Dr. Scientist BitCrusher pedal?

[intothegroove]

I thought this would be a cool topic to talk about whether it happens or not. I figured If anybody can make the best bit crusher it would be Ryan! I really love bit crushed sounds, always have and to have a dedicated bit crusher pedal from the master Ryan would be the best! Any thoughts?

[EricRobin]

BitQuest! He just made a pedal that bit crushes and it sounds awesome.

[intothegroove]

Welcome to ILF

I am actually waiting on it to be delivered this afternoon, oh yea the bitcrushing on it sounds killer! But I'm talking about a full out dedicated bitcrusher pedal, that has extensive parameters and all kinds of features that no bitcrusher pedal ever has and non that can ever touch it!

[Ryan]

I ponder this too as I keep thinking that it would be cool to do decked out versions of every kind of pedal with the Spin chip.. it would be fun and awesome and really versatile/powerful to make 8 chorus patches, 8 flanger patches, 8 delay patches, 8 reverb patches, you get what I'm driving at.. you could do that with the Spin, have all these different patches that added up to one awesome pedal of a specific type.

When I was working on the bit crusher patch for the BQ I kept thinking what more can I do with this.. there's a few goals, first is to decrease the bit depth and make the weird cool distortion. Second is to limit the sample rate and make the weird cool alias frequencies. Third I figured would be to modulate something for some spice. And that's all I could come up with! I don't really have any other ideas for a more decked out bit crusher, especially since the BQ has the clean blend and tone control.. it's probably as decked out of a bit crusher as I could come up with.

One thing though is that you get different sounds depending on what bits you crush.. you can get some unexpected and interesting sounding mixes of clean and crushed by removing bits that aren't in order, so that could be a cool way to deck out a bit crusher pedal. Could also try modulating the bit depth rather than the sample rate but that's a toughie based on the way the code works, when you turn the bit depth knob you point at different sections of code, tougher to modulate as a whole...

But yeah, let's ponder what would make the best bit crusher ever.. I'd love to learn about some new bit crusher tricks, I know there's more to learn than my straight forward bit crusher patch!

Hope you're enjoying your BitQuest this weekend, Andrews, and welcome to ILF, Eric!

[goroth]

I'd also be interested in this!

The be all and end all of bitcrushers is probably the hexe.
http://www.hexeguitar.com/pedals-bitcrush_e

But Ryan those sort of features with which bits are crushed, man if you could implement that! I also think more advanced controls for the modulation would be awesome. Imagine modulating with a square wave that is not "centred". You'd get this on off cruising tremolo where half the signal was more crushed than the other! Imagine assigning the centre point of the sweep to an expression pedal! Slowly modulating the modulation!

[intothegroove]

I ponder this too as I keep thinking that it would be cool to do decked out versions of every kind of pedal with the Spin chip.. it would be fun and awesome and really versatile/powerful to make 8 chorus patches, 8 flanger patches, 8 delay patches, 8 reverb patches, you get what I'm driving at.. you could do that with the Spin, have all these different patches that added up to one awesome pedal of a specific type.

When I was working on the bit crusher patch for the BQ I kept thinking what more can I do with this.. there's a few goals, first is to decrease the bit depth and make the weird cool distortion. Second is to limit the sample rate and make the weird cool alias frequencies. Third I figured would be to modulate something for some spice. And that's all I could come up with! I don't really have any other ideas for a more decked out bit crusher, especially since the BQ has the clean blend and tone control.. it's probably as decked out of a bit crusher as I could come up with.

One thing though is that you get different sounds depending on what bits you crush.. you can get some unexpected and interesting sounding mixes of clean and crushed by removing bits that aren't in order, so that could be a cool way to deck out a bit crusher pedal. Could also try modulating the bit depth rather than the sample rate but that's a toughie based on the way the code works, when you turn the bit depth knob you point at different sections of code, tougher to modulate as a whole...

But yeah, let's ponder what would make the best bit crusher ever.. I'd love to learn about some new bit crusher tricks, I know there's more to learn than my straight forward bit crusher patch!

Hope you're enjoying your BitQuest this weekend, Andrews, and welcome to ILF, Eric!

I am in love with the BitQuest Ryan! Unreal man I really like how the bitcrusher turned out on it and especially the Ringmodulator! I think also implementing a ringmod with bitcrushing could compliment the effects very well. That could also add to the amount of parameters and control over the bitcrusher, like having the ability to mix in the ringmod with all the parameters it has on the bitquest Also having the ability to double up the bitcrusher, like a dual bitcrusher pedal I shall ponder.....

[intothegroove]

I'd also be interested in this!

The be all and end all of bitcrushers is probably the hexe.
http://www.hexeguitar.com/pedals-bitcrush_e

But Ryan those sort of features with which bits are crushed, man if you could implement that! I also think more advanced controls for the modulation would be awesome. Imagine modulating with a square wave that is not "centred". You'd get this on off cruising tremolo where half the signal was more crushed than the other! Imagine assigning the centre point of the sweep to an expression pedal! Slowly modulating the modulation!

Hell yes goroth! That sounds like killer ideas!

[Jwar]

DO IT, DO IT, DO IT!!!!!!!!!! I want my whole board to be Dr. Scientist! Well...and Industrialectric.

[Ryan]

Cool ideas for sure! Just have to always remember that the Spin only has 3 controls, it's very limiting while still being very powerful. My bitcrusher is already quite similar to the Hexe one, it has bit depth, sample rate, sample rate mod, clean blend, volume, expression, couple more tricks like filtering and exp assign... other than that there's not a ton to do with it besides tweaking bit depths or tweaking the mod.. both ideas I like and will experiment with and if I could come up with 8 interesting and unique patches I'd do a bitcrusher for sure! I think it'd be pretty doable actually.. every patch bit crushers and then some have delay or verb or other effects or different crushings or different modulatings.. I like that idea a lot...

Andrew, awesome to hear you're liking the BitQuest and thank you again! I've been hanging around your forum too and the Echo Degrader looks fantastic, awesome job to you and Dirge!

[Tristan]

I love the Hexe Bitcrusher III, it has the most beautiful sounding sample rate reduction I ever heard, Piotr even has a more crazy one that can modulate even more parameters separately through different LFO's and with multiple selectable types of bitcrushing, the Bitcrusher Studio:
http://www.hexeguitar.com/pedals-bc3studio_e
Apparently the type of bitcrushing that is mostly used is a "book type" but there are more ways to do it.

The coolest thing to do with a bitcrusher / sample rate reducer that I can think of is probably to have different waveform LFO's (especially for the sample rate reduction and preferably tempo / bpm syncable), maybe a stepped one like in the Subdecay DLX stuff, a random stepped one, a ramp up one, ramp down one and ramp up + ramp down one, plus the ability to set the low and the high point so you can keep it in the vocal range for those throaty robot sounds when you combine it with a filter.
Also, the Montreal Assembly Wrong Side Of Uranus has quite some settings / LFO's one could draw inspiration from maybe.

[intothegroove]

DO IT, DO IT, DO IT!!!!!!!!!! I want my whole board to be Dr. Scientist! Well...and Industrialectric.

[intothegroove]

Cool ideas for sure! Just have to always remember that the Spin only has 3 controls, it's very limiting while still being very powerful. My bitcrusher is already quite similar to the Hexe one, it has bit depth, sample rate, sample rate mod, clean blend, volume, expression, couple more tricks like filtering and exp assign... other than that there's not a ton to do with it besides tweaking bit depths or tweaking the mod.. both ideas I like and will experiment with and if I could come up with 8 interesting and unique patches I'd do a bitcrusher for sure! I think it'd be pretty doable actually.. every patch bit crushers and then some have delay or verb or other effects or different crushings or different modulatings.. I like that idea a lot...

Andrew, awesome to hear you're liking the BitQuest and thank you again! I've been hanging around your forum too and the Echo Degrader looks fantastic, awesome job to you and Dirge!

YES Ryan! excellent idea!

Thanks so much buddy! I am so glad you like Echo Degrader and it's an honour hearing that from you!

[intothegroove]

I love the Hexe Bitcrusher III, it has the most beautiful sounding sample rate reduction I ever heard, Piotr even has a more crazy one that can modulate even more parameters separately through different LFO's and with multiple selectable types of bitcrushing, the Bitcrusher Studio:
http://www.hexeguitar.com/pedals-bc3studio_e
Apparently the type of bitcrushing that is mostly used is a "book type" but there are more ways to do it.

The coolest thing to do with a bitcrusher / sample rate reducer that I can think of is probably to have different waveform LFO's (especially for the sample rate reduction and preferably tempo / bpm syncable), maybe a stepped one like in the Subdecay DLX stuff, a random stepped one, a ramp up one, ramp down one and ramp up + ramp down one, plus the ability to set the low and the high point so you can keep it in the vocal range for those throaty robot sounds when you combine it with a filter.
Also, the Montreal Assembly Wrong Side Of Uranus has quite some settings / LFO's one could draw inspiration from maybe.

I am loving these ideas

[Tristan]

Thanks man, I'm glad you like my suggestions!

Another thing I was thinking about is (reverse) envelope following bitcrushing and maybe a latch mode where the LFO is always running up, down, up and down or down and up regardless of input signal, a bit like on the LAL Sandstorm.
The bitcrushing on my Hexe Bitcrusher III can sound a bit like airflow or something and it would be interesting to be able to experiment some more with that, when you use a reverse envelope you might be able to mimic wind instruments if you combine the bitcrusher with the right type of other effects.
When using regular envelope following or latch mode I think you could be able to get wind noises, if you'd also have a blend control on the pedal you could mix the wind noises in with the original signal / what you are playing.

Oh yeah, and a gate for the bitcrushing could be really useful too, Piotr changed the code on the crush from my Bitcrusher III a little so it has a bit of a gate on it which makes it much less noisy when I don't play but I can imagine that a control knob that dials in no gate or an even more extreme gate would be really cool.

Well, I guess it's pretty obvious that I love bitcrushers and sample rate reducers and I like to ponder about them.

[Ryan]

Thanks Tristan, that was a bitcrusher master class, sir! Envelope and more LFOs is perfect and I love that wind noise idea, that's wild!