Hi,
I read some interview with a producer who found songs to be the most interesting when they combined hifi and lofi sounds.

What's your view? Are there certain sounds that benefit more from specific treatments? Like drums knock harder after being bounced to tape. It seems that when making a whole track within the SP there's a lot to be won by planning ahead and preparing your sounds to sit good in the mix.

I recently got a Sampletrak to go with my 404SX. Now I've got to figure out which samples that need to take the dirty route before the final assembly. I will have to experiment and see what I prefer of course.

Just curious to hear your thoughts on this!

Drums get really nice with the right level of lo-tech...generally, smoother sounds get more character when running through lo-fi hardware because it picks up extra texture from aliasing that would go missing or end up much harsher with sounds that aren't so smooth to begin with...

Just my observations...I ain't a pro.

Thanks for chiming in!
I understand that it can be hard to generalize. What is right in one mix/song is wrong in another.

I seem to like to roll off some high end on sounds (hats, snares) to get rid of some harshness. In the last battle I bounced my SX-patterns to tape (+4/+7) and believe the drums knocked harder with the tape compression.
In the next step I resampled lofi into Sampletrak which might have softened them too much. Someone found them "underwhelming" - so I've got to learn what is lofi enough and what is lofi too much.

I've been doing a lot of reading in the archives and there are a lot of tricks to try and master. Yesterday I tried the SP1200-technique of pitching up a drumloop (1-3 octaves), resampling, pitching down in the Sampletrak. One octave was pretty subtle, three octaves got really crushed. Have to try it on chords/melodic samples as well.

What I find interesting with Lofi is that loss of hi-end frequencies is perceived as distance by our ears. So in a monomix, I guess you could use softened, lofi sounds to increase the perceived depth of room in your mix if you blend them with hifi-samples that sound more upfront/closer to the mic.

Just thinking out loud...

about drums knocking louder on tape, I was wondering the same thing recently and I read about natural tape compression, and it's interesting,technically, I can't explain it to you, but it has to do with the particules and the way they react to frequencies. I noticed that everytime I record straight from the 404 to my tape deck, there's a lot of bass. I have to turn down my kick and bass a lot. It's a good thing, that's why I love tape. I just started using a computer again for music(Renoise) and I m still going to bounce all my shit on tape for the added benefits.

Also the Dolby mode recorded in/playback in will kill some high end. Most common Dolby NR is B, which is just a couple of band reject filters to get rid of hiss and as a result, they take some of the shimmer off of high end and smooth it out quite a bit.

Dolby C is a dynamic filter and sounds good if recorded with it and played back with it (i'd argue it has just as little noise as a CD but with a smoother, less harsh top end and fuller low end)...

So playing with your NR if you have that option can impact the audio quite a lot. ..however, yeah, sounds like dude needs a less treaded on tape or take a swab to the heads.

Yeah, while experimenting with lofi sounds recently I actually found Dolby C not noisy enough. Could be a really good smoothener for digital sounding tracks I suppose.

Since tape saturation/compression is a kind of overdrive it brings out the overtones (harmonics) in sounds. When recording bass guitar I have a bit of drive on my Sansamp, which both adds character and make it easier for the bass notes to cut through in the mix.

Another aspect of hifi/lofi that I'm interested in is how to balance mono/stereo within the SP. Last time I built a main pattern, mixed down in mono and resampled back in. Then added some extra samples and stereo fx to get a bit more spread.

A good thing with the SP is that you're forced to make decisions as you go ahead. The songs I'm doing in Ableton I just add more and more tracks/instruments/sounds til it all is one huge marble block from which I must liberate the song chip by chip.

I usually run my samples through an Akai S20...after choppin it up...I sample Akai s20 out into my Microsampler...from there...I play with the sample and try and make something work....on the microsampler as my sample is played in the pattern.... I run my drums into the Korg unsampled yet just to see what drums go good with my pattern & then I add the drums later..... then from there...record my sample into my DAW 2 to 4 or however many bars I have....and just track everything out that way... but yeah....I usually dirty my samples up..then switch em to stereo...so its like a clean dirty ...call my drums "Rim Kardashian"

I so agree with that. I just started working with a computer again and I feel that after working only with a 404 and 202 for 6 months, I'm better at focusing on what matters. it's so easy to layer shit with a computer that sometimes you lose focus. And about mono vs. stereo, you learn a lot working with sp samplers. Some stereo samples sound good turned into mono while on some others the phase fucks everything up. It's all about decisions as you said, couldn't agree more. Not overdoing it.

I was talking mainly about the bass, the highs stay the same and I never use Dolby, I hate it. I'm a bit of a maniac when it comes to cleaning the heads. I clean the erasing/recording heads before everytime I record. And I use a brand new tape for masters. I found new tapes actually the other day at Salvation army.