Bit Depth doesn't sound like normal lo-fi

I played around with the Drive and Bit Depth features this evening.

Drive seems to be a fairly subtle and useful distortion.

Regarding Bit Depth:
I was expecting a simple arpeggio I was playing to fall apart with quantization noise as the Bit Depth got low. Instead, the effect was very subtle resulting in some added noise at setting of 4-6 bits but nothing like it should have IMO.

Anybody share this opinion?

Update: I tried Bit Depth with several different dry samples. It’s better than I thought. Still not quite what I was expecting though. Audible quantization noise started in about 11 bits but still not the mess I was expecting at 4 bits.

2 Likes

This is one of my main concerns about tracker and play plus. Bit depht, to me, never sounded like bit depth. I would love to sound like a bit crusher but it doesn’t sound.

And distortion is very weak in my opinion. I’d like more aggressive distortion and bit depth.

I found Drive coupled with sample volume could get fairly aggressive.

Need to test that thank you

Many times BitCrusher effects are a combination of Bit Depth and Sample Rate reductions which is of course a different sound.

I don’t think the Play/Play+ Bit Depth reduction is implemented correctly and this is especially obvious down at the bottom of the scale from 4 to 6 bits where the quantization noise should dominate the signal.

On the other hand, Perc already has several decent distortions/bit crushers and it’s already integrated in the device.

If you have a Play+ that is.

I second this - Bitcrush sounds more like a bitcrushed result is being mixed with the original sample rather than being an outright bitcrush. I’d prefer it to be pure bitcrush to do things like simulate chiptune or lo-fi samplers with primitive DACs

1 Like