There are some very expensive plugins that allow for this, then there is DSK Sax. A completely free VST that allows for great customisation and expressive tones completely free! Great for adding some texture and flavour to lofi beats. Working with virtual studio technology (VST) plugins is tremendously convenient, but a lot of the best VST plugins out there are very expensive. If you're looking to expand your library of VST instrument (VSTi) plugins, or tweak your mixes with some great effects or MIDI effects VST plugins, you can do it for free. Lo-fi SYNTHS VST Instruments DvnSfxMaker size 3.55 MB / 3.61 MB / 4.13 MB / 4.12 MB DvnSfxMaker is a synthesizer designed to create sound effects for video games. 3 Oscillators (Waveforms: Sin, Triangle, Tan. Links to the plugins:Labs: Vinyl: D. Hip-Hop lo-fi: A trending music genre. With all these features, this is a plugin which already by its old version was superb efficient but this update allows to add a better old-school lo-fi effect on hip-hop beats close to the music productions of the legendary Hip-Hop lo-fi precursor producer, J Dilla. Download Free Lofi AU VST Plugins & VSTi Instruments Here is our colection of FREE software, VST plugins, VSTi instruments, audio utilities and DAWs. Should you know of anything that we have not listed here let us know. Xfer Records OTT. Xfer Records is notable for their brilliant generation programming, for example.

Although we have all the tools we need to produce extremely clean and precise music without any unwanted artefacts there’s something about the imperfections of analog recording equipment that triggers certain emotions in us.

So if you want to produce lofi music it’s important to pick the right sounds and samples from the start. You could, for example, sample old vinyl records or buy an old drum machine. It would however be easier to just get your hands on a decent LoFi House or Hip Hop sample pack.

Once you have a selection of cool sounds & samples you can further refine your music to sound like it was recorded a few decades ago. Luckily there are plenty of cool lofi plugins available so you don’t have to actually own an old tape machine. Here are some of the best options:

Free LoFi Plugins

I want to start this list with a bunch of free lofi VSTs, because I know that a lot of producers are one a budget, especially when they’re still going to school (or music is their only income lol). That said, you don’t always have to spend money to get some quality software. The freeware in this list can easily compete with some of the paid stuff I’ll mention later on.

BVKER LoFi Rack

The “LoFi Rack” is a free Ableton Rack based on Live’s stock plugins. It comes with 8 macros allowing you to decrease the band width, add vinyl crackles, detune and distort the source sound. Unfortunately it’s only available for Ableton Live users, so if you’re using another DAW you have to pick some of the other options in this list. If you’re using Ableton however, hop on my newsletter and I’ll send you a free download link.

iZotope Vinyl

As the name suggests, iZotope’s “Vinyl” is a plugin emulating the characteristic imperfections of vinyl records. Since the freeware only comes with a handful of parameters it’s easy to use and setting it up won’t take much time. What I love the most is that you can adjust the year of your “recording”. A must have for every lofi producer if you ask me.

Spitfire Audio Labs

Labs is a free software instrument made by the London based sound design company Spitfire Audio. There are several extensions available, including pianos, brass, choirs and synths. Most of these instruments are rather unique and therefore a nice addition to the basic instruments libraries you probably already own. The cool part about Labs is that it comes with only a handful of parameters so you won’t spend 10 years trying to get everything perfect. The sound either fits your production or not.

Tritik Krush

Tritik’s Krush is an effect plugin with 3 different distortion types. A bitcrusher , a downsampler and an analog drive knob. It further comes with 2 filters and an LFO that can be used to modulate every parameter. It’s available for both Windows and Mac in VST, AU and AAX format so really everyone can get their hands on this.

Best Free Lofi Vst Plugins

HY-Lofi2

This one is a free bit quantizer, waveshaper & filter plugin made by Tadashi Suginomori from HY-Plugins. It’s meant to process “audio to give it a low fidelity sound”. Just like Krush it combines different distortion modes with high and low-pass filters. More precisely it has one drive knob and a quantizer, which can run in different modes and qualities.

Legowelt Ableton Racks

Legowelt is a dutch producer known for releasing samples from analog hardware units, but you’ll also find some Ableton Racks on his website, including the Smackos Tape Station, the Smackos Lemuria Vintage Sampler Simulator, the Smackos 808 Simulator and the Smackos Amiga 909.

Sound-Base Audio Retro Boy

The Retro Boy is a Windows only VST synth. It comes with one oscillator, 7 waveforms and controls for ADSR, vibrato and decimation, which makes it perfect for Chiptune or 8-bit music. Since there isn’t much processing going on, the synth is quite CPU-friendly. /64-bit-accordion-vst-free.html.

Best LoFi Plugins

Although you can definitely do some cool stuff with the freeware I mentioned so far there are some paid options no lofi producer should miss out on. A lot of them do more or less the same thing so in the end it’s up to personal preference (and budget), which ones you should get. Luckily most of these plugins aren’t that expensive compared to some of the stuff by other brands.

XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color

Probably the most hyped plugin of this list is the R-c20 Retro Color by XLN Audio. It combines 6 different effect units, including noise, wobble, distort, digital, space and magnetic. Combining these options basically allows you to recreate any lofi characteristic you could possibly think of. If I could only pick one plugin of this list I’d probably go for this one, since it comes with the most features.

Baby Audio Super VHS

Considering that Baby Audio is a rather new plugin company, their products already gained quite much attention. Super VHS again combines multiple effects, including a distortion unit, a retro sounding VST reverb and detune knob labeled “drift”. All knobs sound surprisingly good and I really dig the design.

D16 Group Decimort 2

Decimort 2 is a bitcrusher on steroids. It offers two optional anti-alias filters, adjustable jitter, two quantization methods and controllable dithering. If you’re looking for a cool bitcrusher, this is definitely the one you should get your hands on. With less than 50 bucks it’s also pretty affordable.

AudioThing Vinyl Strip

The Vinyl Strip is just like RC-20 a multi-effect plugin consisting of 6 different modules: Distortion, Compressor, Bit Crusher, Tilt EQ, Vintage Reverb, and something they call Vinylizer. In contrast to most plugins mentioned in this list, you can change the signal flow simply via drag-n-drop. On their website is stated that you can activate your license without an internet connection, which is pretty cool if you still live in a cave 😉

Devious Machines Texture

Texture is a plugin I just recently found out about watching Virtual Riot’s production workshop he did for Cymatics. It allows you to add noise to any kind of source sound. The cool part is that unlike similar effects you can even load your own noise samples and can adjust the exact frequency range, amount, ADSR and stuff like that.

Cableguys ShaperBox

When it comes to beat making, there’s one plugin every FL Studio user slaps on their melodies: Gross Beat (you’ll find plenty of memes about this). The problem is that it can’t be used in other DAWs (at least on Mac). This is where the Cableguys come into play. Their ShaperBox combines different effects that can all be modulated. The Time one is especially interesting for lofi producers, because it allows you to play back your melodies in halftime, add cool pitching effects and mix everything in with the dry signal.

Initial Audio Analog Pro

Analog Pro is once again a plugin meant to bring your digital audio tracks to live by simulating analog hardware. It comes with a variety of adjustable controls, including Noise Level, Noise Type, Impulse Type, Impulse Mix, Emphasis, Stereo, Lowcut, Highcut, Wow, Flutter and Amount. While I’m writing this the plugin is on sale for €26.10 (which is 64% off) so feel free to check out if this offer is still available.

Aberrant DSP SketchCassette

SketchCassette is a VST inspired by 4-track cassette recorders. It comes with most features the other plugins in this list have. Since it’s however available for only $20 it’s particularly interesting for producers on a tight budget.

Goodhertz Wow Control

Wow Control focuses on the weird and random modulations of analog playback devices. According to their website Goodhertz has carefully studied the essence of three different tape machines to make sure their plugin is the most comprehensive tape model they ever heard. I haven’t tried it out to be honest, but there are some videos about it on YouTube so feel free to check them out if you’d like to learn more about it.

PSPaudioware VintageWarmer2

The PSP Vintage Warmer is a tool simulating the saturation of analog compression / limiting. It comes with classic compression controls, such as knee or release time, and since it can run in multiband mode you can further control the individual bands a bit. In contrast to most usual compressors it comes with a big drive knob. Since it also comes with a mix knob you can drive the compression / saturation quite hard and mix it in just a bit to make your drums or vocals or whatever a bit fatter.

Wavesfactory Cassette

According to Wavesfactory’s website “Cassette is an audio plugin that imparts the unique character and sonic imprint of an often maligned recording medium”. You can also get your hands on their free Cassette Transport plugin, which “simulates the sound of tape speeding up and slowing down”. Or with other words: it’s a pretty cool tape stop plugin.

Psychic Modulation EchoMelt

Echomelt is “designed for adding character, texture and warmth to your sounds”. It doesn’t look that stunning, but it comes with an echo and chorus unit, which sets it apart from the other options in this list.

Best Lofi Plugins

Aphex Vintage Exciter

The Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter by Waves is modeled on a tube-powered hardware unit. It allows you to increase high frequencies without raising the level too much.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of lofi plugins available that make your productions sound like they were recorded with a toaster (or something like that). The free offers, especially Vinyl and Labs are no brainers, since . well, they’re free, so make sure to download them straight away if you haven’t done so yet 😉

misc.inc shows you 5 of his most essential plugins for lofi hip hop, ranging from synthesizers to bitcrushers.

1. Decimort 2

One of my favourite plugins for bit reduction. In lofi hip hop especially, it’s all about finding the right place between old and new.

Decimort 2 offers a great spectrum of options for high quality bitcrushing. Equipped with a filter, resampling engine and a quantizer, you have full freedom to shape your sound.

From light and crispy, to totally destroyed – this plugin offers the best of both worlds.

You can get the Decimort 2 here.

2. Luftikuss EQ

Great for vocals, great for drums – great for everything. This digital adaption of a hardware 5 band EQ sounds just awesome. More an adaptive than a surgical EQ, it adds the last crips you need on your mix. With the ‘Keep Gain’ control, you can avoid overall gain changes when boosting or cutting with this EQ, which helps judge your decisions better.

But the very best part is – IT’S FREE.

Go check it out. You won’t regret it.

3. Lounge Lizard

My go-to plugin for Rhodes, Wurlitzer and more.

Lounge Lizard by Applied Acoustics Systems is a powerhorse. This digital adaption of an electric piano lets you shape the sounds to the max. Adjusting the hammer, tremolo, the pickup or the damper is fun. You can also start with one of the awesome presets ranging from rhodes, organs, wurlitzer and more experimental sounds.

You’ll never want to use a different rhodes plugin.

Get it here.

4. Echoboy

The ONE delay I have on almost all my tracks. Seemingly simple at first sight, the Echoboy by Soundstoys offers a great variety of options for tweaking the sound and feel of your delay.

Beside the normal mix, delay, feedback and time parameters you can go crazy with shuffled delay times, different emulations of hardware delays (like the famous Space Echo) and many more cool parameters.

Over 100 presets, offering great settings from ambient delays to analogue chorus.

Definitely my favourite delay.

5. J37

Last is the J37 Tape Plugin by Waves.

Lofi Synth Vst

Tapesaturation and warmth is what you want in your crispy lofi hip hop mix.

The big hardware brother was used in many masterpieces. Now this digital version is there for yours.

3 different tapes, 2 temp setting and full adjustable wow and flutter effects speak for itself. Furthermore, the delay settings come in 3 different options (ping pong, slap, feedback).

If you’ve always asked yourself why so many lofi hip hop tunes sound like they do – this is the answer.

Free Plugin Downloads For Windows

Grab it here. It’s worth it.