Full Bucket Music: FB-7999

German programmer and software engineer Björn Arlt began building VST plugins under the name Full Bucket Effects in 2010. Being a musician, and a synth enthusiast from a young age, he was drawn to analysing and building software synths. He now offers both synth emulations and effects as freeware through his website.

FB-7999 is a software instrument that aims to simulate both the KORG DW-6000 and DW-8000 synthesizers from the 1980s, and features two digital oscillators. Each oscillator provides 16 different waveforms and three octaves (16’, 8’, 4’), and the levels of both oscillators are set individually. Oscillator 2 can be detuned and set to a different interval relative to oscillator 1 (minor/major third, quart, quint). There is also a polyphonic portamento function for both oscillators.

The DW-8000 is famous for its set of 16 digital single-cycle waveforms. To avoid aliasing, these waveforms are organised as mipmaps meaning that there are different wavetables for different pitch ranges. Waves for higher octaves have a lower frequency content than tables for lower octaves, and the FB-7999 recreates this functionality. In contrast to this, the DW-6000 features only 8 waveforms, so 8 more waves were added including some standard ‘analogue’ waveforms to enhance the overall sound variety. These additional waveforms are displayed in orange. Independent of the current DW mode you can always switch between the waveform sets using the 8000/6000 selector underneath the waveform display.

Features:

• Two digital oscillators with 16 + 16 different waveforms
• Poly and Unison modes
• Built-in pseudo-stereo delay
• SysEx data communication, import and export
• Extended polyphony (up to 64 voices)
• Supports MTS-ESP by ODDSound dynamic micro-tuning
• Resizable user interface (not N version)
• MIDI Learn – all parameters can be controlled by MIDI CC
• Plugin supports Windows and macOS (32 bit and 64 bit)