Our recent Lo-Fi House release has had a fair number of people get in touch with us asking how the pack was made, the gear used and how they might go about re-creating similar sounds in their own studio or completely in-the-box.

Whilst the producer of Lo-Fi House created the sounds from purely analogue circuitry primarily - including classic synths such as the Vermona Mono Lancet as well as the Akai MPC2000 sampler and Sherman FilterBank outboard processing unit - it is possible to get great lo-fi sounds without such expensive gear at your disposal.

Here we’ve listed five clever tricks and techniques that will help add grit, warmth, crackle and dirt to you tracks in no time…

Resampling

Basing your tracks around resampled sources is a sure-fire route to lo-fi vibes. First off, resampling sounds inherently starts to degrade the fidelity of sound in question, whether it’s picking up the hiss and crackle from a charity shop vinyl or obliterating the bit-rate of other sound sources within your DAW.

For example, if you’ve been crate-digging in your local record store discount bin why not rip some of that dusty, crackly ‘air’ and use it as a background textural bed in your track to give an otherwise clinical digital mix a bit of analogue flavour? Record it, give it a bit of light EQ and slip it relatively low in the mix and listen to the difference it makes.

If you’re working completely in-the-box using VSTs you can still get that analogue, lo-fi flavour. For instance, if you’re using a Juno 106 emulation VST to write bass, leads, chords or pads then when not resample these through some heavy-handed settings on an in-built distortion or bit-crushing plugin? Or check out something like the TAL-Sampler which mimics the sound of classic hardware samplers for a fraction of the price and space.

If you are working in-the-box it might be worth looking at some cheaper outboard processing options to dip your toe into the analogue realm. You can pick up an assortment of cheap pedals that will give you dirty, gritty, overloaded or washed-out results in minutes. Record sessions of synths, basslines or whatever these back into your DAW, cut out the best of these and use these resampled sounds as the basis for your tracks.

Tape is great

Whilst time consuming, recording your sounds, stems or even full tracks to tape is a great way of adding the warm, analogue flavour of tape to your productions. When most people think of tape it might be a big, old, expensive Studer quarter inch tape machine but the reality is you can get great lo-fi results from even the cheapest consumer tape decks - you’ll still get the “warmth” of the magnetic tape, and the artefacts from the mechanics of tape machine itself, such as flutter, and other harmonic and non‑harmonic distortions.

Less is more

Not only did the vintage gear of yesterday sound inherently great, it also had very clear (and severe) limitations. And it was these limitations - such as sampling time or limited number of outputs - which kept things stripped back and simple. Part of the lo-fi aesthetic was the minimalism the kit imposed upon it. So why not limit yourself to a certain number of sound sources, a certain number of tracks, a couple of processing options and see how creative you can get within the set parameters?

Go for the overlooked

We all know about the qualities of classics like Akai’s MPC series or Roland’s seminal drum machines but why not consider other often overlooked (and cheaper) options from less esteemed hardware manufacturers? For example, the Boss DR-202 is loaded with retro lo-fi sounds and can be picked up for next to nothing online. The same goes for samplers - check out the Casio SK-1/5 which is limited to 1.4 seconds of sampling or the Yamaha VSS-30. Very cheap, pretty limited functionality but up there in the fun factor and lo-fi stakes.

Get some more samples!

Other than our own Lo-Fi House sample pack, why not check out cool free sounds from Goldbaby or this awesome list of samples and sound sources from analogue aficionado Legowelt? Load up your hard drive and you’re good to go!