There are a whole lot of tape and tube emulation plug-ins available to help give your tracks and mixes that analog style warmth and “glue.” These work great! But sometimes, you might want that glue for your mix, but with less of a vintage sound. Time to reach into the toolbox for a plug-in you might not otherwise think of: a “bit-crusher” plug-in, such as the D16 Decimort Bitcrusher or the McDSP FutzBox.

Normally, bit-crushers and other harsh distortion effects are what people reach for when they’re looking for something over the top. But what makes them interesting as subtle color effects is that compared to tape and tube emulators, bit-crushers are broadband distortion effects — in other words, they’re designed to squash/saturate your entire signal, as opposed to emphasizing specific midrange frequencies. So if you’re looking to make your entire mix a little hotter without necessarily bringing out the mids or warming up the sound in a vintage way, try using a bit-crusher or “harsh” distortion on the master output, or maybe a few select buses, with the gain set very low, the “bit” parameter set to 16 bits or higher, and EQ/shape to taste. Used subtlety, your tracks or mix won’t sound crushed, but it will sound warm and glued, but in a completely different way than with tape or tube emulation.

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How to Use a “Bit-crusher” Plug-in to Add Warmth

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