LOFI

This is a bitcrusher. well, more or less. as with all e-phoniq free products, you can be sure you'll get much more than what's expected.

I remember some months ago I was searching desperately for a bitcrusher. My host didn't have one, and I had read that a bitcrusher could do amazing things on your drums. I found a free bitcrusher and it covered the need for some time...until I found LOFI.

LOFI is a plugin for mangling your imput signal to the extreme. It consists of 4 effect chains plus an amplifier. They can be turned on and off at your will, and the signal passes through all the on ones till coming out.
First there's the Down Scaler, which allows you to extremely play with the pitch of the imput signal. Then comes the Crusher, the most extreme effect onboard, which basically reduces the quality of the audio till turning it into a noise but never losing its musicality (well, that depends on you); third comes the Filter, a very good one, with LowPass, HighPass and BandPass, cut off and resonance, so that the sound may become even more extreme, and finally the Shaper to add a final extreme touch to the sound.

As an extreme effect that it is, it depends on the audio signal and more important on your ability to make it musical that the final results will be great or simply unlistenable...which is sometimes good too, don't you think?

For heavily noisy industrial drums this plugin is seriously recommended. it can slip out of your control easily, but even when it's noisy this effect stays elegant. I'm not lying to you, just try it.

It's free. Together with e-phoniq Retrodelay you can appease your experimental and extreme inner self same was as I do.

As with all e-phoniq products, stability is guaranteed. never had a crash with it.

I'm surprised no-one else has reviewed this great plugin. I'm a bit of a freebie fanatic - I'll definitely try out something if it's free, and this is. So VFM is obviously top.

What you're getting is a smart piece of kit. The GUI is fantastic - everything is in one place, with a beautiful smart blue finish - very modern. I especially love the percentage values next to the slider bars - too often I've seen plugins without this - which irritates me.

The sound is just what you'd expect. Try it out on practically anything and you'll have a lovely distortion of the same sound.

The features really link to the sound. So I'll have to carry on the sound paragraph here - you can get just about any distortion out of this. It's perfect for fine tuning, yet it's brilliance lies in the 'Random' button - if you're feeling lazy, then hit this and it does all the work.

Documentation is a hard one. In many respects it's just a plug and play piece of kit - perfect for people with some experience of setting up a plugin... But I didn't find any docs that told you what to do - which would be perfect for beginners. They do have a contact email address though, but I've never used it. So I'll mark that average.

It really doesn't need any presets. The presets come in the form of the random button really - so there is no specific presets, but that button can give you what the synth is capable of.

I haven't had to use Customer Support.. so I can't really say anything for that. They do provide an email address - I mentioned that earlier.

Value for Money - 10, easily. People should stop giving less than 10 for a free plugin - it's free, you don't have to pay a single thing - how can it not be value for money?

Stability - Top. It hasn't crashed my computer once - it only uses a tiny amount of CPU as well.

I'd definitely recommend this to someone who wants a little more from a distortion plugin but can't afford to shell out. This one is worth it though, if you don't download it then you're missing out!