Nostalgia is Dope
Who doesn’t love the chill, nostalgic sound of yesteryear? Among the most popular analog low-fi effects are vinyl and tape emulation. For digital low-fi, there’s bitcrushing.
Thankfully, some of the best low-fi effect plugins you can get also happen to be free. Here are my personal favorites.
Industry-standard vinyl lo-fi effect. From the developer:
Simulate the dust, scratches, warp, and mechanical noise reminiscent of yesteryear with Vinyl. Perfect for music production and audio post, Vinyl lets you control each nostalgic element independently, giving you all the vintage turntable sounds you love, save for the headache.
Physically-modeled emulation of the Sony TC-260 reel-to-reel tape recorder. From the developer:
ChowTape is an analog tape machine physical model, originally based on the Sony TC-260. The current version can be used to emulate a wide variety of reel-to-reel tape machines.
As well as a tool for mixing engineers and producers, ChowTape is a research project on developing physics-based models of analog tape emulation.
Free bitcrusher and distortion plugin from MeldaProduction. From the developer:
MBitFun is a serious tool for extreme distortion lovers. It converts the audio into limited fixed-point precision form, from a 1 single bit up to 16 bits per sample, and lets you access each bit, applying several operations.
Note that MBitFun comes as part of Melda’s MFreeFXBundle. There are some other great free plugins in that bundle which we may cover later, but if you’re only interested in MBitFun then download the bundle installer, and it will let you pick and choose which plugins to install.
Retro bitcrush sound of the SEGA Genesis. From the developer:
Meet the PCM2612 Retro Decimator Unit, a bitcrusher effect plug-in with a distinctive legacy. Based on the work we made on the RYM2612 Iconic FM Synthesizer, our tribute emulation of the Sega Genesis sound chip, the 8-bit decimation is inherited from the FM synth’s PCM playback feature, packed in a simple and compact effect unit. Bonus: it’s free!
