Lowdown

Name: Lowdown
Price: 29 USD
Author: Cherry Audio

by Cherry Audio · Synth · Bass pedal synth emulation

Not rated yet

Lowdown is a monophonic bass synth modeled on a classic dual-oscillator bass pedal synthesizer, with an animated foot-pedal keyboard on screen.

It keeps the controls simple, with two oscillators, a 24 dB ladder filter and a decay control, and costs $29.

Best for: Bass, Keys & Synths. Genres: Rock & Indie, Electronic & EDM, Pop.

Keywords: basses, monophonic, hardware emulation, classic, 70s, 80s, brass, drones, fat, leads, minimal controls, simple.

What it does

Lowdown recreates the dual-oscillator bass pedal synth heard with Rush, Yes, Genesis, U2 and The Police in the 1970s and 80s. Cherry Audio pitches it as "The Fattest Floor Synth, Now on Desktop", with DSP by Mark Barton and a deliberately small set of controls.

Oscillators: two oscillators with a "constant-beat" design and Hz/V scaling, which keeps the beating between them steady and limits phase cancellation; oscillator B's frequency is programmable.
Filter: a 24 dB/octave lowpass ladder filter with Cutoff, Emphasis and Contour controls.
Pedal controls: one-button Glide, Decay and Octave switches, plus Loudness and Filter foot sliders as on the original.
Programmable section: programmable Tune, Beat, Glide, Octave and Mix settings.
Voicing: monophonic, with full MIDI control and DAW automation.
Presentation: an animated pedal keyboard and 14 floor surfaces to stand it on.
Presets: over 40 factory presets, including Bull, Tuba and Bass, and unlimited user presets.

There are no built-in effects. A free 30-day demo is fully working apart from periodic white noise.

Source: Cherry Audio product page

When to use it

Lowdown is the pick when you want that one sound, the deep, sustained prog-rock pedal bass, quickly and cheaply. Compared with Cherry Audio's Miniverse or Arturia's Mini V it has far fewer controls, no waveform choice and no effects, but it gets to the pedal tone with almost no setup. Against a broad analog-style synth such as Diva it is narrow, yet it costs a fraction as much. A KVR user found it more convincing than other pedal-bass plugins, even with fewer controls.

Best for: sustained bass drones, pedal bass lines under guitars, sub layers and the odd fat mono lead.
Genres: prog and classic rock, synth-pop, new wave and electronic.
Look elsewhere if: you want waveform choice, modulation or leads with more movement; Miniverse or Diva do much more.

What producers say

Users praise it as an authentic, convincing recreation, with the minimal control set the only reservation.

KVR users rate it 4.67 out of 5 from 3 reviews; one heard it as convincing "all the way down to the natural modulation", another called it a "superb simulation".
Criticisms: one KVR reviewer missed a waveform selector for the oscillators, which some competing plugins have, while still calling it the most authentic of them.

KVR user reviews

Where to buy

Tutorials and reviews

Similar plugins

Kee Bass by Martinic · Vintage electronic bass synth · Free
Miniverse by Cherry Audio · Minimoog Model D emulation · $49
Moog Minimoog by Universal Audio · Analog mono synth · $49
Mini V by Arturia · Minimoog emulation · $149
Mini D by AIR Music Technology · Ladder-filter mono synth · $99
Prodigy by Martinic · Moog Prodigy monosynth emulation · $39.99
Monark by Native Instruments · Minimoog-style mono synth · $48
SubBoomBass 2 by Rob Papen · Bass synth · $69
Bassline by AIR Music Technology · Monophonic bass synth · $29

All synths