Design your own 808. Download the WAV.
Pick a note, shape the pitch-drop attack, set decay, drive and tone — and download a tuned, 24-bit 808 that is yours, royalty-free. The whole synth runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded, nothing is sampled, nothing to clear.
Note
Decay
1.2 s
Pitch drop
24 st
Drop time
30 ms
Drive
35 %
Tone
8.0 kHz
Click
40 %
What makes an 808 sound like an 808
The original TR-808 bass drum was a bridged-T oscillator that pitched down as it decayed — a deep tone with a short, higher-pitched attack blip. Modern producers stretched that decay into a bass instrument: tune it to a note, let it ring, and it carries the whole low end of a track. That is what the Note, Pitch drop and Decay controls model.
Drive is the modern half of the sound. A pure sine disappears on phone speakers; saturation folds the fundamental into harmonics the small speaker can reproduce, which is why every trap 808 you hear is driven at least a little. Tone (a low-pass filter) then decides how much of that added bite survives, and Click adds the transient that helps the 808 cut through a dense mix.
A good starting recipe: root note of your key, 1.2 s decay, a 24-semitone drop over 30 ms, 35% drive, tone around 8 kHz. From there: shorter decay for drill, more drive and drop for phonk and rage, less of everything for lo-fi.
808 generator — questions
Is the 808 generator really free?
Yes — like everything on CRATE. Design as many 808s as you want and download them as 24-bit WAV files, royalty-free for commercial and non-commercial music. No signup, no watermarks.
What note should my 808 be?
The root of your song's key, or its fifth for movement. Sub-bass usually lives between A0 and C2 — below that it disappears on small speakers, above it stops feeling like sub. The generator labels every note with its frequency.
What does the pitch drop do?
It recreates the classic 808 attack: the tone starts up to three octaves high and glides down to the root within milliseconds. A short drop (10–30 ms) reads as a click-like attack; longer drops (50 ms+) give the lazer-like dive heard in phonk and rage.
How much drive should I use?
Drive adds harmonics, which is what makes an 808 audible on phones and laptops. 20–40% keeps it warm; past 60% it becomes the distorted 808 sound of rage and drift phonk. Use Tone to tame the top end after heavy drive.
Can I use the generated 808s commercially?
Yes. The generator synthesizes every sample from scratch in your browser — nothing is sampled from any machine or record — so the files are royalty-free by construction, under the same license as the CRATE kits.