Lo-fly Dirt

Name: Lo-fly Dirt
Price: 39 USD
Author: AIR Music Technology

by AIR Music Technology · Saturation · Vintage sampler character effect

Not rated yet

Lo-fly Dirt adds the character of classic samplers and lo-fi gear, with seven modes including MPC60, SP1200, 404 Filter, 404 Vinyl, 8-bit and SK-5.

It has a simple interface with dry/wet control, and costs $39.99.

Best for: Drums, Bass, Vocals, Mix Bus. Genres: Lo-Fi, Hip-Hop & Trap.

Keywords: lo-fi, vintage, drums, hardware emulation, samples & loops, bitcrush, simple, bass, bus processing, classic, mix bus, built-in mix knob, vocals, warm, digital classic, dirty, inspired by, vinyl, 80s, airy, beginner-friendly, crunchy, extreme, full mix, gentle, gritty, mastering, minimal controls, mixing, single-band, single knob, sound design, subtle, thin.

What it does

Lo-fly Dirt is a one-knob character effect that recreates the sound of well-known vintage samplers and lo-fi gear. AIR built it with MSXII Sound Design, and it was AIR's first third-party plugin to run both in a DAW and on AKAI Professional MPC hardware.

MSXII: the default mode, with subtle saturation and gentle compression.
60: MPC60-style 12-bit saturation with a rounded high end.
404 (F) and 404 (V): two SP-404 inspired modes, one a 12 dB per octave low-pass filter, the other a vinyl noise emulation.
1200: SP1200-style saturation, beefier than the others, with boosted low mids.
8-BIT and SK-5: games-console style 8-bit grit, and a more extreme 8-bit sound with high-pass filtering.
Controls: a seven-position mode selector, a character knob for warmth and lift, and a dry/wet blend.
Use cases: drums, bass, vocals, samples and the master bus.

Source: AIR Music Technology product page

When to use it

Lo-fly Dirt is a narrow, cheap tool: you pick a classic sampler flavour and blend it in, with almost nothing else to set. Compared with RC-20 Retro Color and TAIP, which cover broader analog and tape colour with far more control, and Decapitator, a general saturator for any source, Lo-fly Dirt is quicker for one job, giving drums and samples an MPC60, SP1200 or SP-404 feel. Its other strength is that the same plugin runs on MPC hardware, so beats made on the box and in the DAW can share the same sound.

Best for: giving drums, loops and samples an SP1200, MPC60 or SP-404 style crunch, quickly.
Genres: lo-fi, boom bap, hip-hop and trap.
Look elsewhere if: you want detailed control over the saturation or noise; Decapitator or RC-20 Retro Color do much more. If you already own AIR's Flavor Pro, one KVR user felt this adds little.

What producers say

Feedback is thin and mixed: store buyers like its quick vintage colour, while the one KVR reviewer found it unremarkable.

KVR users: 3 out of 5 from 1 review; the reviewer called it "just OK" and not worth it if you already have AIR Flavor Pro, adding that the MPC already has bit-rate and frequency reduction effects.
Plugin Boutique buyers praised the easy warmth and "vinyl soul" it adds, the intuitive controls and the light CPU load, and found it useful across lo-fi, boom bap and trap.

Where to buy

Plugin Boutique: $39
AIR Music Technology: $39.99 (list price from KVR Audio; airmusictech.com shows prices only in its shop)
AudioDeluxe: $39.99

Tutorials and reviews

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