![]() ![]() It makes sense, therefore, to strip these stereo characteristics away from any sound that you want to appear more lo-fi. ![]() Today’s cutting-edge mixes are jam-packed with clever stereo positioning, precise auto-panning, pseudo-widening and other stereo-enhancing tricks that instantly give the listener that ‘wow factor’. The obvious aliasing and metallic treble artefacts generated by the effect can add tons of upper presence to plain sub bass and low-mid synth growls. Crushed to bitsīitcrushers are usually associated with the roughing up of drums, but they’re just as good at dirtying up low-end material too. The trick is to keep the effect as dark as possible, and add in a touch of drive for a gritty, old-school sound. The secret? Use an analogue modulation processor, or an emulation plugin from the likes of Soundtoys or UAD, to inject a dull, swimming sense of nostalgic character. Most of us regard modulation processes such as chorus, flanging and phasing as ‘hi-fi’ effects for adding that extra dimension of polish and sparkle, but there are a few occasions when modulation can be used to darken, degrade and ‘retro-ise’ a modern-sounding signal in a special way. Once dialled in, fire a bunch of sounds into the bus, tweak the distortion amounts to taste, and render the distorted signals out as new audio files for use later. When you’re in the mood for extreme distortion, set up a bus routed through a stack of drive stages. This OTT effect can be mixed in parallel to temper the extremity alongside the unprocessed signal. When applied in conjunction with other analogue-emulating processes such as EQ and distortion, a forceful dose of gain reduction can transform a clean, dynamically static sound into something with real ‘pump’, vibe and dirt. Although most commonly used for transparent levelling, a compressor is a great option when you want to impart a sense of dynamic ‘messiness’ and movement. When your aim is sonic degradation, you need to ignore all the commonly-cited production and mixing clichés. The same applies to pitchshifting, too! 5. Use your DAW or sampler’s timestretching capabilities to shorten or lengthen sounds to absolute extremes - the bitty artefacts from the exaggerated warping can give a boring sound some much-needed characterful grit. Boost this to extremes for nasty, distorting equipment sounds. To add back mix presence in the absence of extreme treble, push up a small EQ bump somewhere around 1-6kHz (depending upon your source material) to shift the signal’s overall emphasis. ![]() Plus, low-pass filtering is the best way to reign in the exaggerated high end that lo-fi processes such as distortion and bitcrushing can create. So to get a lo-fi edge, you can simply roll off high frequencies with an EQ or low-pass filter! It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that signals with more high-frequency content will naturally sound more refined and polished. Collect these files over time to compile a collection of bespoke noise samples for use in your tunes. When working in the studio, keep an ear out and record any analogue hiss, system noise, hum, feedback or other seemingly undesirable signal that might occur. Then there are the subtler types of saturation and drive, which can still add noticeable heat and aggression when pushed to overt settings. Somewhere in the middle sit digital distortion, bitcrushing and sample-rate reduction, for applying harsh aliasing and waveform-munching. At the extreme end of the scale, you’ve got nasty-sounding guitar amps, pedals and overdrive, which will completely obliterate a signal into distorted mayhem. When embarking on a journey of lo-fi sound design and processing, your first move should be to reach for a distortion plugin or analogue drive stage of some sort.
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