Skip to content
GrindSubBy DarkEffekt

Overview

GrindSub is a bass synthesizer built around one promise: the low end behaves the same in every register, on every note, at every setting. One phase drives two paths. The sub path is a single low waveform, identical in both channels by construction. The grind path is a wavetable voice with a keytracked filter and a waveshaper, and it is where all the width, dirt, and movement live.

Why not a sub and another synth on top?

Section titled “Why not a sub and another synth on top?”

Two instruments can make this sound. What they cannot do is keep it right, and that is what GrindSub is for:

  • The sub cannot drift, thin out, or go wide. Both paths run off one phase and line up sample for sample at the output, on every note, for as long as you hold it. The sub is one signal in both channels, and nothing stereo can reach it.
  • As wide as you like up top, never down low. Unison, chorus, and the widener exist on the grind and only there. Pull all three to full and the sub does not move, because there is nothing to route it through.
  • The grind never carries your fundamental. It is removed from every wavetable before a note plays, and a notch that follows the note removes whatever the shaper regenerates. The weight is the sub, at the level you set, whatever the drive.
  • Same patch, same growl, on every note. Cutoff, the pluck, and the modulation depths are intervals from the played note. The resonance peak lands on its interval within 3.3 cents across the whole range, and the Init patch holds level within 1.5 dB from C1 to C3.
  • The bounce is the playback. Same MIDI and automation, same render, bit for bit, at any buffer size. Every note that starts from silence starts from the same state.
  • It never clicks. Retriggers, velocity changes, and the knock keep the output continuous in every mode.

Why intervals instead of hertz

Section titled “Why intervals instead of hertz”

A filter set to 800 Hz is a different musical object on C1 than on C2: two octaves above one note, one octave above the other. That is why bass patches fall apart when a riff moves. GrindSub sets the filter as an interval above the played note and moves it with the pitch, glide included, so the harmonic shape of the sound is a property of the patch instead of a property of the note.

The same thinking runs through the whole instrument. Cutoff, and every modulation depth that moves it, are in semitones. The loudness tilts are in dB per octave around a named pivot note. The VOICE title shows the sounding note’s frequency.

The resonance readout is a promise, not a label: whatever the cutoff, resonance, and drive, the peak lands on the named interval, and at full resonance the filter self-oscillates in tune.

Where to go next

Section titled “Where to go next”