Donner Essential B1

Fatboy Slim’s dream of universal 303 ownership inches a little closer with this cut‑price acid box.

The Donner B1 cut a handsomely futuristic form on my desk. The black and titanium finish oozed class, and the blue and white lighting gave it a cold and serious vibe that felt out of place once you set the synth in motion. When I pressed Play, the synth came alive with a repeating pattern of familiar and pleasing bass lines. I sought out the filter controls and found that I could quickly push the sawtooth and square waves into a wonderfully juicy squelch. A simple decay envelope pulled at the filter, giving it a penetrating zap as I drove into the resonance. There was definitely a tart, acidic tone going on here. Wait a minute... was this a 303?

Yes, the Essential B1 Analogue Syn Bass is Donner’s take on the classic Roland acid synth, and we can never have enough of those. And honestly, I don’t think I’m done with it yet. Something about the bounce, the rip, the squeak and squelch is so beguiling that I couldn’t help but have fun with it. As to the question of whether it sounds like a 303, all I can say is that I’ve had it sat next to the Behringer TD‑3, and other than the B1 being a lot louder, you can’t tell them apart. So, from one analogue clone to another, it sounds as good as it should.

The influence of the 303 will no doubt linger, but I wanted to try to review the B1 on its own merits. Donner have helped with this by ditching the 303 sequencer entirely, giving me something new to critique. And they’ve added some effects and interesting performance features. A recent firmware update has also introduced a Song mode, addressing a lot of the criticisms that have been levelled at it since its original release in May 2022.

Specs

The analogue synth engine and signal path have a single VCO with two waveforms, a low‑pass VCF with cutoff and resonance controls, and a VCA with a simple Decay envelope. The envelope runs the filter and the VCA if you hold down a note. An Accent control boosts a step if it’s activated in the sequencer. The Pitch knob bends the oscillator up or down a fifth. That’s your top row of nondescript knobs.

Along the second row are an analogue Saturation effect with Drive and Tone, and an analogue Delay with Level, Time and Feedback. Below are a one‑note‑more‑than‑two‑octave button keyboard and a sequencer control panel with a three‑digit display.

To the right is a larger volume knob. To the left are four patch sockets: Aux in for mixing in an external source (this doesn’t go through the filter), Headphone output and Sync In/Out. On the back, we find a 5‑pin MIDI DIN In and Out, a mono quarter‑inch jack output, a power socket for the included supply and a USB‑C port. The B1 has to be powered by the adaptor; it won’t power over USB and has no battery compartment.

Form

Donner have gone for a very clean and ordered design. It looks smart, although the metallic illusion falls away when you pick it up. It’s light and plastic, but it feels solid enough, and the raked angle looks really nice on the desk.

The B1’s layout places aux in, headphone and sync I/O ports on the front panel, while USB C, MIDI I/O and a quarter‑inch audio output are found at the rear.

All the important synthesizer bits only take up the top third of the front panel. The knobs are small but adequate, although they’re a little cramped for my fingers. I’ve seen some people swap the Master and Cutoff knobs to give the one control you will be using all the time a bit more ballast. But, in my view, that makes things more cramped.

Most of the space is given over to the 26‑note, strangely oblong keyboard. The extra note lets it pull off a full 16 steps on the ‘white’ keys for the purpose of sequencing. The keys are a bit like sliced‑up drum pads. There is no velocity at play, and they light up white when you press them, which takes more effort than you’d think. I initially thought that too much emphasis was placed on the keyboard, giving it more space than needed at the expense of the cramped synth controls. If this was a 303, I felt, you’d spend all your time on the knobs, not the keyboard. But the keyboard brings a lot to the table, pushing the B1 away from its 303 roots. It encourages you to play it as a synth, to switch on the delay and enjoy the length of the envelope like you might on other synths. There’s also an arpeggiator that handles as many notes as you press. So the keyboard is definitely taking on a larger role in the B1, but I still can’t help feeling that Donner might have given the synth controls more room.

Sequencer

I’m not too proud to admit that when I sat the TD‑3 next to the B1, I spent 10 minutes fiddling in futility before I googled “how to write a pattern on the TD‑3”. The B1 is a dream in comparison. I pressed Rec/Edit, played the notes, and I was done. If I wanted to put in a rest, I pressed the ‘Rest’ button. If I wanted to add a Slide or Accent, I did that while holding the note. It was 16 steps of easy step sequencing. While I believe classic acid bass lines can only be forged during the pain you experience using an authentic 303 sequencer, I’ll happily take this easier, if less heroic, path.

Once you have your sequence, there are a few things you can add to each step. In Edit mode, the steps all light up in an inviting blue colour, but don’t be tempted to touch them to select a step because all you’ll do is change the note for the selected step. You have to use the up/down arrow buttons to navigate the steps. The steps flash as you move through them, and the note is shown by the top half of the key lighting up white. Displaying the notes is one of the firmware improvements on the original release, and it’s very helpful indeed.

In addition to Slide and Accent, each step has a Gate Length and Ratchet value. Gate Length goes from zero, which is a rest, up to eight, which ties it to the following note. You can have up to four Ratchets. With the step selected, you can hold the button and use the arrow buttons to set the value. When you go back through the steps, there’s no indication of a Ratchet or changed Gate Length being applied, which I found slightly odd because the Slide and Accent buttons illuminate when they are active on a step.

Once I was over the initial relief that the sequencer is easy to use, I found it is far from perfect. It’s not possible to select a step simply by pressing on it, which is frustrating as they are right there in front of you. In Play mode, you can hold Rec, select a note, and then add Accents and Slides — so why can’t you do this in Edit mode? You can also turn steps on and off in Play mode, but not in Edit mode. However, you have to be careful, because pressing a note in Play mode transposes the sequence. To turn a step off, you have to press and hold it until the light goes out. Transposition is a great feature, but it’s too easy to do it accidentally while you’re trying to turn off a step.

The numeric‑style pad that controls the sequencer is not awesome. I too often did the wrong thing and hit the wrong button. It’s impossible to read in low light, and those arrow keys got right up my nose. The transport controls would benefit from being elsewhere and perhaps from being upgraded to big green and red buttons. I think the usability has suffered somewhat because the design department wanted the B1 to look really ordered and precise.

There is a Donner Control app, which runs on a computer and gives access to MIDI settings and other parameters. It also has a piano‑roll editor for the sequencer. It’s not a real‑time thing; you have to suck the sequence out of the B1 and then blow it back once you’ve edited it. You can also use it to store presets and import them from elsewhere. I had some trouble getting the B1 and the app to see each other, but once I’d done the right combination of switching things off and on, it functioned fine.

The Donner Control app provides a non‑real‑time piano‑roll sequencer and takes care of MIDI setup and patch storage duties.

Performance & Song Modes

All of the step parameters are available as performance features that you could drop in on the fly. These are pretty great and give you a whole extra sense of interaction. As the pattern plays, you can drop in Ratchets, Slides, Accents and enforce Gate Lengths. You can also use Clear to mute the playback and Hold to retrigger the current step. Without a doubt, it’s a lot of fun. That is, until you accidentally hit the Arp button right there in the middle of them, and it instantly stops playback. That control pad definitely needs a rethink.

The significant new feature in the 1.10 firmware update is Song mode. The basic idea is that you have 16 slots into which you can place any of the 128 patterns. The 16 slots then play back in order, giving you your song. It works and means you can play back something more complex, or simply treat it as a way of extending the step count.

You have to stay in Song mode for it to follow the plan. So you can’t ‘see’ the patterns play as you would in Play mode. And if you drop out of Song mode back into Pattern mode, you can’t get back without stopping playback. You can disengage Song mode from within Song mode, so it spins on the current pattern until you engage it again, which is pretty useful when performing.

All the performance features still work in Song mode except for the Clear button, which no longer mutes the playback for some reason.

Random Notes

Another new feature is the ability to generate random notes. It’s quite clever in that if it’s an empty pattern, it will generate a random sequence, but if it’s not, then it will keep the sequence and only randomise the Accent, Slides, Gates and Ratchets. In either case, the performance features get splurged across the sequence in a wodge of acidic messiness, and that’s a real shame. If only there was a way of generating notes without all the bells and whistles, because it currently feels too epic for me and ultimately unusable.

It’s the performance features that really give it a life beyond the 303. They give you a lot more to do and, combined with the Song Mode, offer a great deal of variation and versatility.

In Flight

Despite all my niggles about the sequencer, the enjoyment level when running a sequence is off the charts. The playfulness of the 303 sound engine is legendary, and you absolutely have that here.

Switch in the saturation, and it screams at you in the most delicious way. The delay gives you everything from bathroom reflections to about half a second of repeats. The maximum level is only about 50 percent mix, and maximum feedback gives you about 12 echoes. It’s not spectacular; it sounds a bit dull as it shaves off all the top end, but it’s fun and valuable to have.

However, it’s the performance features that really give it a life beyond the 303. They give you a lot more to do and, in combination with the Song mode, offer a great deal of variation and versatility. So, unless you crave the authenticity of a 303 sequencer, then the Donner B1 is a great choice for a budget, analogue acid synth.