Nailing the TB-303 squelch in Reason

Now that ReBirth is dead, we probably will miss it’s squelch, bubble and bleepy sound. I am not a purist, so I felt it was interesting to simulate it in Reason 3 using no samples. I needed one Malström to get okay results (that famous squelch, bubble and bleep).

With that patch I created 2 demos, one for the square and one for the saw sound. I used a wider parameter range than the original ReBirth TB-303, but like I say: I am not a purist, a little extra can be nice 🙂 But still: some work needs to be done…

The 2 demos are available as free sample pack at the CCmixter.org website.

Update: you can now download my Combinator patch TiBi-303.

7 Comments

Nice work!
So, c’mon, how exactly did you do it?
Please could you make a refill or even just a patch for other acid lovers to download.
Please ;->

Thank you!

I added a screenshot to the post. There’s not much magic in this patch I need to say. This was my goal, I didn’t want to add several EQ’s and filters, I simply wanted a basic configuration which had that squelch, the naughty sound. I combined the Malström and the Matrix in a Combinator because that would make sense. It’s also nice for making one of the controls of the Combi controlling a few parameters at the same time.

I am not very happy with the saw-sound yet. I did it too quickly this morning, the square might be fine, but the saw needs a few tweaks. I am using only one osc at the same time and created a Combi-button for switching between the saw and square on the Malström.

Maybe I will use the patch for Combi Manifesto II or maybe it will be a free patch… I haven’t decided yet.

Oh, I almost forgot to say that I noticed a difference between running your soundcard at like 44.1 or 88.2. This doubles the oversampling frequency and is probably caused by the fact that Reason will never oversample on filters, although I believe the Malström uses some oversampling techniques (it doesn’t show so many artifacts for a one sample graintable synth). My examples are exports at 44.1 kHz. But most people won’t be able to tell the difference I think.