best lo-fi (without distortion) effects?

[dubbyah]

i'm looking to run lofi on some classical shit, and also drums, to make them really gritty and bit crushed.

im shooting for something similar to baiyon, listen to "multistory parking" and "all that I needed" at http://www.myspace.com/baiyon

i have "lofi" vst (by ephonic, i think), and also refx trasher, but neither of these are doing it for me. what other freeware options are available? and by without distortion, I mean guitar-esque distortion. obviously the signal will "distort" when its bitcrushed or the sample rate is reduced, but I'm referring to the effect subgroup classification referred to as 'distortion'. jack darks mr mutilator and battery acid and dual trashers are great effects on their own, but theyre pretty much too intense for what i want to do. i still want the sound to be somewhat recognizable and not just a complete mash of audio.

[stefancrs]

I'd recommend trying out some speaker cabinet impulse responses etc.

edit: in conjunction with bit crushers etc if you want those as well, but I think EQ + speaker cabinets can get you quite far into lo-fi land. especially if you add some noise as well.

[pw]

I truly think this is by far the best one there is (for sample and bit reduction options with different interpolations-

http://www.virtualcreations.de/software ... te_Reducer

and of course this one is the business for more than bit reduction (payware)-

http://www.otiumfx.com/sonitex.php

[hoffy]

iZotope Vinyl is free, effective, and you can get a diverse amount of sounds out of it.

TC Works have a plug called "Sonic Decimator" as part of one of their bundles which would probably do the trick nicely too.

[pw]

vinyl is great as well but it neither bit crushes nor does sample rate reduction.

[jmh]

Sonitex STX-1260. It's by far the most flexible plugin for anything lofi. As mentioned by PW already.

[.jon]

I truly think this is by far the best one there is (for sample and bit reduction options with different interpolations-

http://www.virtualcreations.de/software ... te_Reducer

+1, great plugin.

[thoshu]

Give Soundhacks +decimate a go, it's free and quite variable, for what it offers:

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/2362.html

[ScarKord]

You could always give my little plug a go



If you leave the distortion knob alone, you can get some nice lo-fi stuff, especially once the flanger is past 50%

http://www.scarkord.com/plugs.html

Oh, and yes it is a synthedit plugin before anyone asks

[nickm]

Sonitex STX-1260. It's by far the most flexible plugin for anything lofi. As mentioned by PW already.

+1 on Sonitex STX-1260. Pure lo-fi bliss. The bit reduction/sampling section of this plug is the best I've heard -- really nails the "grit" of the old school samplers (having fiddled with a Mirage in my youth).

[foosnark]

BJ LoFi, mda Degrade are both also excellent. As is the one in reFX Trasher2.

I really liked the one in the Pluggo demo; it seemed to have a somewhat different character. I didn't love it so much that I wanted to buy the entire bundle. Also the Pluggo plugins load painfully slowly :/

[Debutante]

I'd recommend trying out some speaker cabinet impulse responses etc.

edit: in conjunction with bit crushers etc if you want those as well, but I think EQ + speaker cabinets can get you quite far into lo-fi land. especially if you add some noise as well.

I agree. The Boogex is my new go-to tool for that distant space/bad radio reception type lofi sound. Simple distortion just fuzies things up or crushes beyond usefulness. Impulses maintain alot more of the melodic content better so you can still get the nicer kind of fuzz, but you can hear what was there to begin with to a better extent than you could with simple distortion it seems.

[sinkmusic]

I'd recommend trying out some speaker cabinet impulse responses etc.

edit: in conjunction with bit crushers etc if you want those as well, but I think EQ + speaker cabinets can get you quite far into lo-fi land. especially if you add some noise as well.

I agree. The Boogex is my new go-to tool for that distant space/bad radio reception type lofi sound. Simple distortion just fuzies things up or crushes beyond usefulness. Impulses maintain alot more of the melodic content better so you can still get the nicer kind of fuzz, but you can hear what was there to begin with to a better extent than you could with simple distortion it seems.

Boogex is indeed excellent.

[sinkmusic]

You could always give my little plug a go



If you leave the distortion knob alone, you can get some nice lo-fi stuff, especially once the flanger is past 50%

http://www.scarkord.com/plugs.html

Oh, and yes it is a synthedit plugin before anyone asks

Hey !
It looks good !
I'll give it a try.
It is funny, as it looks a bit like Alesis ModFX Bitrman, gathering flanger, distortion unit and lofi efx.
http://www.keyboardmuseum.org/store/alesis/bitrman.html

[EDIT] = Ok, i've been on your page, and IT IS some kind of emualtion of the Bitrman !
Awesome efx unit !

[FaX]

Ephonic - Loi simply superb IMHO (can have distortion/bit crushing if needed) but it's a rather versatile beast to say the least.