Dubstepforum.com

what i really want to introduce to my productions (and what i've been trying to do for some time now, in a way) is a certain subtle or sometimes not so subtle lo-fi aesthetic. you know, drum kits that sound like they've been played in the room next door, ghostly, drenched-in-reverb vocals and all sorts of crunches and clicks.

i've done the basic adding of vinyl noise and white noise, cutting low freqs from vocals and treating drum kits with filters but still not quite getting there. so i'd like to ask you what are your fave tricks and tips for getting that warmth and the hip cool lo fi sound..?

i'm using ableton

Record to tape then record back in. Have a look through Thinking Out Loud, quite a bit of lofi discussion in there.

cheers man appreciate it but i was thinking more EQing techniques and freeware vst tips

Use Decimort on everything. Fiddle with wet/dry

Seriously

outbound wrote:Use Decimort on everything. Fiddle with wet/dry

Seriously

Demicort is probably my favorite d16 fx vst.

use breaks, specially the shittily recorded ones
lots of saturation
a lot of warmth just comes from leaving the low end in where youd normally cut it out, pretty sure that whats four tet does

fragments wrote:

outbound wrote:Use Decimort on everything. Fiddle with wet/dry

Seriously

Demicort is probably my favorite d16 fx vst.

It's so good. When I first used it I was hooked immediately

outbound wrote:

fragments wrote:

outbound wrote:Use Decimort on everything. Fiddle with wet/dry

Seriously

Demicort is probably my favorite d16 fx vst.

It's so good. When I first used it I was hooked immediately

Try it after a reverb. Dirt for days.

Reel to reel tape will often bump the low mids and round off the highs. So you could play around with EQ and then saturate/distort the upper mids a tad.

woo thanks mateys

downloaded decimort but now i got a problem with it.. when i quit ableton and later on return to the project, the parameters in the vst are like weirdly turned back up?

Use samples from old drum breaks, layer stuff with tape/vinyl noise, leave some of the 200-500Hz range a little muddy, and try compressing and limiting things a little more than you usually would with a nice dirty compressor.

Here's an Ableton instrument rack that I use to emulate a poor quality tape. It's based off a YouTube video that someone posted here a while back, though I unfortunately smoke too much to remember who to properly credit.

i think a nice way to get the lofo/rugged up sound is to use lots of tape saturation and certain other distortions, sometimes a bit of bit crushing. however, the trick is to set them up via sends or at least with a dry/wet knob on the unit. this way you can mix the dry signal in with the rugged up, this way the production still has it's clean element to it and isn't a muddy mess. controlled chaos is the key.

Eat Bass wrote:i think a nice way to get the lofo/rugged up sound is to use lots of tape saturation and certain other distortions, sometimes a bit of bit crushing. however, the trick is to set them up via sends or at least with a dry/wet knob on the unit. this way you can mix the dry signal in with the rugged up, this way the production still has it's clean element to it and isn't a muddy mess. controlled chaos is the key.

you could always do parallel distortion/saturation instead too

kaili wrote:

Eat Bass wrote:i think a nice way to get the lofo/rugged up sound is to use lots of tape saturation and certain other distortions, sometimes a bit of bit crushing. however, the trick is to set them up via sends or at least with a dry/wet knob on the unit. this way you can mix the dry signal in with the rugged up, this way the production still has it's clean element to it and isn't a muddy mess. controlled chaos is the key.

you could always do parallel distortion/saturation instead too

yo wot is dis

topmo3 wrote:

kaili wrote:

Eat Bass wrote:i think a nice way to get the lofo/rugged up sound is to use lots of tape saturation and certain other distortions, sometimes a bit of bit crushing. however, the trick is to set them up via sends or at least with a dry/wet knob on the unit. this way you can mix the dry signal in with the rugged up, this way the production still has it's clean element to it and isn't a muddy mess. controlled chaos is the key.

you could always do parallel distortion/saturation instead too

yo wot is dis

ive never done it on drums before myself, but i guess it would have similar effects to what eat bass said. you just get a distorted copy of the drum track and layer it underneath the original. obviously youd have it quieter and maybe youd EQ it differently

What I said is parallel distortion.

Snd yeah it works good on any element you want to rough up. I use parallel processing quite frequently. Idk how I lived without it for about a year lol.

Eat Bass wrote:What I said is parallel distortion.

Snd yeah it works good on any element you want to rough up. I use parallel processing quite frequently. Idk how I lived without it for about a year lol.

yeah i guess the way you said is just a different way of doing it, i think its better to double trakc imo tho

kaili wrote:

Eat Bass wrote:What I said is parallel distortion.

Snd yeah it works good on any element you want to rough up. I use parallel processing quite frequently. Idk how I lived without it for about a year lol.

yeah i guess the way you said is just a different way of doing it, i think its better to double trakc imo tho

A send is the same thing just saves time for me. I think this way is actually the most common way for parallel processing, not necessarily duplicate tracks.

And you have more control because depending on how much you crank the send to the parallel distortion bus you can get different results or the same if you keep it at 0db.

Typed out a long one here, dsf glitched out on me, er you.

Bottom line: begin experimenting. The sound you want is not cheep in terms of personal investment.