What does polyphony change on a mono-classic clone?
The original Roland MC-202, released in 1982, was strictly monophonic: one note at a time, on a single VCO, wired straight into its built-in step sequencer. That limitation is half of what gives the machine its reputation as a bassline machine, not a chord machine. Audio Damage's AD-202 keeps the circuit-accurate voice (the PolyBLEP sawtooth oscillator, two-saw pulse with PWM, the sub-oscillator, the 24dB resonant ladder filter with drive) but lets it stack up to eight voices at once, something no MC-202 hardware unit has ever done.
Portamento glide now stretches out to five seconds, useful for the kind of pitch-slide sound design the original's fixed glide never allowed. Full MPE support (per-note pitch bend, pressure, four aftertouch destinations) means the plugin responds to expressive controllers like a Roli Seaboard or a Linnstrument the way a 1982 analog box obviously never could. MTS-ESP microtuning support opens the oscillator to alternate tuning systems entirely outside the original's fixed 12-tone scale.
Who is this actually built for?
AD-202 ships for VST3, AU, CLAP and LV2 on macOS, Windows and Linux, plus an iPad/iPhone version at $4.99 through the App Store. Audio Damage put a browser-based tester on the product page so producers can hear it before paying anything. Through September 15, 2026, the desktop plugin sells at an introductory €34.95, rising to €49.95 after.
For house and techno producers chasing that MC-202 low end without hunting a decades-old unit on the used market, where working ones sell for four figures and drift out of tune, this is a straightforward proposition: the sound, plus the polyphony and expressive control the hardware was never built to offer.
"An authentic MC-202 emulation was either nonexistent or very rare," Audio Damage says of the gap AD-202 fills.
