How do I make digital music sound more lo-fi?

April 22, 2004 8:01 PM

I'm after tips for processing audio to "dirty it up" - techniques and software [more inside].

I've been having fun producing music on my PC for years, but it's always disturbed me that everything I produce sounds so clean, electronic and tight, even if I try to add some human variation to the beats and melodies, and try various effects like tube distortion etc.

Does anyone have any tips on how to "dirtify" loops (ie. exported from Fruity Loops or similar software) to make them sound older, more natural, muffled, like they've come off vinyl or tape, rather than been digitally rendered? I'm trying to put together some beats for an MC friend, but they're sounding too "electro" and not very "old school". I guess I'm looking, really, to make music that sounds sampled even though it's original.

So, any ideas of VST plugins / software / methods in Cool Edit / hardware-based techniques to chill out my beats?

posted by Jimbob to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

download izotope vinyl. it's a free VST effect in which you can add dust, cracks, mechanical noise, etc. you can even set it to simulate record players by the decade (70s, 60s, 50s, etc). in addition you might want to try a bit reduction VST plugin. there are tons of them out there. basically it lowers the bit depth of any sound you route through it, making it "lower fidelity."
posted by edlundart at 9:08 PM on April 22, 2004

oh - and another idea is to loosen up the way you compose your music. record more of it live with a MIDI keyboard or even with real physical instruments. it may not be just that your sound is too clean, maybe it's also too much "on the grid." for drum/beat programming, learn about ghost notes and use them liberally, with feel rather than mathematical accuracy.
posted by edlundart at 9:12 PM on April 22, 2004

Response by poster: I do use a MIDI keyboard and real physical instruments - although at the end of the day the sound generated by the MIDI keyboard through VSTi's can still sound quite clean (although I do have some better sounding plugins).

I've tried bit-depth lowering plugins, and they can be helpful, but still sound a bit electric...maybe if I combine them with a low-pass filter...

Thanks for the tip on izotope vinyl though - I've been using it as a Winamp plugin for a while, but didn't realize it was now available as a VST!
posted by Jimbob at 9:33 PM on April 22, 2004

Here are some plugins that I find very useful:

LoFi Plus:

"This low fidelity sound mangler contains a lofi processor and a delay line. The lofi processor has 3 settings : bit, step and shaper and the delay line has 2 : dly-time and dly-depth."

Cyanide 2.0

This one is a very powerful distortion. Page down until you see it.

dfx bufferoverride

"Buffer Override can overcome your host app's audio processing buffer size and then (unsuccessfully) override that new buffer size to be a smaller buffer size. It makes a lot more sense if you just try it out and hear what it does. It can sound like a stuttery vocoder or a stuck beat shuffler or many other delightful things. In certain hosts, you can also "play" Buffer Override via MIDI notes and even sync it to song tempo."

And a really good place to look for VST plugins and instruments is databaseaudio. Even though it seems that it is no longer being updated. There's still an awful lot of neat stuff on there. And it's all free.
posted by geekhorde at 9:40 PM on April 22, 2004

You might wanna try actually going analog, too. Pick up a coupla cheap guitar pedals from your local pawnshop, dump a long-ish stretch of music to cassette, whatever. Maybe try EQ-ing off some lows, highs or both from your samples, too--that's a big part of the "lo-fi" sound right there.
posted by arto at 11:38 PM on April 22, 2004

Moonfish has a nice "LP crackle" sample that you can add to loops to make them sound sampled.
posted by nomis at 11:53 PM on April 22, 2004

Can anyone on this thread recommend good plugins along these lines for Garageband or ProTools?
posted by skylar at 5:42 AM on April 23, 2004

Following up on arto's EQ suggestion, there is a default EQ setting in FruityLoops called Telephone (i think) that makes a good jumping off point for that particular brand of lo-fi sound.
posted by clockwork at 7:21 AM on April 23, 2004