Waves Audio has announced that it’s now shipping Retro Fi, a new lofi FX chain plugin, following the recently released Lofi Space (a reverb and echo combo plugin) that was given away free during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Retro Fi is designed to help users produce authentic lofi textures, warm analog sounds, and nostalgic vibes such as vintage cassette tones and deep vinyl grooves, providing a large palette of lofi noises, spaces, devices and textures. It offers four modules/sections that can be combined, each with its own flavors, including:
— Device, an analog coloring and tonal shaping engine with newly designed impulse responses, an era-specific Styler for 50s/60s/70s/80s retro tones, a squasher, a compressor to add life to instruments or vocals, and more.
— Space, a saturated echo and analog reverb (spring/plate) for depth and bold spatial sounds.
— Noise, offering a library of more than 60 unique textures that include cassette and vinyl noises among many others. Its smart noise generation algorithm is designed to help ensure that the added textures are lively and ever-changing, never repeating themselves like a pre-recorded loop.
— Mechanics, designed to deliver the imperfections and mechanical wear and tear of old cassettes tapes and vinyl records. This section has two independent modulation engines, each with its own adjustable wow, wobble and speed.
In addition, users can also flip through 250 artist presets curated by top producers and beat makers in hip-hop, electronic genres, rock and more, including producers for Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, Dr. Dre, Dua Lipa, Post Malone and others.
Retro Fi doesn’t just stack various random FX onto tracks; it’s designed to act and feel like a true analog device. The four sections are built serially, while also internally routed, so they’re intended to act together like a singular unit.
Meanwhile, the recently released Lofi Space plugin offers bright saturated delay and two flavors of analog-based spring and plate reverb. It helps users create deep lofi-tinged effects with no tweaking needed, suited for any production in need of a vintage touch.
In addition to spring and plate reverb tones, the ECHO button enables delay sync to BPM, host or milliseconds, as well as adjustable echo feedback and more. Lofi Space also provides a MONO control, letting users narrow the stereo field of samples or live instruments to mimic the sound of old mono records.
Retro Fi and Lofi Space plugins are included in Waves Mercury, SD7 Pro Show and Pro Show bundles.
