ACAS

October 25, 2026. ACAS Tools today opened a free public beta of SNARL, a growl bass synth for dubstep and riddim. SNARL puts the entire growl chain in one instrument, so producers can go from a single low note to a talking, wobbling riddim bass without building a plug-in stack.

Growl basses usually mean a synth, a wavefolder, a formant filter, distortion, multiband compression and a filter, all routed by hand. SNARL builds that chain in: an FM wavetable growl source runs into Fold, Talk (vowel formants), Comb, Drive, an OTT-style Squash and a 24 dB Wub filter, with a clean mono sub under its own crossover. One Snarl knob pushes fold, drive, squash, talk resonance, grit and comb together.

Key features:
- Talk pad: set point A (rest) and point B (peak) on a vowel and grit map; the tempo-synced wobble moves the growl between them.
- Wobble LFO with eight shapes, including Yoy, Wow and riddim Stairs, synced from 1/1 to 1/32 with triplets.
- Mono legato with glide and slide-back for riddim and tearout lines.
- 4x oversampling, zero latency and a -0.2 dBFS safety clipper.
- 18 factory presets: growls, talkers, riddim, wubs and screeches.
- VST3 for Windows; VST3 and AU for macOS 11 or later, Apple Silicon and Intel.

"I wanted the growl chain I kept rebuilding in every project to be one instrument with one big knob," said the developer behind ACAS Tools. "The beta is about hearing from producers what breaks and what's missing before launch."

The beta is free with limited spots. Testers make a growl loop and fill in a 3-minute feedback form within 10 days. Everyone who sends real feedback gets a free permanent license when SNARL launches. The planned launch price is $49, with $29 during launch week.

Join the beta: https://acastools.gumroad.com/l/snarl-beta
Learn more: https://acasintelligence.com/free-growl-bass-synth