One of the questions I see turn up on music boards all the time is “How do I get that acid house sound?” or “how do I make a 303 sound?”. So I thought I’d show you the basic settings I tend to use.

Firstly I still find that the Subtractor gives a more authentic “acid” sound than the Thor, even though the Thor has an 18db filter I find the actual sound of the Subtractor filter is better for emulating the 303.

Ok so firstly right click and create a Subtractor then click and create a matrix pattern sequencer to drive it.

Now the settings you need are as follows:

1. Firstly the 303 is a monosynth so set the Subtractors Portamento = 25, Polyphony = 1 and mode to “legato”
2. Set Osc 1 to a sawtooth waveform. Oct = 2, Osc Mix = 0 (IE: 100% set to Osc 1)
3. Set Filter 1 Frequency = 32, and Resonance = 55 on a 24 Db Low pass filter.
4. Set the Filter envelope to Attack = 0, Decay = 44, Sustain = 18, Release = 44.
5. Set the Amplitude Envelope to Attack = 10, Decay = 85, Sustain = 15, Release = 15.
6. Set the Filter frequency Mod wheel amount = 20 and the Filter Resonance Mod wheel amount = 100.

Now you should have something that looks like this

and sounds something like this (If you tweak the mod wheel during playback).

Ok so that’s pretty good but not as raucous or nasty as a lot of acid techno or hard house style tracks would use. So obviously the next step is to add a bit of distortion into the mix.

Simply drop a Scream 4 sound destruction unit in line with the Subtractor and set the distortion algorithm to “Tape” (The Tape is setting is good for making thing s sound a little more analogue and also adding loudness via a little bit of compression). Now set the Tape algorithms speed = 40 and compression = 64.

Your synth should now sound a little more like this.

One other setting you can play with to modify the type of 303 sound you get is the Amp envelope decay (for shorter and longer notes), this was one of the settings that tended to get tweaked on the original TB303.