EastWest LO-FI

EastWest get gritty with their latest Opus‑fronted virtual instrument collection.

I get that some folks are not fans of subscription‑based access to their virtual instruments but, for working producers or media composers, it’s difficult not to be impressed by the bang‑for‑buck offered by EastWest’s ComposerCloud+. The latest addition to the line‑up is LO‑FI. Yes, you can buy a perpetual licence for the title, but for existing ComposerCloud+ subscribers, it is available at no extra cost, just adding further value. EastWest describe LO‑FI as a sonic toolkit for hip‑hop and EDM but with a darker edge. So, if your projects need a little sonic imperfection to make them... well, perfect, is LO‑FI what you need to add the necessary grit?

LO‑FI Low‑down

LO‑FI provides a virtual instrument library fronted by the latest iteration of EastWest’s Opus. This runs as either as a standalone application or in all the DAW‑friendly plug‑in formats you might need. With an installed size of just over 22GB, LO‑FI offers a collection of nearly 350 individual presets organised into nine categories; Bass, Keys & Synths, Leads, Pads, Guitars, Drums & Percussion, Orchestral, Textures and Vocals. While these are all conventional enough instrument groupings, as we will see in a moment, the underlying design strategy for LO‑FI’s sound designers seems to have been to give all these instruments a suitable sonic twist by any means necessary.

The Sound Of LO‑FI

As well as all the options provided by the front end, Opus makes it easy to stack presets for further DIY sound design.

My initial exploration of those sounds took way longer than it should have. That’s generally a good sign as it is usually because the sounds are inspiring to play, but it did leave me with two initial thoughts. First, the sounds are full of character. I suspect the sound design team had a lot of fun as pitch‑shifting, distortion, modulation and other sonic degradation abound. However, this is all done with some taste. The underlying sounds are not trashed within an inch of their life; just given enough colour to impart some sonic personality.

Second, that character is — in general at least — as advertised, which is to say the sounds have a dark, gritty, flavour. When it comes to your sonic expectations, therefore, this is ‘lo‑fi’ in an edgy hip‑hop way rather than a lazy, lounge‑tinted, study music way. You could undoubtedly drop some of these sounds into that more chilled context, but I’d guess that perhaps wasn’t the primary target EastWest had in mind.

There are some inspiring sounds within every instrument category. However, from a production perspective, it’s the Bass, Keys & Synths, Leads, Pads and Guitars that provide the core of the library’s material. There is good stuff wherever you look here. That includes plenty of excellent bass options and, whether you just need something super‑solid to support the low end (Big Boy Bass, for example), something more EDM friendly (such as Deep Ghost), something more attention‑grabbing to provide a hook‑like element (Bass Stab), a sub‑shaker (plenty of options here), or something a little more obviously aggressive (Overdrive Crank ticks that box), LO‑FI has plenty to offer.

The ‘dark’ is particularly obvious within the Keys & Synths category, which is also LO‑FI’s largest instrument group. Yes, there are some dusty pianos that might do the more chilled lo‑fi style (such as Dark Piano), but these sounds undoubtedly encourage you down a somewhat more sinister musical route (for example, Danger Pluck, Cold Pressed Chords, Organ Of The Night, and many others). That darker mood is also present within many of the Leads presets (such as Formantico, Hijacked or Holloween Lead).

LO‑FI’s preset collection is well stocked with sounds to get inspired by.

The same is true of the Guitar category. There are some excellent options here for adding melodic elements and a number of presets where the overdriven or distorted sound design is taken a little further. There are cleaner options if you need them (the Big Ben preset sounds great) but also plenty of choices that are a little more obviously processed and/or meaner sounding (such as Broken Wing Guitar or Axes Edge).

While the above might represent the most abundantly stocked categories, there is plenty to enjoy elsewhere. For example, if you want some ear‑candy to add the occasional textural element, then, yes, the Textures category provides some rather cool options. Equally, alongside some very playable sounds (such as the Vox Triple Stack or Distro Vox Oh presets), there are some quirky instruments within the Vocals category (including the rather wonderful Chopsy Vox preset).

The Drums & Percussion category provides a selection of both kits (a kit of drum sounds mapped across the keyboard) and individual drum elements (a single pitch‑mapped sound). The hip‑hop vibe comes across clearly here, whether it’s chromatic 808s, crunchy acoustic kits, collections of heavily filtered percussion sounds, or single sounds that have been heavily processed. I’m sure you could find more comprehensive ‘hip‑hop meets electronic’ drum and percussion collections in a dedicated library, but the sounds here cover plenty of ground and are full of character.

Within the Orchestral category, presets such as Celli Stac, Violin Stac and Sad Pizzicato provide options for some classic pizzicato‑esque hip‑hop countermelodies, all served with a touch (or a lot) of saturated warmth. Equally, there are some instruments — featuring brass, woodwind and strings — with pitch modulation if you want to get a little wonky with your tuning. Whatever you pick, the sounds are suitably different from your typical orchestral palette.

DIY Design

Colour scheme aside, LO‑FI’s Opus front end is the same as EastWest’s Iconic (which I reviewed in the January 2025 issue of SOS). I won’t cover all the same ground here, but the key elements are worth repeating to give some sense of the DIY sound design potential if you want to go beyond the supplied presets.

In essence, LO‑FI can be thought of as a hybrid instrument. It combines an underlying (and extensive) sample‑based sound set but then lets you modify those sounds with a number of more synth‑like options built into the UI. So, for example, at the top left are options to engage portamento, legato and polyphonic options, to transpose pitch, and to adjust the MIDI velocity response. Top right you can configure full amp and mod ADSR envelopes. Bottom centre of the UI is home to independent low‑pass and high‑pass resonant filters. There are also LFO and step‑based modulation options. The UI also provides a range of effects and, in the centre, an X/Y pad with the choice between four more creative sound modulation options. The Automation page provides further possibilities for modulation, and MIDI Learn lets you link LO‑FI’s controls to a suitable MIDI hardware controller. And, of course, you can easily stack sound layers within Opus.

The bottom line here is that you get a bit of the best of both worlds; instant gratification from the excellent collection of presets and a very accessible set of tools for manipulating those presets further via some DIY sound design. Hardcore synth sound designers might still find themselves with an itch to scratch but everyone else ought to be more than happy.

If you are willing to embrace the subscription model, ComposerCloud+ — now including LO‑FI — has to be one of the best deals currently available for working producers or composers.

It’s LO‑FI, Jim...

At the time of writing, LO‑FI was still available at a discounted price for the perpetual licence ($199), and there were deals on the ComposerCloud+ subscription (a 10‑year anniversary offer of $9.99/month). I don’t know if those prices will still hold by the time you read this but, if you are willing to embrace the subscription model, ComposerCloud+ — now including LO‑FI — has to be one of the best deals currently available for working producers or composers.

I’ll finish with a reminder of the point I made earlier though. As EastWest make very clear within all LO‑FI’s product details, they have aimed for a darker mood with this library. The sounds have undergone a range of processing options to give them a lived‑in, gritty, organic sense of sonic imperfection, but that’s imparted a somewhat sinister, and sometimes aggressive, quality to the sounds.

So, yes, it’s lo‑fi, but not as everyone might know it. If you wanted a palette of sounds for a more chilled, jazz‑meets‑lounge form of lo‑fi, then perhaps this isn’t the most obvious first choice. However, if you are a music producer or media composer who creates harder‑edged hip‑hop or EDM songs or TV/film scores, LO‑FI is right on the money and will offer you plenty of sounds to get creative with. There are other virtual instruments that can do ‘dark and sinister’ very well but, as a single, unified collection of sounds, LO‑FI is an impressive palette from which to work. Is it possible to do high‑quality sonic imperfection? Obviously, it is... and with LO‑FI, EastWest have done just that.