Top-5 Lofi Plugins 2022

Make your sound wobbly and warm with a few clicks

Lo-Fi music has become extremely popular and as was expected, producers started using lofi techniques in many genres besides lofi hip hop.

What defines the Lofi sound? - It is a combination of tape wobble, sometimes distortion, and filters that create a warm and inviting feeling. It struck a vain of nostalgia by reminiscing the sound of cassette tapes and old vinyl records that had a certain “broken“ quality to them.

In short, lofi brings back the human factor in the music-making process that has become too digital and polished. It brings you back to the day when music was recorded straight into tape decks and reel to reel decks without using perfect and repeating loops.

Using hardware gear to achieve that is a bit difficult these days, but thankfully there are a lot of plugins that can emulate this effect at a satisfactory level.

Here are our Top 5 picks:

Hello, World!

iZotope Vinyl

Our first choice is completely FREE and it sounds amazing! Vinyl from iZotope has all the essentials to make your sounds broken and old. You can add Dust, Scratch, and Warp while choosing how intense the effect you want to be by selecting the decade you want. All the way from the 1930s to the 2000s. For a free plugin, Vinyl does way more than you would expect and it is an absolute must-have!

Wavesfactory Cassette

Cassette is a beautifully designed cassette tape emulation made by Wavesfactory. After analyzing a whole lot of cassettes’ effects on the sound, they created a plugin that faithfully represents how your music would sound if you run it through a cassette deck. You can select any kind of cassette type you want from Type I to Type IV while having maximum control over all the parameters that affect your signal. An amazing solid option to use on pretty much anything.

Abberant dsp -SketchCassette II

Ok, now this one not only sounds good but it also looks amazing! SketchCassette II is another cassette emulation by Abberant DSP. Inspired by the 4-track recorders, it is designed to introduce a wide array of lofi effects to help you shape that lofi character you’re looking for!

Baby Audio - Super VHS

Compared to the previous options, Super VHS by Baby Audio is the easiest plugin to use. Only 6 powerful controls, cleverly named, help you go from subtle to extreme in no time! Static generates noise, Heat is a saturator, Shape is a sample rate reducer, Magic is a widener effect inspired by the famous Roland Juno Chorus, Drift is essentially a vibrato/ wobble knob, and Wash is a lofi hall reverb. Very simple to use but also carefully crafted.

XLN Audio - RC-20 Retro Color

Probably the most recognizable plugin in our list, RC-20 from XLN Audio is the best all-around option. Its purpose is to recreate the warm feeling of old recording equipment with a series of effects that sound great and balanced.

It has a Noise strip which adds noise with a lot of options to choose from such as Vinyl, Cassette, Static Noise, and more The envelope follower - Follow knob can be very handy. Next, there is the Wobble strip, whereas the name implies it adds pitch fluctuations to your sound with the choice of Wow and Flutter and everything in between. Distort is a distortion modeler with again, a lot of different types to choose from. The distortion in the RC-20 sounds amazing and the Focus feature is very useful. After that, Digital is a sample rate reducer and Space is a lush ambient reverb. Lastly, Magnetic reproduces wear and volume drops associated with old playback machines.

RC-20 Retro Color is a swiss army knife type of plugin. Useful in almost every project to add that little extra to your recordings. It is not just a lofi effect but a lot more and we highly recommend it.

Any plugin gems we missed? Send us a message to include them too!

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