DIGITAL DUB
Dub built with drum machines, sequencers, synth bass and digital effects while the sound-system mix stays alive. Machines changed the palette; they did not remove the pressure, dropouts or live decisions.
Digital Dub grew as Jamaican and British producers brought computerized riddims, synthesizers and increasingly affordable digital effects into reggae and dub from the mid-1980s onward. The shift could make production leaner and harder, but it still depended on the dub method: subtraction, bass weight, echo, reverb and versions made for the sound. In Britain, steppers producers and sounds pushed the style into militant, high-pressure forms. Later European artists expanded it through live electronics, MIDI sequencing and bass music. “Digital” describes the tools and rhythmic construction, not one single tempo or national scene.