BitClip

What it does

Two stages in one small AUv3: a bit crusher running from four bits up to sixteen, and a soft clipper. Each switches on and off separately. Warm mode retunes the crusher DSP to imitate old hardware and rolls off some of the high frequencies the effect normally throws out, while a bright switch pushes the opposite way. The clipper has its own gain, so heavy amounts can go in without the output peaking. CPU cost is deliberately low.

In the demo

Jade runs it on a drum bus first, sweeping the bit depth and toggling warm and bright, then switches the crusher off so only the clipper saturation is audible. She pushes 48 dB of gain into the clipper, then moves it onto a sub bass.

Worth knowing

There are no filters or tone shaping beyond warm and bright, so it is a two-job utility rather than a full lo-fi suite.