Vintage sound lovers like reducing the quality of their samples
to get this lovely sonic character.
Early Samplers used 8 or 12 bit converters and sample rates of 25 kHz or even less.
This technological limitation became the signature of early electronic music,
particularly of the 80s and 90s.
With Redux, you can recreate this characteristic sound
and reduce the sample rate and bit depth of your tracks. Let's have a look at the Redux device.
I've loaded an instance of Redux on my drum track.
On the left is the downsampling side.
This dial sets the new sample rate that the signal is degraded to.
By downsampling the signal you add frequency shifted copied spectre of the baseband signal.
The lower the sample rate, the more of the input's signal high frequency components are lost.
And the more prominent the distortion becomes,
creating this very characteristic sound of unfiltered resampling.
Jitter adds unpredictable variations, creating noise and randomness to the downsampling process.
Filters can be applied before and after the effect processing.
In Pre, you apply and anti-aliasing filter.
The behaviour of the sample reduction, will then react differently to the frequency content of the signal.
Clicking on Post enables the filter that follows the resampling modules and reduce imaging.
You can change its cut-off frequency below.
Let's have a look at the right side of Redux on the second track in my song.
Here's the bit reduction side.
Changing the bit depth of this sound simulates the process
of converting an analog signal to a digital one with different levels of bit depth.
High values create subtle and crispy distortion.
If you continue degrading the sound the Audio will lose definition
becoming aggressive and noisy.
The shape dial emulates a particular feature of some early samplers.
It changes the bit reduction behaviour from a linear to a logarithmic scale.
This leads to interesting results and affects the sound of this distortion.
Adding DC Shift will also help you change the sonic characteristic of the resulting distortion.
Let's hear both effects together.
Adjust the balance between the processed and dry signal
with the Dry/Wet slider for even more sonic combinations.
With Redux, you can create various types of digital distortion
allowing you to spice up your synths or drums
or totally smash them. It's up to you.