Unison 808 Machine [WiN-MAC]

• Product: 808 Machine
• Developer: Unison
• Version: 1.0.44
• Format: Standalone, VST, VST3, AAX, AU
• Requirements: Windows 10 or later, macOS 10.15 or later
• Source: unison.audio/808-machine

808 Machine is an AI 808 sample generator plugin from Unison that renders a finished WAV audio sample rather than a MIDI note, built around an AI Wavetable Generation engine trained on real 808 characteristics from released songs. Five style categories — Aggressive, Clean, Dirty, Lo-Fi, and Unique — set the starting character before generation, and ADSR, glide, tone, and keytracking controls shape each result afterward. Built-in sidechaining ties an 808 to a kick without a separate compressor. It runs as a one-time $67 purchase across all major DAWs on Mac or PC.

Key Takeaway

808 Machine generates a finished WAV sample per click rather than an editable MIDI note, drawing on an AI model trained on characteristics from real released 808s. That makes tuning and shaping a job for its own ADSR, glide, and keytracking controls before export, since there’s no note data left to adjust once the sample is rendered.

Select, Generate, Drag In

808 Machine builds each sample through what the company calls AI Wavetable Generation, a model trained on the characteristics of 808s pulled from released songs rather than a single fixed wavetable cycled through variations. Selecting a style and pressing generate returns a new, complete audio sample each time rather than a preset played back unchanged.

Because generation happens per click rather than through manual sound design, a producer gets a usable 808 in one step instead of building an oscillator, filter, and envelope chain from scratch. That speed comes with a tradeoff: the underlying wavetable and generation logic aren’t exposed as editable parameters, so a producer chasing one very specific waveform shape works within what the generator returns rather than programming that shape directly.

Five Styles, Five Starting Points

Aggressive, Clean, Dirty, Lo-Fi, and Unique work as five separate style categories, each generating 808s with a different baseline character before any further shaping happens. Aggressive and Dirty lean toward harder, more processed low end; Clean stays closer to a straightforward sub tone; Lo-Fi adds degraded, aged texture; and Unique pulls toward less conventional results.

Picking a style narrows the range of what comes back on each generation rather than pulling from one shared pool regardless of selection, so a producer who wants a clean sub for a ballad and a dirty, distorted 808 for a trap beat in the same session switches styles between generations rather than filtering one large unsorted batch. Producers working in a single, consistent style across a project get repeatable character from staying on one setting; producers exploring a session’s overall direction can move between all five without leaving the plugin.

ADSR, Glide, Tone, and Keytracking

Each generated 808 carries adjustable ADSR, giving control over how the sample’s attack, decay, sustain, and release shape its envelope after generation. Glide smooths pitch transitions between notes, tone shifts the overall brightness or darkness of the sample, and keytracking determines how far the pitch shifts as different notes are played.

These four parameters shape a sample that already exists rather than rebuilding it from its underlying wavetable, so a producer wanting to change the fundamental timbre — not just its envelope, pitch behavior, or brightness — has to generate a new sample and start from there instead of sculpting the current one into something structurally different. A producer fine-tuning a good result to fit a specific note or mix gets there through these four controls directly; a producer who wants a fundamentally different sound is better served by generating again than by pushing these controls further.

Sidechaining Without the Setup

Sidechain compression is built directly into 808 Machine, with adjustable amount, speed, and shape controls, rather than requiring a separate compressor plugin routed against the kick track. Applying it happens inside the same window as generation and the other shaping controls, without a send bus or sidechain input to configure first.

That built-in routing removes the setup step of inserting a compressor, selecting a sidechain source, and dialing in a ratio and release before the 808 and kick sit together correctly. A producer working fast through many beat ideas gets the glue effect without leaving the plugin; a producer with a specific external sidechain chain they prefer on every track still has the option to bypass this and route their own compressor instead.

Presets and Export in One Click

A preset saver stores a generated 808 into a user bank with a single click, keeping the exact sample and its ADSR, glide, tone, keytracking, and sidechain settings together for later recall. Results also drag directly into a DAW project or export as WAV files, rather than requiring generation to happen inside the DAW timeline itself.

Because presets save the full generated sample rather than just the settings that produced it, recalling one returns the identical audio instantly without regenerating and hoping for a similar result. A producer building a personal library of go-to 808s gets exact recall every time; a producer who wants a preset to regenerate fresh variations on demand instead gets the same locked sample back until a new one is generated and saved over it.

No MIDI, Only Rendered Audio

808 Machine outputs a finished WAV sample rather than a MIDI note, so pitch and envelope shaping happen through its own ADSR, glide, tone, and keytracking controls before export rather than through piano-roll editing afterward. Once a sample is dragged into a project or exported, further pitch changes go through a sampler or pitch-shifting tool downstream rather than back through 808 Machine’s own generation controls.

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