Vinyl

Character category, section-level.

The sound of music played off a record: pops, surface noise, and highs that never quite made it through.

Controls

Crackle. Random pops and clicks, the dust in the groove. How often they arrive and how loud they are both rise together as you turn it up.

Hiss. A steady noise floor underneath everything, the worn groove or the tape.

Crackle on its own sounds like a record player. Hiss on its own sounds like a tape machine. Together they make a fuller, less regular noise bed than either.

Warmth. Rolls off the high frequencies the way vinyl and tape do. This is the most musically useful of the three: even with no noise at all, warmth alone softens a bright digital sound. Turned up, the whole track sounds like it is coming through old speakers.

Warmth also makes the noise believable. Crackle and hiss over a bright modern track read as a gimmick; dull the track first and the noise sounds like it belongs to the same recording.

Presets

Dusty Record, Old Radio, Tape Deck, Gramophone.

When to use it

Lo-fi hip-hop, chill beats, anything that wants to sound found rather than made. Works on the whole mix or on one instrument, most often piano or drums.