Bass drum
Level · Tone · Decay
V80 16-voice circuit instrument
Voltage 80. Every hit starts as electricity.
A complete drum machine modelled on the Roland TR-808. Sixteen voices are synthesized from resonators, shared noise, a six-oscillator metallic bank, envelopes and nonlinear control stages—then calibrated against documented hardware recordings.
- No recorded one-shots or round robins
- Measured control laws and hardware defaults
- Velocity drives the accent control voltage
- Closed hat terminates the open-hat envelope
- CLAP, VST3 and Audio Unit at launch
01 The complete kit
Sixteen voices. Nothing hidden.
Each abbreviation is the instrument name exposed to players. Controls follow the implemented panel and parameter contract; paired tom/conga and rim/claves voices share circuit sections without sharing recorded audio.
Snare drum
Level · Tone · Snappy · revision
Low tom
Level · Low tuning
Mid tom
Level · Mid tuning
High tom
Level · High tuning
Low conga
Level · Low tuning
Mid conga
Level · Mid tuning
High conga
Level · High tuning
Rimshot
Level
Handclap
Level
Cowbell
Level
Cymbal
Level · Tone · Decay
Open hat
Level · Decay
Closed hat
Level · open-hat choke
Maracas
Level
Claves
Level
Whole-machine controls: Master level and Accent depth. Accent changes the trigger voltage driving each voice; it is not a gain layer added after synthesis.
02 The low end
A kick that rings. Not a sample that stretches.
The body is a loaded bridged-T resonator settled at 49.5 Hz. Its Decay law is fitted across five positions of a documented unit, from a tight 90 ms T60 to a 3.69 second boom.
The surrounding circuit moves the isolated 45.7 Hz calculation to the measured playing frequency.
The long tail remains a live resonator state, including retrigger interaction and the slow pitch sigh.
A harder trigger drives the pulse shaper and tone path differently, changing spectrum as well as level.
Current MIDI boundary
Voltage 80 is a drum instrument in the current build: MIDI notes select voices; they do not chromatically retune the kick. Note tracking, glide and a dedicated saturation control are not advertised as current features.
03 In the host
Mapped for pads. Predictable in sessions.
The current plug-in accepts a GM-flavoured drum map, translates velocity into each circuit’s accent range and exposes one stereo main output.
- BD
- 35, 36
- SD
- 38, 40
- RS
- 37
- CP
- 39
- LT
- 41, 45
- MT
- 43, 47
- HT
- 48, 50
- LC / MC / HC
- 64 / 63 / 62
- CH
- 42, 44
- OH
- 46
- CY
- 49, 51, 57
- CB
- 56
- MA
- 69, 70
- CL
- 75
- Velocity → accent CV. Higher velocity increases the circuit drive according to the voice’s measured accent law.
- CH → OH choke. A closed-hat trigger terminates the open-hat envelope; note-off messages do not.
- Deterministic recall. Identical input and seed produce identical samples across changing buffer partitions.
- Stereo main output. The current plug-in declares one stereo output; multi-output routing is not a current product claim.
04 Circuit instrument or sample folder?
No round robins. No library management.
Voltage 80 does not choose among recordings. It advances the same shared sources and circuit states that make the voices related.
Repeated hits keep moving.
The shared noise bus and metallic oscillators free-run between triggers, so repeated hits are not identical even though the full performance remains reproducible.
Every note selects an instrument.
The drum map triggers a dedicated synthesized voice. Nothing is pitch-shifted from a master recording and no round-robin slot is selected.
Nothing extra to manage.
No one-shot folder, velocity-layer library or content pack sits behind the plug-in. Install the instrument; the circuits make the kit.
05 Voltage 80 FAQ
Three direct answers.
Does Voltage 80 sound like the hardware?
Voltage 80 is modelled on the Roland TR-808. Its circuits and control laws are checked against documented hardware recordings, including kick, snare, tom, conga, cowbell, handclap and open-hat measurements. It is an independent product and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Roland.
Can it make the long kick boom?
Yes. The kick is a synthesized 49.5 Hz loaded resonator, and its measured decay law reaches 3.69 seconds T60 at the top of the Decay control. The tail is generated by the resonator rather than stretched from a sample.
Does it replace a sample pack?
For this 16-voice kit, it can. Every hit is synthesized at trigger time, shared noise and metallic sources keep free-running between hits, and there is no round-robin library or content pack to download. A recorded sample pack remains a different tool when you specifically want captured processing or a particular recorded unit.
Trademark notice. The Roland TR-808 is referenced only to identify the hardware studied and measured. Roland and TR-808 are trademarks of Roland Corporation. Voltage 80 and Voltage Drums are independent products, not affiliated with or endorsed by Roland.
06 Hear the engine
Sixteen voices. One shared machine.
Play fixed-seed engine renders, select any voice and trace its path from trigger to output.
Machine · circuit · proofOpen the Voltage 80 tour