How to get a lo-fi sound: tape, vinyl and bitcrushing

Lo-fi is not just turning the quality down. Good lo-fi picks a story, a worn cassette, an old sampler, a dusty record, and keeps the drums punchy and the melody clear. Here are the three ingredients and how to blend them.

One knob first

SILTH turns its TAPE, DECIMATE and VINYL sections up together with one AGE knob. 0% is clean, 50% puts each section where its knobs are set, and above 50% goes further: lower rates, fewer bits, darker tone and more wobble. Three sliders under AGE set how much it moves each section, so you can keep one cleaner while the others age.

Tape: warmth and movement

• DRIVE: tape-style saturation that warms, thickens and rounds off peaks.
• BUMP: the low-end lift of a tape head, a warm swell around 90 Hz.
• FLUTTER: fast, fine wobble. HISS: soft tape hiss that follows the sound, so silence stays silent.

Decimate: the old converter

RATE lowers the sample rate for a grainier, duller sound; BITS lowers the bit depth, from grit to hard crunch. SMOOTH chooses between raw aliasing sparkle and a soft, filtered sound, and JITTER makes the clock wander like a tired converter. MACHINE sets everything at once for a whole piece of old gear: a 12-bit drum sampler, an 8-bit sampler, a cassette 4-track, VHS, an old radio or a phone line.

Vinyl: the record

DUST adds fine crackle, POPS the big round pops of a worn record, RUMBLE the turntable motor. WOW is the slow pitch wobble of a warped record, and the 33, 45 and 78 switch sets how fast it sways. TONE rolls off the top like a worn needle and MONO folds the lows to mono like a record cut.

Keep the punch

PUNCH keeps kicks, snares and plucks sharp: when a hit starts, SILTH lays part of the clean attack over the first few milliseconds while the body and tail stay processed. MIX blends in the dry sound for parallel processing.

Two recipes

Dusty drum bus: MACHINE 12-bit drum sampler, AGE 60%, PUNCH 90%, DUST 20%, MIX 70%.
Warm, wobbly keys: DRIVE 40%, BUMP 50%, FLUTTER 15%, WOW 20%, TONE around 8 kHz, DUST 15%, record speed 33.

When you like it, press CAPTURE to record what SILTH just did and drag it straight into your song as a WAV.