Lo-Fi sound

The Lounge General Discussion
#21

There’s of course other types of lofi you can explore as well. a couple of things you might check out:

Plogue’s chipcrusher offers a nice selection of lofi effects, mostly retro computers, cheap speakers that kind of thing.
You can also record your own impulse responses of lofi gear and apply those with a convolution reverb plugin.
circuit-bent toys can make cool lofi drums and noises, you can make your own or search the web for samples.
playing a sound in a room with a weird hall and recording it with a mic can also work nicely sometimes.
last but not least: you can time-stretch sounds and then squezze them back to normal to get funny results.

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#22

Besides cassette/r2r, cheap mics, micing speakers/amps etc like mentioned. Some ITB go-tos for lofi -

Audioease speakerphone
Sly-Fi kaya
D16 Decimort 2
Otium sonitex
Waves kramer tape

All worth checking out if you don’t mind using a computer/not looking for realtime effect.

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#23

also the use of a small cheaper 1980’s portable radio/tape player with a built-in microphone to record the played back audio … preferably outside with some nature noises to supplement in the background

#24

although outside would require the use of another 1980’s portable radio/tape-player to play the original recording from tape

#25

Oh I forgot to mention that I absolutely love the sound of the OTO Biscuit and I think it totally qualifies for the “lofi” category. You get both digital crunch and analogue smoothness in one crazy box.

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#26

dbx SNR-1.

#27

Semi-relevant: my wonky 80s tape deck died the other day so I replaced it with a cheap Yamaha KX330 from the 90s. Unfortunately it’s too clean! Barely any hiss even from type 1 tapes and zero wow and flutter :smile: so pick your decks carefully if you’re going the cassette route…

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#28

I loved this song :dark_sunglasses:

#29

Recorded this track using a four tracks channel tape recorder and it was sooooo funny

#30

Well, I can’t help you with the hardware, but on the software side, I can recommend:

  • Toneboosters Reel2Reel and Ferrox VST for tape simulation is very nice
  • TAL Sampler has perfect hardware simulation of old samplers.

Samples: Goldbaby Tape and Vinyl drum machines are as good as you will get. There are some in that have been recorded on really lo-fi gear.

Best,

K

1 Like
#31

this effect for reaktor.

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/11003/

also if you use cassettes… record way to quiet, or… way to loud onto them.

OR just download a record of tape his… mix in as desired.

#32

I don’t use Reaktor unfortunately but it looks interesting especially the main interface

#33

Reaktor just release the free ens file called VHS and its pretty darn good at getting that lofi tape vibe… and its free so no brainer. Other than that, just grab a cheap tape deck at a second hand store and go for it.

#34

These look cool, a friend of mine just got the kit, havent seen it in person yet.

I love my Strymon Deco for sort of gluing the master mix together.
It’s kind of like coating your sound with a reel to reel simulator and then some.

Theres a few older channel cassette recorders that let you overdrive the inputs, kind of smashing/distorting the sound, and sometimes it sounds really good!