The full signal chain I used for my lo‑fi processing experiment including Grungelizer, BitCrusher and FX Modulator.
Want to get the lo‑fi vibe using Cubase’s stock plug‑ins? Here’s how.
Whether it’s within the abundant supply of relaxation‑meets‑study music, embedded firmly in some types of hip‑hop, or just blended subtly into a whole range of other popular genres, lo‑fi is very much back in fashion. If you want to take your pristine recordings and add a touch of sonic degradation to create a warm, nostalgic sound there are some very popular third‑party effects plug‑ins tailor‑made for the job. But if you have Cubase, it’s also a style you can achieve using just the stock plug‑ins — with no need for additional expenditure required. So let’s see how Cubase can help you embrace all those perfect imperfections!
Tools Of The Lo‑Fi Trade
Typically, signal‑chains for lo‑fi feature a number of elements. For example, electrical noise or vinyl crackles might be applied. Tape (whether real or emulated) can be used to simulate the pitch modulation caused by varying tape speed or wow, flutter and dropouts. Distortion can be added via real or virtual analogue circuity or tube distortion. Sample degradation through bit‑depth or sample‑rate reduction can be used to ‘downgrade’ the sound. Pitch modulation or resonator components are often added to reverb or delay effects. And, finally, the bandwidth of the sound can be restricted using filters.
As with any effects chain, changing the order of the effects in the chain can lead you to different results, and you can use as few or as many of these options simultaneously as you wish, and adjust the wet/dry balance of individual effects or the whole chain to taste.
Stock Options
Given the typical processing options described above, the first screenshot shows some obvious candidates from Cubase’s bundled plug‑in collection that might fulfil each role. To give you a better idea of the kinds of effect this example signal chain can deliver, I’ve created some audio examples that you can find on the SOS website (https://sosm.ag/cubase-1124). These are based around two particularly common targets for lo‑fi processing: a piano part and a drum loop.
So, what have I got in my example effects chain and why? For ‘turntable noise’, Grungelizer is definitely the plug‑in for the task. It lets you add noise, crackle (with a turntable speed switch) and distortion effects as well as an element of mains hum. For this workshop’s experiments, I started with the suitably named LoFi 1 preset and dialled in to taste from there. Really, the only thing to note is that the noise elements added by Grungelizer are ‘always on’, whether or not the instrument it’s applied to is playing. Now you might want the sound all through your track, but often you won’t, particularly if you’re processing multiple parts in this way, where the effect will ‘stack’ unhelpfully. Here, I’ve added an (optional) instance of the standard gate plug‑in immediately after Grungelizer and set its threshold so that it mutes the noise from Grungelizer when there’s no instrument signal playing.
For a tape‑style detuning effect (caused when the tape’s playback speed varies, resulting in variations in pitch), I’ve used the FX Modulator plug‑in. This includes a preset called Old Tape Record, and I used this as my starting point. I then focused on just the Pitch module (I removed the Reverb, Chorus and Filter modules). The result is a long, slow, gentle modulation curve that’s applied to the pitch of the incoming audio. I tweaked the default curve to make the effect a little more obvious in the audio examples, but you can push things much harder and fully customise the modulation curve to suit your needs. Cubase Elements users could replace FX Modulator with one or more of the modulation‑style plug‑ins such as Chorus or Flanger: add a little parameter automation and you can recreate much the same sorts of gradual pitch‑drift.
I used a single band of Quadrafuzz to add some tube distortion to my lo‑fi processing, but there are other distortion options within the Cubase plug‑in collection that could serve a similar role.
For distortion duties, there are lots of options but I chose Quadrafuzz. I added a single band of tube‑based distortion in the 1‑5 kHz frequency range and boosted the output gain a few dB to make it more obvious. On its own, this gave a somewhat crunchy, crisp, and bandwidth‑limited flavour, but you can then use Quadrafuzz’s built‑in mix control to dial in the effect to taste. Elements users could easily substitute in DaTube, or either the Tape or Tube Saturation modules of the MixConsole’s Channel Strip to achieve an effect that’s in the same ballpark.
BitCrusher is the obvious choice for downgrading your sounds. Again, there’s a preset called LoFi that provides a good starting point, but the plug‑in’s Depth control makes it easy to dial in whatever degree of bit reduction your ears are comfortable with. The Sample Divider and Mode buttons provide plenty more variation, while the Mix knob can again be used to blend the wet/dry balance to taste.
By this stage, you may well have all the options you need to downgrade your sounds to pleasingly lo‑fi status but, just for good measure, I finished off my example effects chain with instances of ModMachine and RoomWorks (choosing the Rhodes Beneath The Waves and FX LoFiverb presets, respectively). The former works well on my drum loop, adding a subtle movement, but you can raise the Mix value to increase the amount of ‘seasickness’ it induces. The latter works better with the piano part, injecting an additional element of lo‑fi to the ambience. Again, you could easily substitute alternative plug‑ins for either task or both, but these options are built into Cubase.
It makes better sense to have the whole signal chain sitting on an FX Channel.
Insert Or Send?
The whole chain can be set up using the insert slots on the relevant instrument’s track, of course, but you may well want easier control over how much of this lo‑fi processing you hear versus the dry sound, and in that case it makes better sense to have the whole signal chain sitting on an FX Channel that’s fed by a send from the instrument track. That’s the approach I adopted here, and I chose to make the send pre‑fader. That way, you can set‑and‑forget the actual send level, and simply use the instrument’s track fader (unprocessed signal) and FX Channel fader (processed signal) to set the desired blend of clean and lo‑fi.
As shown in the screenshot, I also used the High‑Cut and Low‑Cut filters in the FX Channel’s Pre section to bandwidth‑limit the lo‑fi processed element between 250Hz and 5000Hz, for an even less hi‑fi sound. Again, I’ve provided audio examples to illustrate the possibilities.
On, Off, Wet, Dry, Up & Down!
With the initial plug‑in selection and settings sorted, it’s then a case of dialling in exactly what combination of these effects you wish to use in any particular case. The options are pretty much endless: turn individual plug‑ins on/off via their bypass buttons; finesse the unprocessed to processed balance further using the wet/dry mix controls found in many of these plug‑ins; or drag individual plug‑ins up or down in the FX Channel’s insert slots to change the order in which they process the sound. The choice is yours, but I’ve included another audio example to illustrate some of the possibilities with the same drum and piano examples.
Free Lo‑Fi Plug‑ins
Hopefully you can see, then, that Cubase’s bundled plug‑in collection can do a decent job of pushing your sounds into lo‑fi territory, but that’s not to say we couldn’t identify a couple of areas that aren’t quite so well catered for. And if you’re not ready to stump up for one of the dedicated third‑party lo‑fi effects processors such as XLN Audio’s RC‑20 Retro Color (probably the most well‑known), you can still usefully supplement Cubase’s plug‑ins with some rather good freebies.
For example, for those turntable‑style noises, iZotope’s free‑to‑download Vinyl plug‑in is an excellent alternative to Grungelizer. It includes emulated turntable noise based on different decades (with more sonic compromises the further you travel back in time) and speed settings, as well as a whole range of noise types that you can sprinkle across your audio to give it a more lo‑fi retro sound.
If you feel the need to expand your lo‑fi processing options, there are some excellent third‑party free‑to‑download options including iZotope’s Vinyl and Caelum Audio’s Tape Cassette 2.
Another personal favourite is Caelum Audio’s Tape Cassette 2, which is also a free download. As the name suggests, it emulates the distinctive sound of cassette tape (anyone under 25 might need to ask their parents about this), including tape saturation, noise, and the wow and flutter created by variations in the tape speed on playback. For a degraded tape sound, this perhaps does a more convincing job than just adding pitch modulation using FX Modulator, Chorus or Flanger, but a combination of both can also be very effective.
Again, I’ve included some audio examples to make a comparison between the stock plug‑in approach and what additional lo‑fi character these third‑party options can deliver. Oh, and while we are on the subject of ‘free’, don’t forget Steinberg’s own and rather excellent free‑to‑download Lo‑Fi Piano expansion for HALion/HALion Sonic. This is a cool piano library in its own right, but there are also a number of lo‑fi effects options within it.