V10F: Audio Blast's New Analog Mono Synth Is Quietly Built for Bass

Audio Blast just put out V10F, a monophonic virtual analog synth modeled on the Kawai 100F — a semi-obscure late-70s/early-80s analog bass-and-lead monosynth that never got the household-name status of a Minimoog or a Pro-One, but shows up in enough vintage synth-bass recordings that cloning it is a legitimate move. Released October 14, 2026, it's on a 40% launch discount (listed as $72 on Plugin Boutique, EUR 77 on Audio Blast's own page, both dropping to roughly $121/EUR 129 after October 30), runs as VST/VST2/AU/AAX (Plugin Boutique's listing also shows CLAP) on Windows 8+ and macOS 10.15+, and ships with no free trial — just audio and video demos on the product pages, so you're buying on reputation and the demo clips, not a 14-day test drive.

None of that matters much if the synth doesn't do anything useful for bass. It does, and the feature list reads like someone sat down and asked "what would make a one-voice analog synth actually good for modern bass production" rather than just cloning the original box's panel.

What's actually under the hood

V10F keeps the original 100F's single-voice layout — this is a monophonic synth, full stop, one note at a time, no chords, no pads. That's the right trade for bass: a monosynth forces legato/glide behavior and clean low-end phase, which is exactly what you want from a sub-heavy patch and exactly what a polysynth fights you on.

The oscillator section is a sawtooth and a square wave, blendable, plus noise for texture and transient snap. The part that matters most for bass producers is the dedicated SUB oscillator with its own octave control and a routing choice: pre-filter or post-filter. Pre-filter means the sub gets shaped by whatever filter curve you're running on the main oscillators — useful if you want a cohesive, filtered low end. Post-filter means the sub skips the filter entirely and stays full-range and unprocessed underneath everything else — the move if you're chasing a clean, consistent sub that doesn't wobble when you automate the filter on the top layer. Most stock synths bury this choice two menus deep or don't offer it at all; having it as a front-panel control is the single best reason to consider this plugin for bass specifically.

Filtering is a four-mode setup: 24dB and 12dB low-pass, band-pass, and high-pass, plus a separate, independent high-pass filter dedicated to cleaning up the low end before it hits the main signal path. That second high-pass is worth calling out — it's effectively a built-in rumble/mud trap that doesn't cost you a filter slot or a separate EQ, which matters when you're trying to keep a bass patch tight without stacking five plugins on the channel.

Modulation is two envelopes (ADR, AD, and AR modes) and a three-waveform LFO with delayed vibrato, plus the usual portamento for slides. Audio-rate filter modulation is in there too, which opens the door to actual FM-adjacent growl and metallic bass textures rather than just slow filter sweeps.

The arpeggiator is the sleeper feature

A host-synced ARP sequencer with up to 64 steps across 8 patterns, with randomization of notes, scale, and pattern length, and — this is the part that'll actually get used — patterns save together with the preset. That means a bass patch and its sequenced pattern travel as one unit; load the preset, the groove comes with it.

For bass specifically, this is more useful than it sounds on paper. A lot of modern bass production — tech house rolling basslines, UK garage/bassline-style stabs, acid-adjacent 303-style sequences — lives or dies on a tight, repeatable note pattern synced to the song's groove. Having that sequencing live inside the synth instead of programmed separately in a MIDI clip means you can audition pattern variations against the same patch instantly, which is a faster iteration loop than editing notes in the piano roll every time you want to try a different rhythm.

Distortion and effects: built-in, not bolted-on

There's a dedicated distortion stage plus three chainable effect slots pulling from five effect types (delay, phaser, reverb, chorus, flanger). The distortion stage sitting in the signal path before the effects slots means you can get analog-style grit on the bass signal itself without reaching for an external saturation plugin — similar in spirit to what Ableton's own Saturator does with its Bass Shaper curve (see our breakdown of that device), just baked into the synth's own voice architecture instead of applied after the fact on the channel.

That said, don't expect the distortion here to replace a dedicated saturation tool if you're layering V10F's output with other sources. It's one flavor of grit tuned to this synth's circuit model — useful for character, not a substitute for bus-level saturation decisions you'd make with a separate plugin once this is sitting in a full mix.

How it stacks up against the current analog-bass-synth crowd

V10F isn't launching into empty space. We covered XILS-lab's MemoryTone a few weeks back — our review here — which is a Memorymoog emulation chasing a thicker, polyphonic-capable analog character. V10F is a different target entirely: it's monophonic by design, modeled on a less-replicated vintage box, and built around the sub-oscillator routing and onboard arpeggiator rather than trying to be a lush pad machine. If you already own a Memorymoog-style plugin for pads and leads, V10F fills a genuinely different slot — dedicated mono bass duty — rather than competing directly for the same patch type.

The dubspot writeup covering the release also points to Arturia's Acid V as the better pick specifically for authentic 303-style acid slides and accents, which is a fair distinction — V10F's slide/portamento is there, but it's a general-purpose monosynth glide, not a dedicated acid-box slide-and-accent model. If 303 clones are specifically what you're after, that's the more honest comparison point than V10F.

Is it worth it for a bass-focused producer

At the $72-ish launch price through October 30, V10F is priced in line with most boutique mono synth plugins, and the feature set — real sub-oscillator routing control, a usable dual-filter setup with a dedicated low-end-cleanup high-pass, and a pattern-saving arpeggiator — covers the things that actually matter for bass sound design rather than padding the spec sheet with chorus presets. The lack of a free trial is the real sticking point: you're committing based on demo audio rather than getting hands-on time in your own session first, so if you're on the fence, watch the demo clips specifically for the sub-oscillator behavior and the arp patterns before buying, since those are the two features doing the actual work here.

A quick starting patch, if you pick it up

If you grab V10F and want a usable sub-plus-growl bass patch in under five minutes rather than digging through all 512 presets, this is a reasonable starting point:

1. Start with the sawtooth oscillator alone (square adds more odd-harmonic buzz than most sub-heavy bass patches want as a base layer).
2. Bring in the SUB oscillator one octave below, routed post-filter, so it stays full and unprocessed no matter what you do to the main filter.
3. Set the main filter to the 24dB low-pass mode and start around 60-70% cutoff, then use envelope 1 (AD mode) to pull it down on the decay for a classic pluck-into-sub shape.
4. Add a touch of the distortion stage — enough to add edge, not enough to fight the sub for headroom — and check it in mono before committing, the same mono-safety check that matters for every bass-adjacent effect we've covered.
5. If the part needs motion rather than a static note, switch on the ARP, drop it to a straightforward 8-step pattern synced to the host tempo, and only increase step count once the basic groove is actually working — the 64-step ceiling is there for complexity you'll want later, not a target to use immediately.

The takeaway

V10F is a narrow, well-built tool rather than a do-everything synth, and that's the right call for what it's going for. If your bass workflow already leans on monophonic analog patches — rolling tech house bass, acid-adjacent sequences, straightforward sub-plus-growl layers — the sub-oscillator routing and the pattern-aware arpeggiator are genuinely useful, not just marketing copy. If you need polyphony, pads, or a dedicated 303 clone, look elsewhere; this isn't trying to be those things.