Chase Bliss Lossy: Who knew low bitrate MP3s could be this beautiful?

Learn more about the Lossy pedal here: www.chasebliss.com/lossy
The sample library I made is here: / patron-exclusive-93953085
Support what I do on Patreon: / dhilowitz
Find my FILM & INSTRUMENTAL music here: davidhilowitz.bandcamp.com
Find my ROCK MUSIC here: manwomanchild.bandcamp.com

[@BenjaminEarlMusic]

"as soon as something can be avoided, it will be emulated" I don't remember who said that but it's so true and i am nonetheless here for it

[@vinylarchaeologist]

It was Brian Eno who said that.

[@organfairy]

That has been true for many years: When Hammond found a way to remove the >>PLTPSCHRT

[@Mr_Frequency]

Yeah, I can see that. I do find I like a lot of the analog effects of a lot of mediums, but the digital compression artifacts just sound and look just meh and unnatural to me. Film grain is a nice organic textural complement to fine detail that fades with resolution in a smooth way instead of hitting a hard nyquist limit, but jpeg compression just looks like a fugly crude blocky approximation. Likewise, subtle pitch shifts of and low order harmonic distortions of analog audio gear sound like nice coloration, while low bitrate mp3 just sounds like annoying garbled audio.

[@ultra5538]

There’s a device they use to do film for IMAX the hardware is that old they need to emulate it

[@infinitemonkeyproject]

"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.” ― Brian Eno

[@Jonathan_Doe_]

CD’s have no reason to be distorted, that’s usually either bad DAC in the player, or a result of the loudness wars mastering stuff wayyyy too hot phase.

[@noaharkadedelgado]

@@Jonathan_Doe_ I have to disagree, you should listen to Madlib - Ash Rockin and you will see how the weird CD artifacts just go around the beat.

[@stephenburkett9193]

What exactly on that track do you think is a CD artifact? That high frequency harmonic distortion? That seems to be aliasing, which is not at all inherent to CDs, it happens with digital audio with a substantially lower sampling rate. If that isn’t what you’re talking about, I don’t know what you’re referring to.

[@mikethebloodthirsty]

... and sometimes it's just crap.

[@mikethebloodthirsty]

​@@stephenburkett9193it's a quote from Brian Eno... Ask him.

[@bborkzilla]

In the early 2000's I worked on a satellite network router - we used a similar audio test to look for dropped packets as we tuned parameters. It was a lot faster than setting up bit error rate tests and looking at the results.

[@ShortKicks7733]

The production value on this video is on another level! Great job !

[@trev-trev]

I appreciated the vulnerability to share your anecdote about living away from home. I realize that I'm likely an outlier, but I'm a viewer of the channel that doesn't have a background in audio production and has very little relative experience in making music. I come here for the warmth, curiosity, and learning new things. I'm a designer and have definitely evangelized these videos to fellow designers as a source of inspiration. The storytelling and process here is what keeps me coming back to the channel and watching the same vids twice.

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

Thanks for the kind words! :)

[@goodhertz]

I thoroughly enjoyed every second of this video! Thanks, David. Seeing someone plug in the pedal for the first time will never get old 😊

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

My pleasure!

[@Ryuusei924]

i looove the sound of your voice, pacing of your script reading, and lovely music you play in the background. all together so relaxing to listen to. on top of that, videos with music producers exploring instruments, pedals, or modular synths are some of my favorite kinds of videos. i love hearing all the ways the sounds can get tweaked/modified, and my favorite part is all the short tunes y’all create while experimenting. so this is an amazing watch for me! also the visuals you provided for the old OS in 1999 were very helpful in imagining the story since i was too young at the time 😆

[@MuzikJunky]

Word! You should narrate audiobooks! Peace.

[@shadowstack]

the rush of nostalgia starting at 2:40 (especially with AOL instant messanger) is incredible, thanks for the trip back

[@bcook6960]

That college flashback had me wistful. I have a lot of fond memories of that early era of digitization. Keep up the good work!

[@dhulme]

Really enjoyed this video! The effort you put into your production and the personal touch by sharing your own story 👌

[@TheAndkonmegalodon]

Another David Hilowitz banger. I love hearing just a little bit more of your life story in the middle of these pedal reviews whilst being whisked away in the glorious sound.

[@windyacres]

This video was so well made and inspiring! I love the little track you made and how it ran through the video in the back during the last quarter. Subscribed!

[@fanana_bishh]

Dave, love your videos so much! Thank you!

[@madsenamplification]

Love the production value of your videos!

[@masterofreality230]

I think you need to use both the Lossy and Gen Loss to see what a digitally degraded sound recorded on to a old cassette tape would be like lol

[@HenritheHorse]

I love using the Lossy plugin with 80s sampler aliasing and just thought about combining it all with old tape too! Waiting for a Gen Loss plugin too.

[@masterofreality230]

@@HenritheHorse A Gen Loss plugin would be cool. I have messed around with the Lossy plugin, its pretty good. Have you tried VHS Audio Degradation Suite in Reaktor? In my opinion it beats the Gen Loss. I sold my Gen Loss Mk2, I just play guitar for the most part and.....its a long story, but I didnt $400 love it.

[@HenritheHorse]

@@masterofreality230 Nope, haven't tried anything Reaktor related in years! Gotta check that out.

[@HenritheHorse]

@@masterofreality230 I just don't have Reaktor anymore, so looks like it needs it to work.

[@YouTubeDrndo]

I love it when you review something cool and you tell a story about your personal life experiences relating to instruments you review good stuff bro always looking forward to your videos it always feels like home here

[@crtzmo]

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. I also had my own EU adventures, starting on a gorgeous white, brown, red swissair branded DC-10 to Zurich.. Fantastic video, Dave, you really do pack a lot into a short time -- takes a few watches to catch it all! I just downloaded the DS pack via Patreon, so nice. Cheers, Dave!

[@Fsng837]

the presentation of this video is really gorgeous, with you doing that whole win95 section and sharing your recollections.

[@kianmehrehtiatkar3380]

I don’t know what it is about your videos, but they’re so soothing! Even though they’re very scientific in nature! So thank you for making them :)

[@DocXango]

This video kicks the llama's ass

[@grantmorgan1104]

With Heinz 57 sauce?

[@nickwallette6201]

Hm, this definitely makes more sense as a plugin. The thing that gives MP3 compression its distinct character (not just the lowpass filter applied at really low bitrates... because that's _just_ a lowpass filter, and we already have plenty of those) is the fourier transform, deconstructing the complex signal into a stack of sine waves, then doling out more of the precious few bits to the ones with the most amplitude. Signals with lots of complexity have more harmonics, and thus more spectrum, and thus require more data to encode them accurately. In contrast, a single sine wave is trivial to encode with good fidelity. The point is, if this thing is really using a perceptive coding technique to impose the bitrate limitation of actual MPEG audio encoding, feeding it simple signals is not really going to result in much of an effect. You need something more wide-band to trigger it. Listen to some poorly-encoded MP3s for a demo of this... you'll notice things like orchestral sections, transients (drums, and especially cymbals!), and wall-of-sound production will really bring out the inadequacies of the codec. Putting one of these inline between (e.g.) a guitar and an amp... would not do much. Unless it's cheating, and just creating those phasey, metallic sounds from scratch, based on an envelope follower or something. And that's not much fun.

[@iivarimokelainen]

thanks for showcasing the. whole range of sounds with incredibly simple input and reverb knob turned to max, makes it really easy to figure out what the pedal is doing.

[@oliverziehme8981]

Love it. Great video as always!

[@SonicVibe]

whenever you make a video i get truly excited i love the sound of this pedal maybe even a lil more then the mk2

[@tdumnxy]

Nice! I liked that you touched briefly on band-pass filters early on in the video. I enjoy many hobbies and I especially appreciate cross-pollination of knowledge. I wonder how many musically inclined people realise how much there is to be learned from amateur radio constructors. Its all about the Filters, Oscillators, Amplifiers & Mixers/Modulators FOAM!

[@RemitheDreamfox]

You just know its going to be an excellent freaking day when David releases a video with a Chase Bliss pedal!

[@z4ski]

beautiful video, and as a student who is redoing his first year at epfl myself, i really felt your anecdote

[@Povilaz]

Oh, this pedal is GENIUS. Awesome video!

[@emiliofajardo6785]

Terrific! I am no musician or sound engineer; still, your passion is inspirational. Keep it up! Love your videos!

[@rayeblack]

Thank you for the throwback! I was in a college a few years after you, making music with Acid Pro in my dorm room

[@user-de4fk8jv7f]

Love your videos!

[@mixentrik]

Ah... so many memories.. especially the struggles with win amp and its skins!!! 😂😂😂

[@jeremychrzan]

Always love your explanations. Love the throwback to the use of winamp too. My mp3 collection is more frequently played on Sonos these days, but when playing music on my desktop it still flows through winamp!

[@Whenuknow]

as someone who loves 90s/2000s electronic music and incorporating that vibe into my own modern electronic music i loved this video and am for sure puttin gthis on the wishlist

[@RJ_Eckie]

Loving this a lot more than I expected! I guess this sound is etched into my brain way deeper than the (currently more prevalent) 70s/80s degradation

[@GuyManley]

75% of my lifetime of collected mp3s is at 128k because no one knew any better back then. So I still hear low bit rate mp3s quite often. Never thought of it as a vibe before. But this pedal is pretty cool. In the furture, non AI generated art and content is gonna seem so nostalgic. 😭

[@wazthatme]

Thank you for making videos. Its nice knowing there are people out there with similar interests double so knowing there are over 800 people lol

[@skyty0]

I havent made enough music to ever consider looking into pedals but i LOVE the sound of this thing and i wanna look into getting one. So funky and weird.

[@human.skyscraper]

You don't have to make music consistently to reward yourself with some new toys! Who knows, maybe it will inspire you to create more 🤷

[@HonestAbe626]

Wow! I havent seen the acid music on a screen in decades. I ran that software, but never really expanded from it. I also had acid pro, and another sonic foundry program that i used to make my own loops. Then i friend let me use sony vegas and was overwhelmed and went off to college as well. Im sure i still have the program discs somewhere and a cyclontronic resonator loop disc😂. Good times

[@connerelmes3181]

thanks man. im gonna go buy all these pedals and synths now tbh

[@Retr0Bright22]

That thing you made needs to be a full short track man, vibes so hard!

[@SlyHikari03]

I've been wanting a pedal like this for years now. So glad they did this. They nailed the vibe, it even has the chirps, this would he perfect for a variant on the telephone intro for most metal songs,

[@cassl7001]

amazing david

[@ekim131]

Yes! Love the Winamp call out there.

[@zz7254]

It's 4:20 on the clock in the production flashback. You know some tasty jams are gonna come out of that session :)

[@Aloiv]

About 10 years ago, me and a couple friends did a sorta jokey charity album that involved a lot of recording samples and then deliberately converting them into low quality mp3s and making songs out of that as a sort of "post-vaporwave" album. I'm amused to think how having this pedal would have made that process so much faster, but at the same time, the fact it took so much effort is kinda a novelty that made it so much fun and reminded me how 10 years prior to that, the amount of nonsense it took to make music at all. Anyway, thanks for a fun reminder of the journey of using technology to make music. Amazing to even think how I've been using Ableton for almost 15 years now....

[@nickp460]

Dude. You’ve perfected the ‘Boutique Audio Product Review’ video. Seriously, this is a masterclass. Your vocal clarity, the generous number of high quality audio samples from the device throughout, effective and inviting communication and context given for what it does and why it exists, I could go on. It’s clear you love what you do, and you’re very good at it. Thank you.

[@krispchickentenders]

Love the video keep it up

[@ThePedalboardOrchestra]

This a great demo of Lossy! 👍👍👋👋

[@JayTheJolly]

You show so much cool gear, I wish had more experience with online shopping so I could find some of these that I can't find in the few remaining music stores in my country. Maybe I can get the local shop to order it for me and avoid the hassle haha. Absolute beauty that pedal, even though I was skeptical in the beginning. :)

[@ewwitsantonio]

I first came across the term "mp3" online as a little 5th grader furiously searching for "White Zombie - More Human Than Human" because I figured it HAD to exist on the internet somewhere, and it wasn't getting played enough on the local radio stations. I saw fishy "mp3" links allover the web and didn't trust them for a solid year or so. Then came napster...

[@thedctr]

Wow, I've heard Noodle say no one would enjoy defects of MP3, but this prooved him otherwise.

[@EvieNesta]

I have this pedal as a plugin! goodhertz does some awesome stuff

[@elshuffles]

this a slick video, loving the casio vibes

[@infinitemonkeyproject]

I swear to god, every episode starts with "i've been waiting for a package and its finally here" I swear to god there is no other way to grab my attention immediately.

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

haha. I do get a lot of mail :)

[@mrjokioo]

I like music because of where it takes you. For example, this music let's you travel back in time.

[@tungtobak]

Boy do I not miss the sound of low bitrate mp3s.

[@godsinbox]

thanks to the kick into photographers, wasn't expecting the algorithm to lead me into that!

[@hisnameisjoel]

Seeing winamp was the nostalgia hit i needed today

[@starflash__]

Really nice storytelling

[@goldenstarmusic1689]

As someone who collects the Casio PT-20 and other keyboards of that lineup, I really appreciate seeing a PT-10 get used like this.

[@gasolineandwine]

Was just toying with this effect in it's plugin form in a song. It opens up so many possibilities for sonic and mood experimentation.

[@HowdyOaks]

THEY NAILED THE LOW BITRATE SLUSHY SOUND PERFECTLY! Takes me right back to the early 2000's... what a cool idea for a pedal. Chase Bliss with another banger

[@mysteriousstranger9496]

I can't believe it's 400 bucks. That's nuts. My Korg guitar pedal back I got back in 2001 was a feature rich multi-effects board capable of pretty much anything was like 250.

[@RaskolnikovR]

great video !

[@IsaacMyers1]

You know what we need, a pedal that emulates a really early wax cylinder sound. Or if not that, one that emulates a shellack 75rpm record.

[@MrVisionDPB]

Great Pedal. Mostly meant for direct wave signals & guitar/bass. For the price of these two, one can purchase a decent keysynth have extra in their pocket.

[@capnjames]

Your low bit rate beat from the 90s sounded like those aesthetic weather channel clips that get tossed around the internet nowadays as nostalgia bait lmao sounds very good tho fr

[@Hypno_BPM]

i can see the “sound” of music being played through phone speakers or laptop speakers being something that will be emulated in the future. gen z pretty much grew up watching movies and listening to music on phones, tablets and such.

[@scholasticdeth]

That's interesting and the video is so well produced. Nowadays you can hear a very low bitrate audio on the phone while on hold.

[@keithfulkerson]

Back then, I was happy to find a 96k or 128k mp3 because it meant I would only have to wait for about 10 or 15 minutes for it to download.

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

same!

[@jacksonsmith4648]

The amount if effort it must've taken to set up the college flashback sequence... Did you load windows 98 up in a VM? I assume you weren't prepping for this video back then... Either way, *chef's kiss*

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

Thanks! I did indeed install it in an emulator. I definitely never thought I’d see the Windows 98 install sequence again :)

[@ukeblajwlog]

ahh what a relaxing video...

[@thiagoborges2920]

Just to mention about what you said of 2d photos. I went to Japan recently and took (very) few photos with a 3DS I bought there. Some times I get myself seeing those pictures and thinking how impressive I am with the result (I should have taken more). They looks so real but at the same time so low quality haha. Limitations on these technologies are not a burden, but a charm.

[@VSPhotfries]

What I want to see with this sort of effect is emulation of the low bitrate WMA format (the only competition to mp3s at the time). MP3s got muted, like a lowpass filter, as they became more compressed. WMA files on the other hand got weird, chirpy, and had this distinct whirling, ringing sound overtop. Obviously at the time it was awful, but it was also unique and I don't see many people who remember dealing with that specific format (because it sucked so bad compared to mp3).

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@chapmcchap2919VLC for Android should sort you out :)

[@Frikoppie]

Kinda peculiarly (sort of on accident) was doing a "remix" of some audio like a month or two ago and like overlayed a very low bitrate wma (i think it was like 30kbps) with the normal quality version and it sounded kinda rad.

[@dandanjambon]

Yooo you went to EPFL?! I was in Lausanne just this afternoon, hi from Switzerland!

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

Only for one semester! I love Lausanne, btw

[@Bkoded]

theres a few plugins out there that do the whole lossy effect which ive used on a fair amount of tracks and its a super cool effect, its super cool to see this in pedal form with the chase bliss ambient take, upon reading it seems they did it in collaboration with goodhertz which is cool

[@human.skyscraper]

What are some that you would recommend? Would love to check them out.

[@smiilemusic]

@@human.skyscraper ghz lossy and digitalis are both great

[@luminammusic]

@@human.skyscraper spectral gate or ghz lossy

[@Handplottedblackhole]

****Pointing furiously at the Brian Eno sign****

[@BradWest96]

Hey my parents went to NNHS! Great video :)

[@peterelfman]

Winamp! Takes me back!

[@guelphdgc7995]

I always wondered why your set was a piece of painted plywood. Now I know. Enjoyed that little tidbit.

[@rickglorie]

Mine was with Blade encoder, drop the .wav in an MS-DOS box in Windows95 en the magic happened. Was aware of packetloss, 'cause MP3 was what JPG did tot photo's, but bitrate etc; unknown. CD was my hi-fi, growing up on tape and vinyl. First was Return To Hot Chicken by Yo La Tengo because it fit on a 144mb floppy.

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

That's funny. I remember having a low bitrate MP3 of Modest Mouse's Neverending Math Equation that also fit on a floppy. :)

[@rickglorie]

@@DavidHilowitzMusic nineties highfive! I still have the MP3.

[@numberknower]

the jumpscare of seeing my own high school at 2:12! I went to North from 2010-2014 (so the first class to go through the 'new' Newton North after they demo'd the old one full of asbestos), what a cool coincidence! A fellow North alumni!

[@rossparker4374]

Reminds me of all the music I hear on a phone when I’m on hold

[@AB.BABY.]

Nice track

[@xJayKnight]

I remember being a kid in the early days of AOL and listening to music on their "radio". Finding all sorts of bands and listening to the horrible, clippy, low quality versions. Sometimes stuttering to the point of waiting in a few seconds of silence while it loads. I also remember when I was old enough to go to the mall and buy my first CD at Sam Goody. My ears being absolutely assaulted with all sorts of high-quality audio, gone was the lo-fi filter of 56k internet.

[@lepanzon]

The Zelda background music when you were explaining how you changed the codes in your song ❤

[@fullbodyunibrow7383]

The pastelification of experimentation.

[@winterkat8693]

I dont understand jack shit what you are saying but I enjoy the sounds so I just watch your stuff. Very entertaining

[@JakeGuttormsson]

Ouch this is making me so nostalgic. I'm right back downloading mp3s on napster.

[@cliiwen]

it's an instant Dungeon Synth pedal! Amazing

[@leeeeum]

Hey! Newton North! I went to south not too long ago. Small world haha.

[@Beatsbasteln]

Man, now I wanna have this super old version of Acid

[@deniskhafizov6827]

Long before mp3 (MPEG1 layer III) there was mp2 (MPEG1 layer II) widely available, because it was used in DVD. And it was natively supported in Windows, including the ability to encode audio or rip CDs with the embedded tools like Sound Recorder or Media Player respectively.

[@pokepress]

Sorry to be that person, but I believe DVD technically uses either PCM stereo or Dolby Digital. It can play layer II because it has backwards compatibility with Video CDs that used it. Also, while layer II made it to market first, layer III was developed around the same time. There's a great story behind that in the book "Appetite for Self Destruction".

[@deniskhafizov6827]

@@pokepress For compatibility reasons or whatever, mp2 was a legit open standard and thus was supported in Windows. mp3 was being developed at the same time but it had (and still has) some serious copyright issues.

[@icankillbugs]

Dungeon Synth dweebs are gonna love this one

[@eric_james_music]

i have the gen loss mkii, you can somewhat imitate this sound using classic mode. use the high pass filter and sample rate reducer in combination. you get the telephone filter sound and you can degrade the signal. add in a reverb pedal or the reverb on your amp

[@madiserket2]

when you started with just the drums and first bass part it reminded me a lot of Kid A by Radiohead with the way the drum loop subtly glitched and the basic but ominous bass line

[@elektra81516]

takes me back to the era of flash games where they'd put music in the games and it would sound awful! Yet I have an immense amount of nostalgia for that sound

[@vraisairs9201]

Super cool. Would’ve liked to hear it on a guitar

[@impolitikful]

My first mp3 was “baby got back” from Napster

[@DavidHilowitzMusic]

a solid pick