How to create lo-fi / bitcrushed sounds for trance tracks…

In trance music, the rhythmic sounds are playing a prominent part in any tracks. Producers are always looking to innovate with new sounds which could really make their track stand out. During the last years we have seen a strong trend for lo-fi sounds, also referred as bitcrushed sounds.

Here we purposefully downgrade the quality of the sounds, to make them sound more harsh and more crushing. It’s mostly used with cymbals but it can be used on pretty anything you want. It will create a nice digital / synthetic effect in the track.

There are two ways of achieving this effect. The first one is simply to get samples that are already processed, and already sounds bitcrushed. While very simple, you will not really be able to modify / adjust the sounds as you want, and it can become a problem for the originality of your track.

There is simply no better than to “do it yourself“! There are many very good freewares out there that do bitcrushing.

If you produce with Ableton Live you are lucky because there is very good bitcrusher effect integrated by default with the soft. You can find it in the Browser under Live Devices > Audio Effects > Redux.

If you don’t work with Live and if your sequencer doesn’t come with a bitcrusher by default, you can simply add one as a vst plugin. The one I would recommend is CMT Bitcrusher. It’s a freeware developed by students from a Finnish university; it can be downloaded from their website.

CMT Bitcrusher

There are 3 settings to play with: Drive, Bit-depth and Down Sampling – this last one being the one you want to experiment with. You can also choose between 3 different distortion curves for the drive setting. Being a standard VST , all these parameters are controllable with automation - allowing you to create more advanced effects…

To conclude I would say that bitcrushers are damn easy to use, and are a great tool to experiment with sounds; to create your “own” sound… On the other hand, it’s just a tool and should not be used for everything in my opinion. We hear too much of these bitcrushed sounds everywhere lately! So use it smartly in a balanced manner, avoid the “too much”…

For more infos and details about the distortion curves:
http://cmt.siba.fi/studies/Courses/2001-2002/VST/plugins/CMT_Bitcrusher/