subforge is a from-scratch 808 & bass synthesizer. Every sound is rendered live with raw Web Audio — no samples, ever. Build it, play it, download a clean .wav, save it as a preset, or share it with the community. Tip: hover almost any control for a one-line explanation.
sound engine
Each 808 stacks two oscillator layers — osc a and osc b — blended with the morph / blend control. Each layer has its own waveform (sine, triangle and analog / folded shapes), octave / semitone / fine tuning, drive, level and a timing offset. Set the global note and octave at the top to tune the whole 808, and watch the note readout to stay in key.
pitch drop
The signature 808 move: pitch drop slides the pitch down at the very start and drop time sets how fast. A deep, slow drop gives that diving sub attack; a short one adds a punchy knock.
transient & harmonics
The transient sculpts the first few milliseconds — choose a shape (clean, punch, click, metallic, gritty, deep…) and dial punch, pitch and time for the attack. harmonics layer tuned overtones on top of the sub for presence and cut-through on small speakers.
envelope
The orange shape over the waveform is the amplitude envelope — attack, decay, sustain, release. Drag the handles directly on the waveform to sculpt it: a short decay is a tight kick, a long one is a booming sub. The output gain handle also lives on the waveform, and double-clicking a handle resets it.
fx rack
Stack effects to colour the sound. Drag cards to reorder, toggle each one on/off, or hit bypass to A/B the whole rack. random fx rolls a fresh chain, mutate fx re-rolls the params of your current effects, and the count slider sets how many. Effects with a screen (filter, eq, erosion…) are draggable right on their visual. Full list below.
effects — what each one does
filter shapes brightness: cut highs (lowpass) or lows (highpass). drag the dot — x = cutoff, y = resonance, plus drive & mix.
eq three bands (low / mid / high). drag each point to boost or cut; scroll a point to change its q (width).
distortion hard clipping for grit and edge — squares off the peaks. drive, tone and mix.
saturator warm, soft clipping — rounds the peaks for analog thickness without harshness.
reverb adds space and a decaying tail — from tight room to huge hall.
delay echoes that repeat and fade — set the time, feedback and mix.
chorus doubles & detunes the sound for width and shimmer.
flanger sweeping comb filter — that jet / whoosh movement.
bitcrush lo-fi: reduces bit depth & sample rate for a crunchy, digital feel.
erosion ableton-style grit — modulated short delay adds noisy or metallic texture. drag: x = freq, y = width.
bloom harmonic bloom — adds bright overtones that swell on top of the sub.
sub sub bass — layers a clean low sine under the sound for weight on big systems.
ott multiband upward compression — that loud, in-your-face modern tone.
exciter adds sparkle and air up top — presence without turning up the highs.
unison stacks detuned voices for a thick, wide, super-saw style layer.
presets & banks
Save any sound as a preset in the browser, and load ready-made starting points from the built-in factory bank. You can also copy a preset's code to paste into another session or hand to a friend.
sharing
Hit share to publish an 808 to the community — you name it and pick up to 3 tags. You can also share a whole fx chain from the rack: it becomes a reusable chain anyone can drop onto their own 808. Sharing is always free and unlimited.
credits & pro
You get 300 free credits every day (they reset daily — no stacking). Downloading a .wav costs 100 credits; building, tweaking, importing, favoriting and sharing are always free. Run out and you can top up with credit packs or go Pro for unlimited downloads.
community
Two feeds — 808s and fx chains — sorted by hot / new / top, filtered by tags, and searchable by name or producer. On any card you can play it with the real engine, vote it up or down, ♥ favorite it, load it into your workshop, or download the .wav. For fx chains, play and load chain apply the chain to your current 808 in real time. Click any @producer to open their profile.
account & avatar
Set your producer name (shown on everything you share) and pick an avatar colour — tap a swatch or the rainbow for a custom colour, then apply. Your colour follows you across the workshop and the community. You can also change your email and manage your plan from the account menu.
quick tips
• random then mutate is the fastest way to stumble onto a vibe. • Long decay + a deep pitch drop + a touch of saturation = a classic trap 808. • Drag the dots on the filter / eq / erosion screens to shape them fast; scroll an eq point to change its Q. • Keep an eye on the note readout up top to stay in key. • Everything you make is yours — no watermarks, no samples, no clearance headaches.
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preset browser
fx chain browser
output—∿ env
chaos 0%
01
shape
root
stereo 0
shape
punch 0
pitch 40
time 45
offset 0
wave
interval 7
octave 1
level 0
decay 0
drive 0
attack 0
sustain 0
02
oscillators
ab50%
03
effects
count 3
04
info
subforge is a from-scratch 808 & bass synth. Every sound is rendered live with raw Web Audio — no samples — then you play it, download it as a clean .wav, or keep it as a preset. Here is how it all fits together. tip: hover any control for a one-line explanation.
signal flow
two oscillators blend into one voice, layered with a kick-thump and an optional harmony note, run through your effect rack, sculpted by the envelope (applied after the effects, so release also ends fx tails), finished by a transient shaper, then gained, widened and sent to the output.
transport & playback
play auditions the sound — the 1-shot / loop toggles sit at the top right of the screen (loop keeps repeating and updates live as you tweak). spacebar plays from anywhere. random builds a fresh, musical 808 (smart, not chaotic) — it now shapes the whole instrument: oscillators, blend mode, occasional polarity flips and release tails, kick and effects. push the chaos slider next to it for wilder results. mutate nudges the current one, undo / redo walk your history, reset returns to defaults. download names your 808, exports the .wav and saves it as a preset in one step — every export carries an inaudible DRAYKI signature.
tip — scroll the wheel over any slider for step-by-step control (one notch at a time; small params move one increment, wide ranges scale up); hold shift for bigger jumps.
keyboard
play notes straight from your computer keyboard — a – k are the keys of one octave, and the layout is read automatically (azerty / qwerty) so it always matches your real keys. z / x shift the octave down / up.
the waveform window
The big scope shows the real rendered output, with an amplitude (Y) axis down the side. The envelope is sculpted directly on it: drag A for attack, S for decay length and sustain level, R for release. Double-click clears it; the ∿ env button hides or shows it. On the right edge sits a vertical gain fader for the output level — drag it up / down, double-click to reset to 100%.
envelope — sculpted on the waveform
download — opens a small dialog to name your 808, then exports the .wav and saves it as a preset in one move. Every export carries an inaudible DRAYKI signature.
preset browser (top bar)
The bar at the very top shows the current preset. Use ‹ › to step through every preset, or click the name to open the full browser.
Inside: banks on the left, presets on the right — factory (read-only), my presets (your default save spot) and any custom banks you make. + new bank creates one, ✎ renames, × deletes. Drag a preset onto a bank to move it. export bank / import bank save and load a bank as .json — good for backups or sharing.
At the bottom: name + save preset, plus copy code / load code to share one preset as a text string.
01 · shape
root / octave set the pitch. blend crossfades between oscillator A and B (0 = only A, 100 = only B). stereo widens the highs while keeping the sub mono (club-safe). Output gain now lives on the waveform (see below).
Three tabs sit here too (each has its own on / off switch, so you can a/b a layer instantly). punch — a low kick-thump at the onset, with a shape (clean / snap / punch / boom / tight / thump / click / distort), amount up to 200, plus pitch, time, and an offset to push the hit a few ms later. harmony — a simple 3rd voice: waveform, interval, octave, level, with its own decay & drive. transient — a full transient designer on the whole sound, post-fx: attack ±100 snaps or softens the hit, sustain ±100 lifts or shortens the tail.
press ? anytime for keyboard shortcuts.
the envelope on the screen is applied after the effects. drag a · s · r to shape it and drag between the points to curve each segment. the r point is where the sound ends: pull it left to end the sound earlier (it also cuts reverb and delay tails), push it right for a longer ride, and park it at the right edge for the full natural length. double-click a point or a segment to reset just that one; double-click empty space to reset the whole envelope.
two browsers keep your work: the preset browser (top bar) stores whole sounds, the fx chain browser (section 03) stores racks in banks. both have save, import / export, and a share code — copy the code, send it to anyone, they paste it and hit load.
02 · oscillators
Each oscillator (A & B) has 13 waveforms (sine, triangle, saw, square, fold, metal, organ…) or sample mode — drop your own audio onto a panel. Per oscillator: octave / semitone / fine tuning, pitch drop + drop time (the classic 808 glide), attack / decay / drive / level, and an offset to delay that layer — handy to stagger kick and body. The live scope shows each voice (a ø badge appears when its polarity is flipped); fold a panel with [–] to save space. The morph bar above the panels blends a and b — pick the blend mode: morph (equal-power crossfade), linear, stack (a stays, b layers on top), or ring (fades into a×b ring modulation — metallic, gnarly).
03 · effects
The rack starts empty. + add effect picks from the list, drag the ⧉ handle to reorder, the checkbox enables/disables, × removes. fx chains are one-click racks. flick through them with the ‹ › arrows above the rack (the bar shows the active chain and its effects as tags), or open the chain browser for the full picture: three built-in banks — clean (mix-ready glue), creative (texture & space), unhinged (destruction) — plus your chains. hit save next to the arrows to store the current rack. bypass mutes the whole rack. random fx re-rolls the settings of the effects you already have switched on — it never adds or drops one.
distortion
soft / hard / fold / foldback / tube shaping, with tone & mix.
bitcrush
bit-depth + sample-rate reduction for lo-fi grit.
filter
low / high / band-pass or notch, with cutoff & resonance.
eq
draggable 3-band tone shaper (low shelf, mid bell, high shelf), ±18 db each. for surgical cuts, reach for filter instead.
compressor
threshold / ratio / makeup for control & glue.
saturator
warm tanh drive with a tone tilt.
reverb
room / hall / plate / spring space, size & mix.
delay
echoes with time, feedback & mix.
chorus
lush detuned doubling.
flanger
sweeping jet-like comb.
unison
stereo detuned spread.
sub bass
adds a bass layer locked to C — pick the octave (C0–C3) on its graph — with added harmonics for presence, rbass / bx_boom style. weight that still reads on small speakers.
exciter
adds high harmonics so the 808 cuts on small speakers.
bloom
synthesizes extra harmonic notes around the detected pitch, following the sound’s own envelope. pick the mode (which intervals) and the shape of the added notes, then frame them with the two reach lines on the graph — drag the right line to cap the highest note, drag the left line to cut the lowest ones (park it at the left edge to let everything through). tone, smear and mix finish it.
ott
interactive 3-band up/down compressor, xfer-style and extreme — ratios up to ~30:1 both ways with per-band makeup and a glue soft-clip. drag each band’s amount + the two crossovers; depth & time on top. push the bands for the full slammed sound.
Both eq and ott have draggable displays right in their card:
ott — 3 bands + crossovers
workflow tips
Hit random a few times to find a starting point (hover anything to see what it does).
Shape the body in oscillators (decay = length, pitch drop = the glide).
Sculpt the envelope right on the waveform (A / S / R).
Add weight & character in effects — sub bass, saturator, then ott to glue.
Tighten the hit with punch and the transient tab.
download — name the 808, export the .wav and save the preset in one step.