How LOW Can You Go? (sample rate, in decimator/resampling plugins)

[Jace-BeOS]

I'm porting projects from Korg Gadget on my iPad to Logic on my Mac. I bought the Korg Gadget plugin bundle (mostly good value, aside from some stupid choices here and there, and bugs, and bad CPU spikes during saves and plugin window closing, and...).

Problem: The Decimator track effect in Gadget seems to be unique. It claims to allow a Sample Rate all the way down to 100Hz. I am not finding this capability anywhere else.

Logic's Bitcrusher plugin? Nope. I have no idea what it's doing; it doesn't even show Hz values!

Korg's MDE-X plugin (Korg Collection, formerly "Legacy Collection") has a Decimator algorithm, and you'd think that it would be the same, since it's from Korg... but it can only go down to 1KHz.

I've downloaded a freeware plugin (with a microscopic GUI, holy shit!) called Elite Reducer 2. It can only get down to 882Hz. Better than the others, but just not far enough (it's also a frelling nightmare to look at, because it's insanely tiny and all "retro" style in visual design). I have no idea what most of the rest of the garbage is in the interface and I got sick of playing around with it because it's a PITA to look at on a 27" iMac.

Then I downloaded the demo of Plogue's ChipCrusher. I thought, "surely this can go down to 1Hz, or something crazy like that"... but no. ChipCrusher only goes to 1000Hz as well. I guess no real hardware ever went lower, so why emulate that option? (otherwise, this plugin looks like fun)

I also have iZotope Trash 2, but it doesn't seem to actually have this kind of algorithm (its "retro" category seems to be a wave shaper, not a bit-depth and samplerate manipulator).

What else is there? (noting that I am looking for 64-bit AudioUnit plugins, not VST, and not 32-bit)

I don't know if I will be able to get the same results from another plugin even if it goes low enough (there seem to be a number of other hidden elements going on to affect filtering, etc, in the Gadget Decimator), but I now want to know if any other plugins go this low.

Ultimately, I can just render these tracks to audio, but that's irritating to me because of the extra storage space used up and the frozen nature of the material. I bought the plugins to resolve that.

[Jace-BeOS]

And because most of the threads I start this year seem to be just an echo-chamber of me talking to myself...

I managed to dial in an exact(ish) reproduction of what I wanted with Tritik's Krush. And it's free!!(??) Its controls aren't to my liking, but the sound is, so... SUCCESS!! FINALLY!!

Thank you, Tritik!!

[justin3am]

The Bit-8 plug-in in Bitwig goes down to 200Hz (though you can reduce the rate further with the Chance parameter, the rate will no longer be periodic). Probably doesn't help, since you are using Logic.

Sonalksis' Digital Grimebox goes down to 1/1024 of the project sample rate, in DWNS mode. That's ~43Hz, at 44.1KHz.

Any modular environment that allows you to run audio signal through a sample and hold will likely get down into the sub-audio rate. I frequently clock and S&H module with a variable clock that can run into audio rates. When I modulate the clock, at low rates, I just get periodic clicks but at higher rates, the sound being processed comes through. This is a fun patch, when using resonant filter banks or comb filters.

[Jace-BeOS]

Thanks for the info. What is DWNS mode? Down Sampling? I think Krush might have that on the interface in place of the label "Sample Rate". Is there a difference in meaning between the two, or just two ways of describing the same thing?

[Lotuz2019]

D16 Decimort 2:

Frequency - The frequency the signal is discretized to (resampled). This parameter ranges from 44 Hz to 44.1 kHz

[Jace-BeOS]

D16 Decimort 2:

Frequency - The frequency the signal is discretized to (resampled). This parameter ranges from 44 Hz to 44.1 kHz

That one seems to win so far... Can't seem to access their website, now, though. Oh well.

[Captain]

Looks like the new CrushShaper in ShaperBox 2 goes all the way down to about 8 Hz. Should be low enough for most purposes! A great plugin in every other way too.

[Jace-BeOS]

Looks like the new CrushShaper in ShaperBox 2 goes all the way down to about 8 Hz. Should be low enough for most purposes! A great plugin in every other way too.

Ha! A new winner on the "how low can you go?" show!

[Jakob / Cableguys]

Looks like the new CrushShaper in ShaperBox 2 goes all the way down to about 8 Hz. Should be low enough for most purposes! A great plugin in every other way too.

Ha! A new winner on the "how low can you go?" show!

Ya, we actually considered 0Hz for CrushShaper, but then thought that the static DC offset that this would introduce would not be appreciated. 8 Hz is still musical in a sense that it can give some nice rhythmic clicks.

Going down for as low as 8 Hz is great for drops, I think.

[Jace-BeOS]