TBDaits
A 24-engine macro-oscillator voice spanning virtual analog, FM (incl. DX7-style 6-operator synthesis with 3 banks of 32 patches), additive, wavetable, chord, speech, granular, particle / string / modal physical models, and analog drum models — driven by a wrapper-side AHR envelope so held keys sustain and release on key-up.
Available on: Track 12 (Lead2) — selectable alongside Wavetable Osc (default boot host), Mono Synth and TBDings.
Built on: Mutable Instruments Plaits firmware 1.2 (extended 24-engine registry — orange / green / red banks).
Character
TBDaits exposes the full Plaits-1.2 engine set in a single voice. The Model knob picks one of 24 engines; Harm / Timbre / Morph then mean different things per engine (chord type, bank selection, FM index, formant ratio, decay time, …) — the OLED reflects the active engine’s parameter semantics where they’re discrete.
The DX7 engine has 3 instances (banks A / B / C, 32 patches each = 96 total) — sweep Harm to browse patches; the OLED shows A17 / B5 / C30 so you know exactly where you are.
A wrapper-side AHR envelope (Attack / Hold / Release) drives the Plaits LPG so:
- Held keys sustain for as long as you hold them (real keyboard feel)
- Decay knob shapes the release tail per key-up across 5 ms .. 8 s (drone mode at the very top of the knob)
- Velocity scales both amplitude AND DX7 patch-internal timbre routing
- Sequencer steps still re-attack crisply on every trigger
Stereo voicing
TBDaits is a stereo voice. The left channel carries Plaits’ main OUT signal; the right channel carries the engine’s AUX output — typically a sidekick or by-product of the main signal (a different filter tap, an inverted phase, a noise component, etc.). The mixer’s Pan knob blends between them: pan hard left isolates OUT, pan hard right isolates AUX, centre sums both at full level.
Three engines do not emit a distinct AUX — DX7A, DX7B and DX7C output the same signal on both channels. For these engines the Pan knob behaves as conventional left/right balance only.
Engines (Model knob)
24 engines, registry order. DX7A/B/C are highlighted as the headline FM voicings.
| # | Label | Engine | # | Label | Engine |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | East | Virtual Analog VCF | 12 | Add | Additive |
| 1 | PhDi | Phase Distortion | 13 | Wtbl | Wavetable |
| 2 | DX7A | Six-Op DX7 — bank A | 14 | Chrd | Chord |
| 3 | DX7B | Six-Op DX7 — bank B | 15 | Spch | Speech |
| 4 | DX7C | Six-Op DX7 — bank C | 16 | Swrm | Swarm / Granular Cloud |
| 5 | Trrn | Wave Terrain | 17 | Nois | Filtered Noise |
| 6 | SChr | Strings Chorus | 18 | Part | Particle Noise |
| 7 | Chip | Chiptune (Square Chords) | 19 | Strg | Inharmonic String |
| 8 | Dtun | Dual Detune (Virtual Analog) | 20 | Modl | Modal Resonator |
| 9 | Wshp | Waveshaping | 21 | BD | Bass Drum |
| 10 | FM2 | FM (2-op) | 22 | SD | Snare |
| 11 | Frmt | Granular Formant | 23 | HH | Hi-Hat |
Parameters
The default TBDaits performance macro is organised as 3 pages, ordered for live performance: voicing controls on page 1, envelope-driven dramatic controls on page 2, supportive output settings on page 3.
Voice
The 4 main timbral controls. Model + Harm are adjacent because Harm’s display is engine-aware.
| Parameter | What it does |
|---|---|
| Model | Engine selector (24 engines — see table above) |
| Harm | Engine-dependent. DX7 → patch number (A1..A32 / B1..B32 / C1..C32). Wtbl → bank (A..A-, 8 banks). Chrd → chord type (oct / 5 / sus4 / m / m7 / m9 / m11 / 69 / M9 / M7 / M). All other engines → continuous tone control (% display). |
| Timbre | Engine-dependent continuous tone control (e.g. wavefolder amount, formant frequency, mod index, brightness, …) |
| Morph | Engine-dependent continuous tone control (e.g. asymmetry, feedback, decay time, filter type, …) |
Env
Envelope-driven dramatic controls — the drop / build knobs. All four fed by Plaits’ internal envelope.
| Parameter | What it does |
|---|---|
| Decay | Release time of the wrapper’s AHR envelope feeding Plaits’ internal LPG (5 ms .. 8 s exponential; drone mode at the very top of the knob holds the envelope indefinitely). The release tail is most audible on engines without strong internal envelopes (East / Phase Distortion / Wavetable / Speech). Percussive and resonator engines (Modal, Particle, Bass Drum, Snare, Hi-Hat) have their own decay shapes baked in — Decay still shapes the LPG, but the engine-internal envelope often dominates the audible tail. |
| FMod | Envelope → frequency modulation depth |
| TMod | Envelope → timbre modulation depth |
| MMod | Envelope → morph modulation depth |
Shape
Supportive output settings — set per voice and rarely touched live.
| Parameter | What it does |
|---|---|
| Level | Voice-internal output gain — applied post-engine and pre-LPG. This is independent of the mixer track level on the Mixer screen: Voice Level shapes how hard the engine drives Plaits’ soft-clipper (affecting timbre / saturation feel), Track Level adjusts the per-track contribution to the master bus (affecting the mix only). Use Voice Level for tone, Track Level for balance. |
| Color | LPG character: VCF (filter sweep) / Mix (blend) / VCA (amplitude only). Mostly-audible on the analog / wavetable / granular / modal / additive engines. On DX7A / DX7B / DX7C the engine’s internal velocity-to-timbre routing overrides the LPG colour input, so Color has minimal effect on those banks. |
| Freq | Pitch detune (±12 semitones) around the played MIDI note |
Browse the 96 DX7 patches by selecting Model = DX7A / DX7B / DX7C and sweeping the Harm knob. The OLED reads
A17,B5,C30etc. Lock Harm per step in the sequencer to step through DX7 patches across a pattern.
Crank Decay to the very top for drone mode — the envelope never releases, holding the LPG open indefinitely. Combine with the Noise / Speech / Modal engines for textures that sustain past key-up.
Use FMod / TMod / MMod for performance drama — automate or hand-sweep these for build-ups and drops. Each scales how much Plaits’ internal envelope modulates the corresponding voicing parameter.
Playing TBDaits
With the sequencer: per-step velocity is honored on every trigger (re-attack snaps the envelope to the new velocity). Lock Harm per-step to browse DX7 patches inside a pattern. Lock Model per-step for radical engine switches mid-bar.
With an external keyboard: held keys sustain for as long as you physically hold them — the wrapper’s AHR envelope tracks key-state directly. Velocity drives both amplitude (via wrapper master gain) and DX7 patch-internal timbre routing (via accent). Decay shapes the release tail on key-up.
In the sequencer: each step has a fixed length (Length / Gate setting); at step-end the sequencer emits a NOTE OFF and the wrapper’s release phase begins per the Decay knob. Holding a sequencer step longer does not extend the gate beyond its programmed length — for held / drone notes use Decay = drone-mode (knob top) or play live with a keyboard.
See also
- Mono Synth — single-engine Braids-based monophonic alternative.
- PolyPad — chord-pad voice with built-in chord generator.
- TBD03 — 303-style mono bass.
Origin & credits
TBDaits wraps the Mutable Instruments Plaits firmware 1.2 voice (extended 24-engine registry) for the TBD-16 PicoSeqRack plugin host.
Plaits is © 2018-2021 Émilie Gillet, MIT-licensed (see plaits/LICENSE). Firmware 1.2 adds 8 “orange-bank” engines (Virtual Analog VCF, Phase Distortion, Six-Op DX7 ×3, Wave Terrain, Strings Chorus, Chiptune) on top of Plaits’ original 16-engine palette.
The wrapper around Plaits adds:
- A wrapper-side AHR envelope so held keys sustain and release on key-up (Plaits hardware default behaviour assumes an external CV envelope on the LEVEL input)
- Per-engine semantic OLED rendering for HARMONICS (DX7 patch number, Wavetable bank letter, Chord name)
- A silence gate so drone-style engines (Noise / Speech / Modal at high decay) don’t hum continuously when no notes are playing
-
Per-instance LCG and PSRAM placement-new for the Voice + 16 KB allocator workspace
- DSP source:
plaits/dsp/voice.{h,cc}and theplaits/dsp/engine{,2}/*.{h,cc}engines - TBD-16 wrapper:
rack/RackTBDaits.{hpp,cpp}(PicoSeqRack) - Related reading: Plaits manual