An acid voice and a 64-step sequencer in one window.

v0.4.0 · VST3 · AU · Standalone · macOS 11.0+ · Apple Silicon and Intel · 39 presets

after Donato Dozzy · Surgeon · Plastikman · Elektron parameter locks · Moog Grandmother

Why it exists

One acid line, mutating over sixteen bars, is the track.

akaBleep is a monophonic instrument for the bleep-bloop lineage of hypnotic techno, the school where one acid line mutating slowly over sixteen bars is the track.

Stock racks can get you there, but it means wiring a synth to a sequencer to a fistful of utilities and automation lanes. akaBleep folds the whole loop into one window: one plugin, on one MIDI track, that you can perform.

A short pitch blip into a resonant low-pass is the acid bloop. Push cutoff down and resonance up and the filter starts to talk.

The voice

Two multi-mode oscillators, each with tune, level, pulse width and a two-operator FM pair. A sub oscillator, a ring modulator and white noise feed the same mixer, then a tanh drive stage runs into a ladder filter.

Three envelopes shape it. An amp ADSR, a filter ADSR sweeping five octaves either way, and an exponential pitch decay, which is the one that makes the blip. Glide and an LFO round the voice out.

An akaElders mode opens a Grandmother-inspired expanded patch: oscillator sync, extra noise, and modulation routes the standard panel does not expose.

Parameter locks, across 64 steps

Four pages of sixteen steps, with variable pattern length and around forty parameters lockable per step. There are two ways in. REC captures locks live as you twist, and EDIT selects a step so that any knob you touch locks to it.

Each step carries a chord of up to four notes, plus velocity, gate and a probability. Generators cover four-on-the-floor, off-beats, eighths, Euclidean 3, 5 and 7, and sparse or dense random fills.

The sequencer phase-syncs to host PPQ, so patterns land where the transport says they should rather than where the plugin happened to start. Probability is what keeps a static loop alive over time.

Ruining it

The drag-to-wire patch bay has left. Wiring modulation by hand is a different instrument from an acid box with a sequencer, and it was sharing an editor with one; it is becoming akaPatch, which keeps this voice and gives the cables a window of their own.

After the voice, the master chain runs chorus into phaser into bitcrush into ping-pong delay into reverb. Each stage auto-bypasses at zero mix, each is P-lockable per step, and the whole rack has its own preset bank and a randomiser.

That is the fast route from a clean bleep to a ruined, perfect dub-techno smear.

What it does

6 of them

Forty parameters, lockable per step.

Monophonic acid voice

Two oscillators, sub and ring mod through a tanh drive into a ladder filter, with an exponential pitch decay for the blip.

64 steps, ~40 lockable parameters

Four pages of sixteen, REC and EDIT workflows, and per-step chords, velocity, gate and chance.

A screen that watches the output

The display beside the step grid is a live spectral field, blooming from the centre and driven by the instrument's own filterbank rather than by a clock.

Master FX chain

Chorus, phaser, bitcrush, ping-pong delay and reverb, all P-lockable, with a preset bank and a randomiser.

Pattern generators

Four-on-the-floor, off-beats, eighths, Euclidean 3, 5 and 7, and sparse or dense random fills.

Locked to the host

Phase-syncs to host PPQ, with undo and redo across the sequencer and the voice.

Signal flow

from the repo

Two oscillators in. One ruined bleep out.

        ┌─ osc 1 ─┐
        ├─ osc 2 ─┤
 MIDI ─▶┤  sub    ├─▶ mix ─▶ tanh drive ─▶ ladder filter ─▶ amp env ─▶┐
        └─ ring ──┘              ▲              ▲                       │
                                 │              │                       │
        LFO · filter env · noise · velocity  ──▶ modulation             │
                                                                        ▼
        out ◀── reverb ◀── ping-pong delay ◀── bitcrush ◀── phaser ◀── chorus

The interface

3 views

Eight themes ship. This is Magenta.

The synth page, running. The display left of the step grid is a live spectral field, and the lit steps decay behind the playhead

The same panel on the light theme — every colour is derived, so neither theme is the afterthought

Stopped. A Euclidean 5/16 pattern, with parameter locks marked on the steps that hold them

Presets

39 factory

Thirty-nine patches, and somewhere to keep your own.

Genre-curated factory patches, plus a user store with favourites.

Acid WobbleLiquid AcidDetroit StabAphex BellSub BleepR2D2Cosmic DriftWarp BleepVinyl BellPhase WalkerCrystal PluckVapor Wash

Specifications

read from dc7a836

Eighty-one parameters, and the codes your DAW files it under.

Version: v0.4.0
Loads as: akaBleep
Formats: VST3 · AU · Standalone
Category: Instrument · Synth
Platform: macOS 11.0+ · Apple Silicon and Intel
Voice: Monophonic
Sequencer: 64 steps across 4 pages
Parameters: 81 automatable
UI themes: 2 (light and dark)
Engine: JUCE 8 · C++17
Tested in: Ableton Live
Bundle ID: com.akaieuan.akableep
Plugin code: Akeu / Blep

Version, formats, codes and platform are read from the plugin’s own CMakeLists at the commit above, not retyped here.

Where it is

v0.4.0, and not yet notarised.

Shipping

Acid voice, 64-step sequencer and master FX chain
39 factory presets and a user store
Universal binary, Apple Silicon and Intel

A modulation section, replacing what the patch bay used to reach
Developer ID signing and notarisation
A signed .pkg installer
A pluginval strict pass across a multi-DAW matrix

The other two

Enzyme

Four lo-fi layers drawing on one shared voice pool.

i4

One sample, five engines, resampled back into itself.