This leads me on to the first application of a bitcrusher effect. Sometimes you can actually brighten up a sound by very cautiously applying some gentle bitcrushing. In the same way you wouldn’t default to cranking a distortion or saturation effect, try adding a shimmer to your audio with small touches of bitcrushed signal mixed in with the dry signal.<\/p>\n

When you have short sounds like the hits of a snare or hi-hat, their length is often too short to be able to properly identify an effect on them. Try using a bitcrusher to create a different character to these short transient sounds, this can then be automated or attached to an LFO\/Envelope to create little variations and nuances which are often lacking in electronic drum sounds. This is particularly useful because of the way drums are often looped or synthesised with the exact same unchanging sound throughout a track.<\/p>\n

Another great application of a bitcrusher is to use it on a sythesiser, the famous dubstep “yoh” sound can be generated with a resonant filter going into a bitcrusher, seen below.<\/p>\n