed to the tempo, from 1/32 to 1/2 including dotted and triplet values, with feedback, tone, mix and ping-pong. TAPE makes each repeat wobble and darken, and THROWS sends only the steps you paint
Sidechain Pump
Volume ducking with rate, depth, shape, smooth and mix. It ducks on the beat, or on every hit of a track you pick
Signal Bloom
A short feedback delay triggered on steps you choose, cut off by a gate after a set number of steps. The repeats can swell in, and the time can be set in milliseconds or note values
Undertow
A reverse-reverb swell made from the track's own sample, rising into the steps you paint. Up to 16 steps long
Split Field
Stereo width from mono to double, a mono point for the low end, and a Haas delay for spreading mono sounds
Reverb
Room, hall, plate and spring, on a send, with pre-delay, decay, size, diffusion, damping, filters, modulation, and ducking that can follow another track
Elastic Limiter
Limiter for any track or the main mix, with clean, punch, loud, hard and clip modes
Routing
Drag insert effects to reorder them. Every effect but Undertow works on a single track or the main mix

Space & output

Reverb
Amount, size and tone, set on the send
Stereo
Width and pan per voice
Render
44.1 kHz, deterministic seeded noise
Export
24-bit and 32-bit float, separated tracks, MIDI, Sample Pack ZIP, or .fkit project
Portability
Custom patches travel in the project's .fkit