Bunkernoise releases Bit Loser, a free (for a limited time) multiband bitcrusher plugin for Windows and macOS.
Artifacts of the early digital era have their own certain character about them, much like the wow, flutter, and grit imparted by cheap cassettes. If you’re looking to capture some of that old-fashioned digital dirt, then Bit Loser by Bunkernoise has you covered.
Bit Loser goes beyond just the typical use cases for a bit crusher and adds quite a bit of additional functionality. If you’re after downsampling and saturation, this plugin has you covered.
What makes Bit Loser unique is that it doesn’t approach digital grunge in a typical wide-band fashion, but rather it is a multi-band plugin with three individual bands.
This gives a fair amount of control over how much digital filth you want to impart upon a signal. You get control over the low, mid, and high bands, similar to other multi-band processors in the wild.
Also included is a function called the Corruptor, which seems to impart some degree of variability to how the bit crushing and sample reduction is processed. This has numerous options for how often the noise itself corrupts, and probability is just one of a handful of controls present for it.
You can also control how much of the dry signal comes, though, with each band having its own individual dry/wet mix slider. To cap all this off, there is a pair of LFOs that can be pointed to various targets to introduce more motion for sound design purposes.
Bit Loser is a novel plugin and calls to mind similar paid alternatives like Digitalis by AberrantDSP. The digital corruption doesn’t go quite as deep, but it more than makes up for it by including multi-band functionality.
As to what it’s good on, I slap this kind of stuff on everything to get a fine lossy patina on things. I never owned one of those lauded Akai or Emu samplers that are now iconic thanks to hip-hop and drum and bass alike, but I figure this gets me in a similar ballpark.
Bit Loser is available for Mac and Windows computers. Supported plugin formats are VST3 and AU.
UPDATE: The free download offer has expired.
Download: Bit Loser (the free download offer has expired, and the plugin now costs $10)
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26 Comments
Mastartiq
onHere is an interesting free glitch effect I found mentioned by someone.
https://www.utsbox.com/?p=3302
P.S: The page is in japanese language and there is a video demonstration for the plugin too.
VST3, only for Windows.
Tomislav Zlatic
onInteresting, thank you!
Georg
onThank you!
joe m
oni havent been on this site for a couple months i see why nobody releasing good free plugins
Richard Cooper
onThis looks like a great free plugin.
Richard Cooper
onDon’t like the license/account setup though and in the plugin it’s called BitLooser instead of BitLoser. No presets, but no crash so that’s nice. Saturator sounds pretty good though to be honest.
John B.
onI agree. Not keen on giving out my IP address so uninstalled it.
Ike
onGUI reminds me of Goodhertz plugins, which is a good thing.
alex
onQuiet Music Healing 2, originally priced at $20 is free until May 31, 2023:
quietmusic.eu/healing-2-instrument
Brenny C
onAwesome, thanks Alex.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThank you!
Hell'ektrix
onIt’s 9,99€…
Is it already over the “free” deal ?
Nick
onNo. Still free until 31st May. https://quietmusic.eu/healing-2-instrument
Georg
onLooks interesting, thank you!
Numanoid
onWavosaur has been updated to v1.8. This is the first update in almost three year, since v1.7
Michal Ochedowski
onThanks for reminding me about this program. Wavosaur hasn’t been stable in the past, but based on how many features have been implemented I will give it a try. Especially since I keep having playback issues with Audacity. It keeps buffering every 10-15 seconds. Very annoying.
PureFire
onHey Michal, you could backup your aup project files and reinstall audacity, or try starting your computer in “safe mode”
Open audacity and close it again after a min or two without trying to use it (most likely audacity / audio won’t work in safe mode anyway because of the nature of safe mode), then restart your computer normally again, see if that helps ?
I had troubles before with apps, like ableton live @white screen” and the safe mode process fixed my issue, just a thought 🙏
Michal Ochedowski
onThank you for the suggestion. I figured that the problem occurs, when have multiple wav files open in the project. As soon as I exceed let’s say 10 wavs, Audacity needs to buffer mid-playback. Then I can easily hear my hard drive working harder. I always play only one file in solo, but the problem is still there. This doesn’t happen if I operate on a single wav per project. That’s why Wavosaur always seemed smooth regarding playback. It couldn’t play more than a single file at a time.
PureFire
onYour welcome Michal, thats not ideal if you have decent and old audacity projects
If you haven’t already, try these
Whatever DAW you use, each will help a little at a time to reduce overall strain on the computer
Maybe increase buffer size
I’m not sure if you tried this or how your working, but increasing buffer size means increasing latency / delay
Use an external disk / flash drive / sd card to store projects and open them from there
Doing this reduces disk bottlenecks between the os and DAW / audio files being accessed at the same time (at least on magnetic hd)
A few other things that will help in any DAW (just in case you didn’t try these already)
Turn off track inputs while their not in use
Remove silence in long audio clips
If your not able to “freeze” tracks, its not ideal, but you could export Groups of 2 or 3 tracks together as one wav file and then import them into a second project (use highest export quality)
I hope it helps, beat wishes 🙏
PureFire
onAlso, turning off oversampling in all plugins until final export, close all other apps, most likely there are more things to consider too
Michal Ochedowski
onI think that bottleneck was the key word. It helped me realize that all wavs were being played from external magnetic hard drive via usb. I usually have all projects for Cakewalk or Ableton Live on my SSD. No issues there. It was a different scenario only for Audacity. Thanks again.
PureFire
onYour very welcome Michal, i hope you get back to your smooth musical journey just making your great music without any annoying interruptions, i feel what you said 🙏
Numanoid
onTone 2 just posted that they have launched Public Beta of Nemesis 3. They have an interesting wording: “The trial versions are a free gift. You can use them for evaluation purpose” So there are no audio drop outs, or white noise in their trial versions, like this new beta for Nemesis 3 ?
Corti.Son
onHi, I tried it on Warlock and could not detect any audio dropouts or periodic noise. Even the controller settings were still there after reopening the project in Live Suite as VST3. That’s why I think it won’t really be different in Nemesis.
Corti.Son
onOkay, the demo limitations on the Nemesis: no saving, time limited, and some features can’t be used. So I was talking nonsense. :)
Numanoid
onThanks for checking :-) Then I know