Bass plugin in C++ with JUCE. VST3 and Standalone, Windows and Linux.
The real bass stays at the center of the signal. What changes is that you stop hunting for the right parameter and start choosing a sonic personality, and the engine translates that intent into a processing chain you can still open and edit underneath.
Made by a bass player: Ricardo Rossati, Mister RickRoss, 28 years playing, School of Rock teacher, television, radio and stages across Brazil.
Download and full description · Manual in Portuguese (PDF) · Leia em português
Your bass goes in. The plugin measures how that specific instrument responds, and expands the tone around what you already play.
- Learn Tone listens to 30 seconds of real signal, silence does not count, and keeps a spectral profile of your instrument
- Bass Vision shows five musical regions, so you see what you are hearing
- Five band graphic EQ, plus or minus 12 dB, aligned to those same regions
- Monophonic tracking by autocorrelation, with a chromatic tuner that can be switched off without disabling the internal tracking
- Synthesized sub and octaver with attack preservation
- Cabinet IR, five internal cabinets or your own WAV
- Cognitive Snapshots, factory library plus four capture and recall slots
- Full chain:
OCTAVE → DRIVE → WAH FILTER → CHORUS → SYNTH LAYER → AMBIENCE → CAB IR → EQ
This is the part that is not a preset with a different name. Each engine is a different behavior.
| Engine | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tequila | Asymmetric valve, magnetic memory, body, sag, centered image |
| AI Mentor | Clean leveling, protected attack, controlled air, mix ready image |
| Joker | Preserved attack and four deterministic gestures, Bite, Drop, Squawk and Fracture, fired by how you play |
| Future Adviser | Firm mono low end, harmonic glass, its own bass safe stereo field |
| N.I.N.A. | Slow adaptive correction in opposite directions for dark or bright sources, deepened by the learned profile |
Six personality macros sit on top: Texture, Weight, Motion, Chaos, Space and Blend. Blend is the only global dry and wet crossfade.
ROSSIFY reads the current measurements and adapts the chain to them. In Manual, every control stays fully yours.
The project ships an offline renderer that feeds the same groove and one isolated note to all five engines and compares the results. A build is only accepted when it passes all of this:
- 10 out of 10 distinct engine pairs, in both scenarios
- 30 out of 30 macro responses
- Calibrated loudness across engines
- Safe DC offset
- Joker determinism, the same performance produces the same gestures
- Bass safe stereo on Future Adviser
- Correct polarity adaptation on N.I.N.A.
The test runs under ctest. This is what keeps five engines from quietly
becoming one engine with five labels.
The first launch offers a 15 day Pro trial, no card required. After it ends, audio keeps working in Free.
- Free keeps the core sound, LIVE processing, tooltips and factory snapshots
- Pro unlocks HYBRID, Advanced and DNA, user presets and the complete module set
Pro is US$ 59 by card, or R$ 297 in Brazil by Pix or card. A lifetime license, not a subscription, with 1.x updates included. One license activates on up to two computers. Buy it at misterrickross.com/substance/en/checkout; the key arrives by e-mail right after payment.
Download SUBSTANCE-Setup.exe from
Releases and run it.
The VST3 goes to Program Files\Common Files\VST3. Rescan VST3 in your DAW
afterwards.
The installer is not code signed yet, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC". Click "More info", then "Run anyway".
tar xzf SUBSTANCE-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd SUBSTANCE-Linux-x86_64
./install.shInstalls the VST3 to ~/.vst3 and the standalone alongside it.
- Plug the bass into your interface
- Open SUBSTANCE on an audio track
- Play hard and raise INPUT without clipping
- Confirm AUDIO IN / ACTIVE in the footer
- Run Learn My Bass once, then pick an engine
Stated plainly, so nobody buys on a promise:
- macOS, on the roadmap, not released
- Code signing on the Windows installer, so SmartScreen warns on first run
- Real sample layer for finger, pick, mute and slide
- Multiband compressor and oversampling
- Long term multi session training for N.I.N.A.
The source is not public. This repository is the product page, the release channel and the issue tracker.
Bug reports, crash logs and DAW compatibility reports are genuinely welcome in Issues, and are the fastest way to get something fixed.
Support page · Refund policy · Privacy
To move a license between machines, support can reset one activation after verifying the purchase.
Proprietary. See LICENSE.txt.
The plugin may be freely downloaded and used under the Free tier. What is not allowed is sharing license keys, removing activation, or redistributing the plugin or installer as your own product.
Built with JUCE 8.
© 2026 Ricardo Rossati, Mister RickRoss · Ross Audio