Digital Systemic Emulations has released Elsita-V, a freeware emulation of a vintage drum machine in VST, VST3, and AU plugin formats for digital audio workstation software on PC and Mac.
Elsita-V is a virtual emulation of the RMIF Elsita analog drum machine, which was manufactured in the USSR until 1991. The instrument features a rather barebones analog drum synthesis engine reminiscent of the first electronic drum instruments from the 1970s. It sounds similar to early Simmons electronic drum models, as well as the Lell UDS drum module, which is featured in our free BPB Mini Analogue Collection sample pack.
See also: BPB Cassette Drums – Free Drum Machine VST/AU PluginThe instrument features four drum channels with identical controls but slightly different sound properties. This is indicated by the plugin’s color scheme, which uses the white color for channels 1 and 3 and a yellow shade for channels 2 and 4. Speaking of the user interface, the labels are printed in a Cyrillic font that fully resembles the visual style of the original instrument. All four channels feature a switch for selecting the tone or the noise oscillator. Additionally, the user can adjust the volume, filter cutoff, pitch, and decay time parameters for each drum channel individually.
As for the sound, Elsita-V is a fun little tool for those whole enjoy using old electronic drum modules. Its sound palette is very limited, but there’s definitely some fun to be had with automating the parameters to add variation to drum grooves. In addition to the virtual instrument, the developer has also included a set of drum sampled that were captured from the hardware RMIF Elsita drum machine.
Elsita-V is available in VST, VST3, and AU plugin for both PC and Mac. The plugin was developed using SynthEdit, so I was somewhat surprised to see that all these different plugin formats are supported. Apparently, SynthEdit has come a long way, and I simply wasn’t paying attention. Back in the day, SynthEdit could only export 32-bit VST plugins for Windows. I tested Elsita-V in a 64-bit plugin host on Windows, and it worked just fine.
More info: Elsita-V (7.57 MB download size, ZIP archive, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/VST3/AU plugin format for Windows & macOS)
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