BABY Audio introduced Tekno last week, a plugin designed to rethink drum production by making every sound from scratch. While most modern drum production revolves around samples—whether live-recorded hits or pre-made synthesized kits—Tekno takes a different path by generating every sound entirely through synthesis. With no samples under the hood, each hit is built from scratch, giving Tekno a distinct character and workflow compared to the sample-based tools most producers are used to. The plugin makes it easy to instantly generate sounds and refine them with a wide range of effects and parameters, ensuring your drums feel fresh and unique. We’ve been playing around with the plugin for over a week and here’s what we think about it.
Tekno has 18 individual “engines” for generating different drum sounds, including kicks, snares, claps, hats, toms, and various other percussive hits. They can be made in the style of anything from classic 808 or 909-type drums to modern electronic hits. This is a plugin for producers and artists who want personalized and distinctive drums without the hassle of complex sound design.
Controls and Sound Shaping
Tekno’s main interface has separate sections for the drum sound selection, synthesis controls, per-sound effects, and master effects. This creates a top-down workflow where you start by selecting the drum sounds, fine-tune the synthesis controls, add extra effects to further shape the sounds, and then finish with the master effects for glue and overall control.
Synthesize Panel
The Synthesize panel forms the foundation of each sound, affecting the raw tone of the selected drum engine before any processing is applied. Each voice type (Kick, Snare, Hat, Tom, Cymbal etc) has its own unique set of five controls. For example, “Kick A” has parameters like frequency, length, shape, click, and tame, which control its body, decay, transient shape, and low-end behaviour. Cymbals and more tonal sounds have options like resonance, warp, or pitch, but each sound has a different selection of synthesis tools.
Because these controls change per voice, each instrument feels designed rather than generic. The synth engines are entirely digital but are meant to behave like analog circuitry, with non-linearities that give them an organic response to the changes you make. Changing the “freq” or “reso” settings doesn’t just move a static filter – it interacts with the internal model to subtly shift it’s frequency information and envelope shape. This makes sculpting the sounds more intuitive and musical than clinical.
The front panel is intentionally minimal, showing only the essential controls needed for fast sound design. If you want to go deeper, you can open the gear icon for each engine, revealing its calibration page. This is where Tekno houses the engine-specific parameters, such as additional transient shaping, noise behaviour, or harmonic distortion. Each drum type has completely different calibration tools, so adjusting a snare is a very different experience from tweaking a kick or a tom. This layered approach lets you quickly program beats but still go deep when a sound needs precise control.
Effects Panel
Once the raw tone is set, the Effects panel is the next step in processing. Like the Synthesize section, its layout changes depending on the selected engine. A kick might offer Sub and Exciter controls to reinforce its fundamental and add harmonic presence, while a snare or clap could instead have Dispersion, Ring, or Drive for tonal shaping and added texture.
These effect slots are purpose-built for their specific role. For instance, Ring is a true ring modulation stage, introducing metallic, inharmonic overtones perfect for hats and cymbals. Even basic processors like saturation are modelled with musicality in mind – adding “Satur” to a kick gives it weight and warmth without the brittle harshness that can come from digital distortion.
This workflow is designed to let you dial in each sound with extreme precision, which gives you endless opportunity to experiment but also forces you to think about what the song really needs. The emphasis on internal routing keeps the sounds self-contained, meaning you rarely need to set up separate buses or sends in your DAW just to add extra effects to a single drum. The result is faster mixing and sound design, with less clutter and more room for experimentation.
Master Panel (global)
The master section glues the kit together, applying processing to all sounds at once:
- cutoff – Global high/ low pass filter for shaping the frequency range of the entire kit.
- human – Adds variations in timing, velocity, and timbre for a more natural, less robotic feel.
- limit – Transparent limiting to control peaks and keep the output consistent.
- clip – Soft clipping for extra punch at the final stage.
- level – Master output gain for balancing Tekno with the rest of your song.
When more precision is needed, you also have a deeper calibration section that expands on these settings. Here, you can fine-tune the global controls with the same level of detail offered to individual engines. This includes setting the space and decay characteristics of the reverb, adjusting limiter behaviour to control peaks more transparently, and refining how much timing and velocity variation is introduced with the “human” setting.
Presets
Tekno comes with a huge preset library designed to cover basic starting points as well as more experimental sounds. There are 73 complete kit presets, each ready to drop into a session, alongside over 1,300 individual voice presets so you can swap out specific sounds without rebuilding an entire kit. The library includes contributions from well-known sound designers and artists like Richard Devine, Virtual Riot, and Mr. Bill, giving it a good range of styles.
The randomization tools are great for trying out different sounds when you already have a rhythmic pattern. The top dice button can instantly generate new combinations across the whole kit, and the individual versions can do the same for each sound. The results are surprisingly varied, with everything from sharp, tonal sounds to analog-style drums that wouldn’t be out of place in an 808 or 909 kit.
I started my testing with an upbeat, EDM-adjacent track I’d been working on, with a four-on-the-floor style drum pattern accented with dotted-eighth note snares and wild, skippy hi-hats. I was happy with the rhythm but not the drum sounds themselves, so I copied the pattern onto Tekno and started clicking through different presets. There are truly no bad options here, and everything sounded clean, full, and characterful, but there were some standout presets.
“Dead Industry” by Protovolt had some interesting tonal sounds, which worked great with the more atonal, textural elements that were already in my track. It’s absolutely essential to tune this one to the key of your track, as it could quickly get dissonant otherwise. This could also work great as a layer for more acoustic, sampled drums to give them stronger fundamentals and a better cohesion with the rest of the song.
I loved the “Glitchmaster” kit by Zardonic; the crazy glitchy sounds would be great in a faster Dubstep or heavy Techno track. They could also be used as background FX to add some earcandy and interest to an existing drum pattern.
The “House Kit” by Bad Habit had some classic sounds, not the most groundbreaking, but a great starting point for tweaking and customising to best fit your track.
“TK 78” by MNML SGNL had some very snappy, low-key sounds that sounded amazing with a bit of humanising and swing. This kit would work great for a more sparse, bouncy drum pattern.
“Trap Kit 2” by Toddchamp had some very clean trap sounds. I’d highly recommend using Tekno (or synthesised drums in general) for making trap or hyper-pop style instrumentals, as they typically recycle the same sounds for every beat (think the Zaytoven 808, the classic snappy snare, the TR-808 clap), so having custom-made drums is a great option to stand out.
“Zap and Smack” by MPM is super heavy, a great jump-off point for some serious EDM. A lot of the sounds have pretty long sustain, so it’s worth tweaking this to fit into the pocket of your drum pattern.
Zardonic’s “Atmosphere” kit comes loaded with loads of reverb and some spacey and atmospheric sounds. This one would be great for the breakdown section of a song, or for more ambient, minimal productions.
This seemed like one of Tekno’s best use-cases – quickly trialing drum sounds with an existing pattern to best fit the song, then fine-tuning them to best complement the rest of the track. It’s also great for getting an idea started with some quick inspiration – the presets and randomization options make it easy to generate kits, and it only takes a few clicks and knob tweaks to get inspired.
Is it worth it?
I would highly recommend Tekno for percussive-lead productions and for designing unique drums. It’s functional and high-quality straight out of the box, so it can be used as your everyday drum plugin, especially if you work with more electronic or experimental production. It doesn’t have any sample loading functions, and the synthetic nature makes it difficult to synthesize anything acoustic-sounding, so it’s not for the sample-based producers or more acoustic artists. But for Techno, House, Electronica, Trap, DnB, and anything electronic, glitchy or industrial, Tekno is a great option, especially for those who value having unique drum sounds and deep control over their character. I’m particularly a fan of the “human” controls, as programmed drums can get repetitive easily without variation – I often create complex automation clips to keep the timing, velocity, and timbre constantly modulating, so it’s great to have these controls built into the plugin.
Tekno stands out because it treats drums like something to be built, rather than just chosen from a pre-existing library, making you focus on dialing in the precise sound for your song instead of defaulting to your favorite drumkits. By generating each sound from scratch, it gives you a level of control that is difficult to find without synthesizing drums from scratch, which can be time-consuming and interrupt your workflow. If you work with electronic genres, value deep control and unique sounds, want to upgrade your drum-design workflow, or just want quick inspiration for starting your tracks, then Tekno is a great addition to your toolbox.
Price: $129, currently available for $79
More info on babyaud.io
Pros:
- Fully synthesis-based — no samples, all sounds generated from scratch.
- 18 dedicated drum engines with voice-specific controls.
- Intuitive workflow with quick results and deep editing.
- Built-in effects tailored to each drum type.
- Strong preset library plus powerful randomization.
- Great fit for electronic and experimental genres.
Cons
- No internal MIDI sequencer
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