A couple of things I noticed while I was doing that MIDI editing: First, the synth has a note range of four octaves. It's not velocity-sensitive. However, do you remember how in the sequencer mode there are accented and unaccented notes? If you send a MIDI note on a message that has a velocity greater than 96 it will send that out as an accented note, so it's sort of almost velocity-sensitive. Donner, one of the best-known companies for low-budget guitar pedals, is now making synthesizers. That’s interesting news. There is currently no sound demo of the B1 analog bass Synthesizer in the wild. Even without a demo, I’m pretty sure the sound journey is going in the corner of the Roland TB-303/Behringer TD-3. Faithful To The Original】The synthesis engine on Essential B1 is straightforward. With only 1 VCO, 1 VCF, And 1 VCA, You can't get the wrong sound. To get the organic sound texture, we keep the signal path fully analog. There are probably a few other things I’m forgetting, but I’ll finish by saying I have a lot of 303 synths, including TB-303’s, TT-303’s, TB-03, x0xb0x, T8, and the Donner B1 is still useful to me, it brings its own flavour of acid, in particular the filter decay goes nice and short for very choppy acid lines, the resonance also sounds very nice. I think with a few more firmware tweaks it will be even better, for reference I am on the late version as of August 2023 which I think is 1.03.

Okay, enough about the 303. Let's actually hear the synth We've got in front of us. First, let's hear the sawtooth wave. Now, the square wave. Sounds really nice. You can really tell it's analog. Of course, we won't really know anything until we've got a pattern going. Now that we've got our pattern, we can save it. For example, I'm going to save this pattern. By hitting Save here, it blinks and it asks me to basically choose a slot to save it to. I'm going to say Slot 4. Hit Save. It blinks again and now it's saved to slot 4. If I go to 4 and hit play, there's my pattern. So the original db303 had a very distinctive system for sequencing melodies. Some people love it. Some people hate it. But there's no question that that sequencing system is at the core of why acid house music sounds the way it does.Flexible and Versatile Music Studio at Your Fingertips】The B1 controller has MIDI IN/OUT interface connects the B1 to your external MIDI devices for sequencing or as a MIDI controller. Connect external sound sources using the 1/8” audio input. The 1/4" TS mono Main Out carries the main output signal. Recently a video went viral on YouTube by the famous composer and music tutor David Hilowitz (YouTube channel: David Hilowitz Music). His review of the Donner B1 bass synthesizer is one of the most detailed on the internet. " How did I JUST find out about this channel? ", as a comment under the video says. Donner’s take simplifies this significantly, coming with a two-octave pad keyboard, which allows the synth to be played chromatically. Sequencing is more straightforward too; steps are input one by one, allowing users to select a pitch and then input note length and assignslides or accents before moving on to the next step. Overall I’m really impressed. I’m building a live guitar/synth setup and the B1 is tiny yet does everything I want. Hopefully we’ll see some more synthy products heading our way so I can spend the money I saved on this!

On 11 March 2021, China’s National People’s Congress approved the controversial electoral laws for Hong Kong, which aims to ensure a system of “patriots governing Hong Kong”. The reforms expanded the number of seats in the Legco and Chief Executive Election Committee, but reduces the number of directly democratically-elected seats. Hong Kong Government officials and pro-establishment figures have hailed the reforms as a way to shut out “anti-China” forces from the political structure whereas the pro-democracy camp in Hong Kong criticised the reforms as a “major regression” in democracy. The E-4 Voice Tweaker is a compact vocal effects box that promises everything from standard processors to full-on vocal transformers. There are pitch and formant sliders for instant gender switching and robot voice effects (among other things), and you also get the customary automatic pitching/harmonising and vocoder options. No tap write or realtime record, and no ability to record slides or accents in realtime, the TB-303 does not have some of these features but a lot of other clones do. Here's the video review from David Hilowitz's channel, with a full transcript (only edited for reading fluency).So it holds up against its progeny just fine...but against the other 303 clones? Well, as I mentioned, pretty much all of the clones miss a detail or two that winds up altering the sound. And some of that, I'm sure, is due to companies copying the circuitry itself and then calibrating things to sound "good". But the TB-303 DOESN'T "sound good" when up against a "real synth"...and Donner nailed that nasty, skittery, squealy, snarly distorted sound...which is a really big feat, in my opinion. Add to that the ease of programming the sequencer, and you're in a little better territory than the other clones that tried and didn't quite hit that early 1980s mark. Sometimes when pressing the keys when a pattern is playing it will transpose, other times it will clear a note, seems like a bug. The layout of the B1 is straightforward, with the synth controls up at the top, a rubberised silicone keyboard which doubles up for sequencing, and a separate sequencer section off to the right. The synth aspect itself is very simple, and extremely close to the setup of the TB-303, albeit not exactly a clone. Like the 303, the B1 is monophonic, meaning it can only play one note at a time (a common approach for analogue synths). You have a choice of sawtooth and square waves for different basic tones, which then feed into a resonant low-pass filter. An envelope decay control works in tandem with the Depth control in the filter section to modulate the decay time and filter cutoff, and that’s the extent of your options. It’s about as simple as a synth gets, but perfectly sufficient to get those classic acid squelches and deeper, low-resonance basslines. Oh, and it's got a delay. Acid lines sound great with that effect, and Donner seems to have thought ahead there. Sound-wise, the delay isn't as aggressive as you might think, but if you're out doing a DAWless gig, it's excellent to have that right there and ready to go. Again, Donner seems to have done their homework on what the TB-303 needed to have.