Rob Papen SubBoomBass Review

            That knock, the low end, the rumble, the rattle; these are phrases that we all use to describe that one thing that Skrillex tends to drop. I’m talking about nothing more than, the bass. We all have our favorite tracks that we intently listen to, waiting to be overcome with a look of having a spoonful of vinegar held to your nose. That, my friend, is dropping the bass (not to be confused with base as in baseball, or the internationally known Rob Base). In our journey’s to get that perfect low end our good friend Rob Papen has just the product for you. Meet SubBoomBass; an incredibly designed synth to help you create your own bass tones, and packed with literally hundreds of presets at your disposal to make noise with.

Upon first opening SubBoomBass, you’ll be taken aback by the crazy amount of knobs involved. Really all of this to create a bass sound? Well, let us break it down. SubBoomBass is divided into sections that will help you mold your sound. Starting from the top middle left you will find the 2 oscillators powering the synth. In the waveform sections you will find over 35 different ones to choose from to help sculpt your sound. Ranging from the straight sine wave, to square waves. But also in the mix we find 3 different kick drums, cajons, congas, white noise, and much more. You can also adjust the volume, speed, tone and other things in these as well. Oscillator 2 adds the ability to control FM as well as ring modulation to create your sound as well.

To the right of that we have the filter which has 14 different filter types including comb, and vocal. The filter is very detailed and even includes a filter path which can be ran in series, parallel or split to the two effects built right in containing  over 20 effects. There is also a second filter to the right containing 6 filters and only a cutoff knob. After that is the AMP section with basic ADSR, velocity and volume control.

Also built in is a 16 step sequencer.  You have complete control over tune, slide, and velocity of each step. In addition you have control of speed of the sequence to our host DAW (i.e. ¼ the tempo, 2X the tempo) to really add flavor to these sequences. Also they can be set free, or you can get extremely wacky and program the steps to the oscillators.

SubBoomBass is crawling with presets for the user that just isn’t a sound designer. There are over 15 libraries that Papen and his team have created to get outstanding use out of this VST immediately. Some of these sounds are extremely heavy and will take up just about everything 150Hz and below in your mix. And that’s exactly what we want our bass to do. This is one of my personal favorites from the Explorer 2 Bundle. On a scale of 1-16 pads (1 being alcohol free beer and 16 being served complimentary bottles of bubbly in VIP), SubBoomBass checks in at a solid 13 pads. SubBoomBass is a very straight to the point, no nonsense VST that specializes in a specific type of sound that will quickly become your go to for creating those custom sounds. Make sure you add the Explorer 2 bundle to your collection today and take advantage of this.

James Jaxin (@jaxin414)

Forum Moderator MaschineMasters.com

Product Review Specialist MaschineMasters.com