Wobbles, growls, reese basses and 808 slides on a black anodized panel with walnut cheeks: three oscillators with FM, a driven filter, two tempo-synced LFOs and cables you drag from jack to jack. Press Play and the 16-step sequencer starts the groove.
Everything a modern bass needs on one panel: no menus, a knob for every job, and patch cables that show what moves what.
Saw, square, pulse, triangle or sine on each oscillator, with unison up to seven voices and a spread knob to make them wide. A sub oscillator holds the bottom, oscillator 3 can frequency-modulate oscillator 1 for metallic edges, and a ring modulator multiplies the first two.
Ten outputs and eighteen inputs. Drag a cable from an OUT jack to an IN jack - LFO 1 to the cutoff for a wobble, the mod envelope to the pitch for an 808 drop - scroll on the jack to set how much, double-click to unplug. The cables hang on the panel, so you see the whole patch at a glance.
A steep 24 dB low-pass for wobbles, 12 dB, high-pass, band-pass and notch, all with drive and key tracking. After it, a vowel filter: send an LFO to its VOWEL input and the bass starts to talk, the growl of riddim and neurofunk.
Sixteen steps with accent, slide and octave on each one, timed on the audio clock so the groove stays tight. Every program brings its own pattern and tempo: press Play, then turn knobs while it runs. Or hold a chord on the arpeggiator, up to four octaves.
Step through them with the arrows next to the amber display; each one sets its tempo and its 16-step pattern.
Dubstep at 140: a saw over a square an octave down into a resonant 24 dB filter, wobbled in eighth notes by LFO 1; the mod wheel speeds it up.
Riddim: FM from oscillator 3, a fold drive and the vowel filter swept by a triplet LFO, so the bass seems to speak.
Drum and bass at 174: two detuned saws in unison, a slow LFO drifting the filter and oscillator 2, chorus.
Neurofunk: a band-pass filter in sixteenths, sample and hold on the vowel and the comb, bit crush and parallel compression.
Trap: a pure sine with a short pitch drop from the mod envelope, tube drive, a long decay and notes that glide.
Acid at 130: one saw into a very resonant filter opened by a snappy envelope, velocity on the brightness, a dotted echo.
Click a key, touch it, or use your computer keyboard: the middle row from A plays the white keys, the row above the black keys, Z and X change octave.
Space or the Play button starts the sequencer with the pattern of the program. Step through the programs with the arrows next to the amber display.
Drag a knob up or down, use the mouse wheel, hold Shift for fine moves and double-click to reset it. The cyan dot on a knob shows its modulation live.
Drag from an OUT jack to an IN jack: LFO 1 to CUTOFF for a wobble, LFO 2 to VOWEL for a growl, MOD ENV to PITCH for a drop. Scroll on the jack to set the amount.
| Type | Polyphonic bass and lead synthesizer with a patch bay, playable on this page, free |
|---|---|
| Oscillators | 3 (saw, square, pulse, triangle, sine), unison 1 to 7 with spread, octave, semitone and fine tune; sub oscillator; noise |
| FM and ring | Oscillator 3 frequency-modulates oscillator 1; ring modulation of oscillators 1 and 2 |
| Filter | LP 24 (two 12 dB stages), LP 12, HP, BP, notch; resonance, drive, envelope amount, key tracking |
| Envelopes | Filter, amplitude and a free modulation envelope |
| LFOs | 2, free or synced to the tempo, retrigger on each note, sample and hold |
| Patch bay | 10 outputs (LFO 1 and 2, filter and mod envelopes, velocity, key, random, mod wheel, VCO 3, noise), 18 inputs (cutoff, resonance, pitch, each oscillator, FM, VCA, pan, sub, noise, ring, vowel, both LFO rates and amounts, comb) |
| Effects | Drive (tube, fold, crush, rectify), vowel filter, comb, chorus, phaser, tempo-synced ping-pong delay, reverb, parallel compression, then a limiter |
| Sequencer | 16 steps with accent, slide and octave per step, on the audio clock |
| Arpeggiator | Up, down, up-down, random, as played; 1 to 4 octaves; 1/4 to 1/32; gate; hold; chord memory |
| Voices | Poly 8, mono, or legato with glide |
| Display | Oscilloscope, spectrum and X-Y, each oscillator's waveform, the filter curve moving with its LFO, amber display, needle VU meter |
| Input | Mouse, touch and computer keyboard by key position (QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ); MIDI keyboard in the studio app |
| Requirements | Any modern browser with Web Audio - Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari |
A wobble is an LFO moving a filter; a growl is an LFO moving a vowel filter; an 808 drop is an envelope moving the pitch. On most synths these links hide in a menu. On the SX-2 each one is a cable you can see, follow and pull out, which makes it the quickest way to understand how a bass sound is built.
Dubstep sits around 140 BPM, drum and bass around 174, and a wobble only works when the LFO follows the beat. Each program on the SX-2 sets its tempo, and both LFOs can lock to it in note values, so a wobble in eighth notes stays in eighth notes whatever the tempo.
The SX-2 on this page is free and needs no account. In GOONS Studio it shares the studio tempo with the drum machines and the sequencer, takes a MIDI keyboard, records into a take and saves your patches as projects - with a 7 days free trial, no card required. For a polyphonic lead, try the SX-1 Silverline.
Yes. The SX-2 at the top of this page is free, with no account and nothing to install. It runs in your browser with the Web Audio API, without samples.
That is what it is built for: wobble and growl basses at 140 BPM, reese and neurofunk basses at 174, plus trap 808s, UK drill glides and acid lines among its 14 programs.
Drag from an OUT jack to an IN jack to connect a modulation source to a destination, for example LFO 1 to the filter cutoff. Scroll on the jack or the cable to set the amount, and double-click to unplug it.
The middle row of letters plays the white keys and the row above the black keys, starting from C; Z and X move down or up an octave, and Space starts the sequencer. Keys are read by position, so it works the same on QWERTY, AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards.
No. It is an original GOONS design: the panel, the sound engine and the programs. It borrows the idea of patch cables from modular systems and the knob-per-function layout of high-end analog keyboards, but no real instrument has this panel or this sound.
The SX-2 is free, with no account. GOONS Studio adds drum machines, a sequencer and a mixer that play together - free for 7 days, no card required.
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