Ableton Forum

This is probably gonna sound silly, or even insane to some of you... but I want my music to have a more lo-fi feel, some subtle distortion and crispy vintage-like recordings. This goes especially for the vocals and the guitar. I'm using saturator and overdrive, but it tends to get more purely noisy than just having that special lo-fi quality, that comes when you record on crappy gear.
I know that I could just buy a really lo-fi microphone and put it to my amplifier, but I don't have any money whatsoever, so I'm using recording directly through my audio-interface...

Examples of the sound I want could be bands like Minks (for example the song Kusmi) or Sic Alps (for example the song "DO You Want to Give $$")

I guess I'm just curious if anyone has some tips or tricks.

thanks in advance

Try using Redux in Lives audio FX, its a bit reducer.

Earn some money.. Buy some old analog gear..

I was previously looking for a "high quality lo-fi sound". Analog gear dude!!! A whole new world of lo-fi awesomeness!!!!

^^
utter bullshit

you need eq, compression, tape saturation, slapback delays and spring reverbs, attitude and knowledge of mixing

Some of these are all pretty good for a bit of fake analogue warmth (the reverb and compressor are nice too). PC only though.


http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/vst-effects/

@4.33

@So-fi: You can acheive good lo-fi sounding stuff with Live alone. If you want true lo-fi straight out of the box, youll need some cash..

All depends on your point of referance.

I@m in a similar boat. I've been trying to get drum machines to sound like Velvet undergound lately and its bloody hard.

I usually re-amp stuff or run it out to analogue through this old mixer and over-drive the mixer a bit.

sometimes helps.

Oddly enough, my favorite lo-fi plugin is the lofi preamp model in Pod Farm...Makes everything sound like it's being broadcast from 1947.

Use EQ, r'verb, and some heavy compression. LOFI

just incase you haven't thought....
record stuff through your laptop mic and layer it with the original?

oddpop wrote:I've been trying to get drum machines to sound like Velvet undergound lately and its bloody hard.

A noble quest.

Try recording out onto a cassette deck, and then record the tape back into Live. It will add some nice tape saturation.

Get a four track tape recorder off ebay. This will give you all the "wow and flutter" you need. The trusty Boss 303 sampler is also a great tool for lo-fi recordings and has some great effects.

oblique strategies wrote:

oddpop wrote:I've been trying to get drum machines to sound like Velvet undergound lately and its bloody hard.

A noble quest.