Bit Crusher: worthless?

I hope they change the algorithm for the bit crusher effect. I find it useless, and never use it. My old Roland SP404 has a far superior sounding but crusher. The RYTM effect just sounds bad. Does anyone actually use the RYTM’s bit crusher?

Yes I use it and I like it.

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i also really like it. much more so than other bitcrushers in that i can get some usable mid-high freq sounds from it.

I must be the odd-ball out. I find that I can barely tell it’s doing anything till I crank it up to a certain point where it sounds like drastic noise. It’s not as subtle, or musical as I would like. I usually try using it on the sample when I’m layering it over a drum-synth sound.

Idk, I like the overdrive & the compressor… the analog effects of the RYTM; but I find I’m also not a huge fan of the reverb, or the delay as well, which are also digital.

I haven’t personally found a use for it. More often than not, it gives an unpleasant result.

How do people use the bit crusher?

I tried with an LFO…was nice… but I am still confused about this one

I like the Rytm’s BC better than the OT’s or MD’s. It sounds smoother and can be tamed with the filter for a nice, modern lo-fi effect.

I like this idea. I often use it to add a little sizzle or crunch to snares or hats. Using an LFO to change that up from hit to hit sounds nice. I’ll give that a go on my next project.

I also use bit crusher to make metals stick out in a mix a bit. Almost always on closed hats or cymbals.

If it was the only bit crusher I had it wouldn’t be up t o par. Not as good as the one on the OT, I think MD had Lo-Fi bit crusher too and it was good if I remember. My Oto Biscuit has it cased. The RYTM Bit reduction sounds not like a typical bit crusher, but I do like what it does.

The BRR in the MD and OT get a lot of use here. As virtual flannel mentions, the OTO Biscuit is a deeper Bitcrusher with a lot of options along with a fantastic overdrive.

An example of the MD BRR used as an effect on the Monomachine:

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I’m just curious, why couldn’t they add BRR on the synth machines themselves as opposed to the sample machines? Is it not possible or just a glaring omission?

It’s a digital effect so I assume just keeping the engines separate so you can go all analog if you wanted.

Yea, more LFOs would really open up possibilities and modulation on the Rytm. I’d like to LFO the Bit Crush but I always have the LFO on the filter cutoff or something else.

I like the bitcrusher but wouldn’t mind at all having a redux parameter as well (ie. changing samplerate as opposed to affecting bitdepth). plocking the bitcrush or setting it up as a velo mod target & using accents is sometimes just the ticket.

Can’t find a use for the Bit Crusher. It just kinda make everything sound worse. . . . not pleasing to the ear. Would be nice to have Sample Rate reduction… . . . on the whole sound. I kinda dig that on kick drums.

You can send pretty much unlimited lfos and other mod sources to more or less any parameter on the Rytm using Overbridge, Live’s LFO tool and/or something like Numerology.

Obviously not a solution if you’re looking to play live on the boxes alone without a computer, but you could always sample out a selection of hits and send them back to the Rytm for performance.

I tend to use it subtly on the tails of samples using the lfos. Its pretty good for adding gritty warmth IMHO.

Just wanted to mention that with the 1.21RC OS I’ve been using the past several months, all the effects sound much better, including this effect. From what I recall before, this effect didn’t do anything noticeable to the sound until the knob was turned quite a bit; and when it did, it just became too drastic of an effect (like it was either nothing or noise). Now, I can actually hear the effect subtly when I gradually turn the knob, and it sounds great. Actually, it’s one of the better bit-reduction effects I’ve used.

I think people were nuts for complaining about having to make minor adjustments to their effect levels to take advantage of this. I never used this effect before, and now I use it often. It is so much better the way it was intended to work.

That’s cool that it’s gone from useless to your favorite in the course of the last year. I still don’t really get the point of this effect. I’d understand if it was made to emulate some of the older samplers 8 & 12bit stuff but (granted I don’t know which OS I’m using ATM) it just sounds bad to me and I would have far more use for a sample rate reducer.

100% agree. Never found it to be musically useful at all. At least, for my music. Sounded like sandpaper to my ears. I would love to see more of an attempt at emulating older samplers with aforementioned sample rate reduction. That plus some new fx maybe, similar to TAL Sampler’s, but in the Rytm hardware form-factor.