Inside the strip
Bass Strip is a DAW channel strip voiced for bass — DI (fingerstyle, pick, slap), post-amp-sim, miked cab and synth bass. Everything sits in one view: no automatic gain compensation, fixed musical routing, and three bass-specific tools built around low-end control: an independent two-band crossover, a per-band preamp slot, and a frequency-limited sidechain ducker.
A three-knob bass gate tuned gently so note tails and sustain survive.
Threshold, Range, Release
With a gain-reduction meter and bypass. Range softens the gate into an expander when you only want to trim noise.
Bass-safe defaults
A slower default release and soft transition keep sustained low notes intact instead of chopping the end of the phrase.
A clean two-band split so lows and highs are processed completely independently.
Linkwitz-Riley, zero-latency
A 24 dB/oct LR4 split with essentially flat magnitude summation and no added latency from the crossover itself.
Click-free and optional
A short crossfade makes toggling and retuning click-free; with Split off the whole signal runs full-band through the LO chain and nothing is lost.
A preamp slot at the front of each band, ready for character models.
Clean today
v1 ships Clean (unity, transparent) on both bands so gain staging is set now and stays compatible.
Tube & Solid coming
The Tube and Solid models appear as visible coming-soon options; the slot and parameter layout are reserved so adding them later changes nothing about your saved state.
A bass-voiced character EQ for musical, Pultec-flavoured tone-shaping per band.
Bass-voiced bands
HPF, Sub, Body, Mids, Top and LPF, with Pultec-style Boost/Attenuation ends and Broad/Tight bells, all voiced for low-end weight and pick/clank definition.
Guided interface
Soft frequency detents, character tooltips, a non-interactive response curve and a Bass Tone Map Reference (rumble to sub to thump to warmth to string noise).
One compressor with three real circuits, applied independently per band.
VCA / FET / Opto
Clean/VCA, FET and Opto, each with its own controls and remembered settings; a Mix control for parallel compression and a gain-reduction meter.
Tuned for bass
A slower default attack on the LO band so the thump is not flattened. No sidechain, no auto-makeup.
Four harmonic-colour voices on each band, latency-matched so a bypassed band stays sample-aligned. Each model keeps its own Drive and Mix.
Tube
Soft, slightly asymmetric, harmonically open.
Tape
Rounder saturation that gently rounds transients and top end with Drive.
Console (EMI TG)
Transformer-forward console colour: a beefy low end with an airy, silky top and 2nd-plus-3rd harmonics — the cleaner, more open of the two new voices.
Germanium (Neve 1057)
Germanium-transistor grit: weighty lows, focused forward mids and a darker top, 2nd-dominant with 3rd rising under drive — the more aggressive, more compressed voice.
The strip's signature dynamic tool — an external-key ducker that can be limited to a frequency band, so the kick makes room for the bass only where they collide.
Band-limited ducking
Threshold, Amount, Release and a Range (default 50-80 Hz). The key is filtered to the Range before detection, so only in-band kick energy ducks the bass; open the Range fully for a conventional ducker.
Clean when idle
Sits after the band sum so its Amount is independent of compressor settings; Listen auditions the removed content, and with no sidechain connected it is bit-exact passthrough at zero latency.
Everything in one flat view, low-end first.
LO/HI tabs, fixed order
One tab per band, fixed per-band order Preamp to EQ to Comp to Sat; with Split off the HI tab dims.
Honest gain staging
Input/Output gain with peak meters and a clip indicator, per-module bypass plus Global Bypass, and no automatic gain compensation.
