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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