Bit crushers and a quick Frantabit review

[bigchiefbc]

Soooooooooooooooooooo...

What would you all say is considered the "best" bit crusher pedal on the market right now? Or at least just your favorite!

The HEXE III and Scrutator caught my eye because they both have Expression.

Thanks!

The best crusher I ever played was the Frostwave Sonic Alienator, but it's rare as shit and they go for mad money. My second fav was the Hexe.

[Uncle Grandfather]

Soooooooooooooooooooo...

What would you all say is considered the "best" bit crusher pedal on the market right now? Or at least just your favorite!

The HEXE III and Scrutator caught my eye because they both have Expression.

Thanks!

Hexe sounds realllllly good but OTO Bicuit is my favorite, I like it more than my sonic alienator.

[vallaton]

http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/ho ... sychopress

been waiting for more info on this thing since effects database had a picture of it in their instagram a few days ago. i hope it's gonna be dirt cheap and fun as hell.

[solewheelin]

Holy crap that looks awesome. Ho-tone comin out with the goods.

I wonder if it'll be like anything else out there.

[lordgalvar]

That looks like a Hot One!

[Invisible Man]

In b4 codetocontra.

[neonblack]

Contrabump!

[fuzzisokiguess]

How will we know
If this rush of noise we're hearing
Is the world's biggest hammer
Coming down on our heads crushing our lives
And everything that we've said
Crushing the existence of any small effects we've had
Or is it just some super-sonic flux invented in the future
Blowing up so hard you can hear it before it happens
How will we know?

I know it's an easy out, but: Bitquest's crusher.

[crochambeau]

Thanks. Now I'm sitting over here a few beers into a heat wave and I'm grappling with the delineation between analog and digital. Warning, this might be total bollocks, because I don't have AC.

I don't know if I agree with the statement that bit crushing (I'm correct in stating this is simply bit depth reduction, yes?) must be digital. But my stance makes the following assumptions:

Bit depth is measured "where the rubber meets the road" (at the signal) and is essentially a measurement of the full amount of steps a signal rides on. That is to say:

1 bit is 1 step ( or more precisely two states: on or off)
2 bits have four states, a lower low, upper low, lower high, and upper high.
3 bit have eight states (....)
4 has 16
5 does 32
6 into 64
7 : 128
8 : 256

etc.

So, if an analog signal is fed into a bank of comparators, and the reference for each comparator is feeding of a rung of a resistor ladder, that means that at any given point in time you have a quantity of comparators that arr latched ON that is a more or less direct representation of the amplitude of signal at input.

Does the fact that any of these comparators have only two states, either ON or OFF (not counting the transition swing) make this a digital signal?

Say we haven't quite completely lost our mind, and are limiting ourselves to a five bit equivalent circuit, those 32 comparators would be essentially running in parallel at input (with the laddered reference voltage), and the output voltage could be fed directly into an R-2R resistor ladder in real time, limited only by the speed at which a comparator can go from a cut-off to a saturated state or back again. This would in effect be an A/D D/A by which the bit depth "crushing" could be implemented by simply shunting rungs of either the input or output ladder to cast the signal into a courser stair step relief. Easy switch ass action right there.

Such a circuit would be unhindered by the sampling time constant, as it would run in real time (limited only by physics, or the transition time of the circuit), and certainly be free of implemented logic, which is kind of where I personally draw the line between the two domains (analog versus digital).

So I guess the question boils down to: is such an implementation analog, or digital (by merit of the comparator essentially only producing an on or an off state)? What if the comparators are slow enough that at certain frequencies they more or less follow a rudimentary curve of the original signal? Does that become sloppy digital, or just fucked analog?

Don't overlook the fact that when you boil it down, any digital computer is essentially running analog signals within the billions of PN junctions at hand, it's just the way in which the signal is treated that makes it a digital versus an analog signal.

They both rule.

[raj007]

I've played two Bitcrushers...

Make Sounds Loudly ...."Analog".....Was garbage
Hexe Bitcrusher ..."Digital"....Awesome

Now, Piotr is a genius, so it's not really a fair fight...but that MSL was ass. Sure doesn't want to make me want to try another analog Bitcrusher .

[crochambeau]

but that MSL was ass. Sure doesn't want to make me want to try another analog Bitcrusher .

In his defense, Mark is a builder - not a designer, and I believe a lot of his work is customer specified so faults of the sound of that particular device should not tarnish the MSL brand.

I do agree that stuff touted as analog bit crushing is largely just the electronic equivalent of shaking a rock in a box.

Man, glancing over my yesterday posting makes me tempted to hide from the internet this afternoon. Gonna get ugly...

..and make no mistake, a build derived from that insanity would be a colossal undertaking the cost of which no end user in their right mind would shoulder.

[ck3]

I have experience with the Alesis Bitrman, Alesis Ineko, Electroconducive Analog Sample Rate Reducer, an early Copilot Effects analog sample rate reducer, original Red Panda Linesux Tonecore bit crusher module, Mooer LoFi, Hotone Krush, Malekko Scrutator, and Zoom bitcrushing algorithms from the past 5 years. Insufficient gating and unwanted oscillation were recurrent issues with many of the aforementioned options. The fatness of analog sample rate reduction was appealing for a brief period, but I ultimately grew to appreciate the sterility and crunchiness of digital signal mangling. The Scrutator is my preferred bitcrushing and sample rate reduction solution at the present time, though the amount of trial and error tweaking to balance levels without clipping seemed excessive.

[raj007]

but that MSL was ass. Sure doesn't want to make me want to try another analog Bitcrusher .

In his defense, Mark is a builder - not a designer, and I believe a lot of his work is customer specified so faults of the sound of that particular device should not tarnish the MSL brand.

I do agree that stuff touted as analog bit crushing is largely just the electronic equivalent of shaking a rock in a box.

Man, glancing over my yesterday posting makes me tempted to hide from the internet this afternoon. Gonna get ugly...

..and make no mistake, a build derived from that insanity would be a colossal undertaking the cost of which no end user in their right mind would shoulder.

Ya I should've clarified ...I've had MSL make me a Muff and it was dope as hell.

Good builders aren't immune to swingin and missin though haha.

[codetocontra]

In b4 codetocontra.

Contrabump!

In the market for a different bitcrusher since the Ottobit Jr has opened my ears to some great sounds while also not loving it. Planning to bump the larger bitcrusher thread later.

[D Rock]

I would say ottobit jr is the current king. I finished up a parasit studio sonic reducer tonight, the thing just sounds so damn good, can't wait to test it out at band volumes. Parasit as a builder is extremely overlooked, he makes some badass shit that is right up the ILF ally.