OB-Xd 3 is a complete ground-up rewrite of the engine that started this whole thing — built hand-in-hand with original author Vadim Filatov. The classic character is intact, the bones underneath are brand new.

The engine moved from per-voice scalar processing to a fully vectorized design, with ~5x lower CPU than 2.x, room for 128 voice slots instead of 32, and the headroom to stack up to 16 detuned voices per note in polyphonic unison — sounds that simply weren't possible before. There are also much higher quality oscillators, new analog modeled filters and envelopes, and adaptive oversampling up to 4x for hardware-grade sound without melting your CPU.

The full technical comparison goes deeper — but the short version: same soul, modern muscle.

Saws that cut, pulses that punch — without the digital glass and aliasing that gives away most virtual analogs. Push the upper octaves hard and the top end stays musical, not buzzy. Three pulse-width tools — independent PW offset on Osc2, filter-envelope-driven PW, and dual-osc PW movement — shape the waveform exactly the way you want.

The filter that defined the sound of Van Halen's Jump, Rush's keys, and a thousand '80s anthems — now with the warmth of the original and the precision a modern mix needs. Sweeps sing, resonance bites without going harsh, and self-oscillation gives you a full extra oscillator hiding inside the filter.

Vintage punch on demand. The same RC capacitor curve that made the OB-X's attack feel alive — keys, plucks, percussive leads — is now a log-lin slider you can sweep from snappy logarithmic to gentle linear, independently on the filter and amp.

From stab leads to breathing pads: push logarithmic for percussive plucks and aggressive lead attacks, sit in the middle for the classic OB-X punch, dial toward linear for slow swells.

Polyphony 4 with 4 stacked voices = chord-pads with serious weight. Polyphony 1 with 16 stacked voices = supersaw mono leads. Same patch, two completely different instruments.

Unlike most virtual analogs, OB-Xd stacks up to 16 voices per note independently from how many notes you can hold — so you keep your chord polyphony and get the thickness. Push Spread above 50% and the stacked voices read as separate, opening up the stereo field.

Full MIDI Polyphonic Expression support with independent per-note pitch bend (X), timbre (Y, CC 74) and pressure (Z), each freely routable to multiple destinations. Plug-and-play with LinnStrument, ROLI Seaboard, Sensel Morph, Haken Continuum and more — OB-Xd auto-configures from the controller, and ships with factory presets for every major MPE surface.

MIDI Out sends CC mirroring on channel 1 (or a selected channel). Pair it with the TouchOSC template or the SFC-OB hardware controller and the surface stays in sync with the plugin.

Recursive search across all disk preset folders with duplicate handling — same-named presets show as "(1)", "(2)", etc. Step through results in order.

Dual LFOs — two fully independent LFOs running in parallel, each with its own rate, three waveforms, two amount controls, five destinations, and per-LFO tempo sync. Stack a slow filter sweep over a fast vibrato, or sync both to the host for tight rhythmic patches.

Knob LED Visualizer — the whole interface comes alive while you play. Volume knob shows a true VU meter, the cutoff dot tracks live envelope and LFO modulation, ADSR strips animate during note playback, and any routed destination glows green so you see exactly what your modulation is doing.

Reworked MIDI Learn — live LCD prompts walk you through CC mapping. Save, rename, import or export full MIDI boards grouped by manufacturer, and ship presets with their CC layout intact.

Preset Bar Workflow — anchored Disk Browser, native Save / Rename dialogs, bank search, and shift-click shortcuts for prev/next jumping by bank or folder.

Standalone MIDI Out — virtual CoreMIDI port for routing OB-Xd's MIDI stream to external gear or other apps.

Analog Mode — per-voice component tolerances that bring the subtle detuning and filter wobble of vintage hardware. Stored per bank so different presets can use different amounts.

MTS-ESP Microtuning — full ODDSound MTS-ESP support for scales beyond 12-TET.

Dynamic Pan Presets — Random and Random OSC modes spread voices across the stereo field on every note.

Preset Import — loads OB-Xd 2.x patches and community fork presets directly.

Oversampling — 1x / 2x / 4x in the registered version.