Full Bucket Music has announced the release of its new software instrument FB-7999, a synthesizer that simulates the KORG DW-6000 and DW-8000 synths from the 1980s.

The emulation was much requested by users of Full Bucket Music plugins.

As stated above, many folks asked me to build a DW-8000 simulation (someone even suggested that for reference purposes I could buy a DW-6000 offered on a famous internet sales platform). Originally, I was not very fond of the idea (both building and buying it!) because I cannot say that I really miss my old DW-8000 etc. In fact I thought it would be impossible to simulate the DW-8000 because I did not have any reference about the mapping of the abstract parameter values to physical parameter values (How many Hertz is a cutoff frequency of 25? What is I3 in terms of attack time?). But it went the same way as with Fury-800 and I could not stop myself from starting to work on it…

In the mid of August 2021 Gerald Murer from Austria just wrote me a mail where he stated that WhispAir can sound pretty close to his DW-8000. I also remembered that Ben Martin from Portugal (who suggested & helped me to do SequencAir) once said that he was in possession of a DW-6000. So I asked both of them whether they would be so kind to provide me with samples of their devices – a tedious and boring work. But they agreed and did!

It is important to understand that FB-7999 is not a sample player. Instead I used the samples that Ben and Gerald sent me to reconstruct the sound parameters of the original hardware. Plus there are numerous places in the web where one can find additional reference data and sounds.

FB-7999 features

  • Two digital oscillators with 16 + 16 different waveforms.
  • Poly and Unison modes.
  • Built-in pseudo-stereo delay.
  • SysEx data communication, import and export.
  • Extended polyphony (up to 64 voices).
  • Supports MTS-ESP by ODDSound dynamic micro-tuning.
  • Resizable user interface (not “N” version).
  • MIDI Learn – all parameters can be controlled by MIDI CC.
  • Plug-in supports Windows and macOS (32-bit and 64-bit).

The plugin is free to download in VST and AU plugin formats from the Full Bucket Music website.