Sound degradation techniques

[hotels // keajn from darklit]

i'm curious to hear what different techniques people utilize in order to get something to sound crunchier, lo-fi, totally fucked up, etc. everyone goes about it a little differently and it's always fun/inspiring to see others' processes.

how do u destroy ur samples & synths?

[Blakelight]

Bitcrusher or waveshaper can be very effective when destroying sound , aswell you can do this With soundtoys decapitator and FabFilter Saturn , you can also destroy a sound a make it your own with a simple eq

[ocularedm]

Seconding bitcrushers and waveshapers. You can also really fuck your sounds up with iZotope Trash

[hotels // keajn from darklit]

Seconding bitcrushers and waveshapers. You can also really fuck your sounds up with iZotope Trash

Trash looks awesome haha. I use Reason a lot for sound design, and it has these two amazing plugins The Echo and Pulveriser. The Echo can give u some insane warped tape effects, and pulveriser is like a waveshaper/compressor/distortion unit all in one. really fun to play around w/

[Mussar]

Additive synthesizers that can analyze waveforms (Harmor, Alchemy, and I think there's one more) and messing with the saw/square harmonics or messing with the harmonic positions is dangerous, but can lead to really awesome stuff.

[atris]

I like to send audio through my korg monotron delay with a super short decay time, that normally messes it up pretty good.

[hotels // keajn from darklit]

I like to send audio through my korg monotron delay with a super short decay time, that normally messes it up pretty good.

I've been looking at the monotron, seems pretty useful considering the price. would u recommend?

[atris]

I like to send audio through my korg monotron delay with a super short decay time, that normally messes it up pretty good.

I've been looking at the monotron, seems pretty useful considering the price. would u recommend?

Yes definitely, it's so dang small that I take it pretty much everywhere with me and I love it.

[Valer]

I can swear by TAL-Bitcrusher. It's freeware, so you don't have to commit to buying anything, and has the lowest cpu load of any bitcrusher I've tried so far.
Also comes with a Noise knob that you can use to make your hi-hats or snares sound really crunchy.
Would recommend.

[polardubbear97]

Reducing the sample rate from audio files. It's subtle but it sounds good.

[Dagda]

Sometimes  just an EQ can do a lot of it for you, just look up the various EQ of 'Phone' (or radios), I believe Pro-Q2 has a preset for it as well.

[track7]

I like doing this the more traditional way, some distortion.. an odd reverb or scooping all the lows/highs out. Not a fan of bitcrushing as a whole, but depends on the genre.

[maksyn]

if you're just looking for a plugin that would give it a crunchier, low qual sound, try TB Timemachine! As far as I can remember there was a free version released by the company a while back that honestly worked amazing, but it seems they've tweaked it and put it up for sale or something. Definitely check out the old/free version, totally worth the shot!

If you're looking for distortion plugins: Izotope Trash2, Ohmicide, and Sugar Bytes WOW/WOW2 work fantastic.

[bearmanbear]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "crunchy" for example i wouldn't consider a bitcrusher crunchy.it just raises the noisefloor via quantization distortion and samplerate reduction adds aliasing.maybe provide an example

[FarleyCZ]

If you have A LOT of time, try Reaktor. Your possibilities of mangling your sound will depend solely on your imagination (and ability to transcribe that idea into a logic and some dsp modules ).