Skip to main content
Music Radar MusicRadar The No.1 website for musicians
  • Guitars
  • Amps
  • Pedals
  • Drums
  • Synths
  • Software
  • Pianos
  • Controllers
  • Recording
  • Buyer’s guides
  • Live
  • DJ
  • Advice
  • Acoustic
  • Bass
  • About Us
  • More
    • Reviews
Magazines
  • Computer Music
  • Electronic Musician
  • Future Music
  • Keyboard Magazine
  • Guitarist
  • Guitar Techniques
  • Total Guitar
  • Bass Player
More
  • Take our survey to win a £300/$350 Ticketmaster gift card
  • Type beats
  • 86000+ free music samples
  • How to make an AI cover song
  • Three-chord trick

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

  1. Tuition

7 ways to get a real analogue sound on the cheap

By Computer Music
published 20 March 2017

Get genuine dirt in your signal path with these simple outboard solutions

Intro

Intro

When working to imbue your tracks with analogue sound and vibe, you don't have to spend a fortune on classic outboard, synths and all the rest of it.

Here, we'll show you seven highly effective techniques for capturing the buzz and sizzle of real electronic circuits and making it your own.

For much more on warming up digital productions with analogue emulation, check out the February edition of Computer Music.

Page 1 of 8
Page 1 of 8
1. Cheap analogue synths

1. Cheap analogue synths

The synth market isn’t just filled with top-end gear - give one of these budget options a try.

Korg’s Monotron range can be found for about £39, and their Volca range is modestly priced, too. Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operators are about £40, and Arturia’s MicroBrute competes with high-end plugin synth prices. And then there’s eBay, where secondhand prices mean that you can pick up gear for cheap. 

Page 2 of 8
Page 2 of 8
2. It's always sum thing

2. It's always sum thing

An analogue sound is caused by the interactions of real electrical circuits, right? So why not get yourself a few?

A basic mixing desk will subject your signal to several stages, whether you activate processing on them or not; and an eight-track console from a few years back will have depreciated in value quite a bit. Slam your whole mix through one, or, if you’ve got the interface outputs, stem out some or all of your tracks to the desk. 

Page 3 of 8
Page 3 of 8
3. Speaker in the house

3. Speaker in the house

When you’re looking out for the sound of analogue, it’s hard to find a better source of reality than the air around you.

Grab a speaker (or two, for stereo signals), or a guitar amp if you have one, and play a signal out of your computer while recording the result back into your DAW on a new track. The resulting waveform will be imbued with tiny changes caused by the circuitry of the speaker, and from the air in the room.

This also feeds your signal through the analogue circuitry and character of whatever speaker you use, and captures the realistic effect of your sounds in a reverberant space. Blend the result with the dry signal for instant vibe, character and personality!

Page 4 of 8
Page 4 of 8
4. Multisample an analogue synthesiser

4. Multisample an analogue synthesiser

Here’s a great way to expand your range of hardware without actually expanding your range of hardware. If you can get your hands on somebody else’s excellent analogue synth - perhaps one owned by a friend, a rental unit, or a rare gem within a professional studio - it’s quite possible to clone it!

Open the filter fully and record samples of long key-presses from as many keys as you possibly can. Isolate and loop the sustaining sound, and with these raw oscillator samples then loaded into a sampler, you can recreate the instrument’s tone. You might have to do some work to properly replicate filters and envelopes, though.

For an even more sophisticated clone, check out SampleRobot 5, which is specifically built for the task of capturing instruments, helping to automate the sample looping and mapping process. 

Page 5 of 8
Page 5 of 8
5. Bring the noise

5. Bring the noise

Sure, we can use plugins to add a layer of noise to a track, but why not record actual analogue noise?

Here, for example, is a recording of some transformer hum, sampled from an ancient tonewheel organ. This is another way to get some instant analogue grime, and it’s easy to capture your own collection of noise sounds. The cheaper the kit, the noisier the result!

Page 6 of 8
Page 6 of 8
6. Can you pedal?

6. Can you pedal?

When a studio engineer wants some magic analogue mojo, he might reach for a rackmounted device costing thousands. A guitarist, on the other hand, is happy to lob a quick ’n’ dirty distortion pedal, sputtering spring reverb, or crappy, crunchy compressor into their signal path. If you own any pedals, you can do the same thing on your tabletop via your audio interface.

Most stompboxes operate in mono, so you should be advised to sum any stereo tracks before sending them out. Also, guitar effects expect a high-impedance signal, so you may have to adjust incoming and/or outgoing levels to make sure the electrical signals match up inside the cables. And again, be sure to get the signal back into your audio interface using the high-impedance (Hi-Z) ‘instrument’ input jack, too.

Page 7 of 8
Page 7 of 8
7. Get signals out of a DAW

7. Get signals out of a DAW

Here’s how to take a digital signal out into the real world through your audio interface.

Step 1: Most DAWs provide some means of routing selected signals through any additional outputs on a given interface - and Ableton Live users have a dedicated plugin. Open a Live project with a couple of audio channels. 

Step 2: Currently, track 1 is routed to the main outputs. In the browser, find the plugin called External Audio Effect and drag it into our first channel. It goes quiet because our new plugin has no output assigned.

Step 3: On the device, locate the Audio To dropdown. Select an output to send the signal out from your interface. You can use the same plugin to route processed audio back in, then reverse phase and compensate for latency. 

Page 8 of 8
Page 8 of 8
Computer Music
Computer Music
Social Links Navigation

Computer Music magazine is the world’s best selling publication dedicated solely to making great music with your Mac or PC computer. Each issue it brings its lucky readers the best in cutting-edge tutorials, need-to-know, expert software reviews and even all the tools you actually need to make great music today, courtesy of our legendary CM Plugin Suite.

More about tech
DAWproject

Bitwig and PreSonus’s new open file format enables you to save projects in one DAW and open them in another, but will other developers support it?

John Norum

“I didn’t want to have anything to do with the song. To me, it was like: ‘Are we turning into Depeche Mode?’”: Europe’s John Norum says he thought The Final Countdown was “dreadful” at first

Latest
UAFX Ox Stomp

The missing piece for your ultimate pedalboard rig? Universal Audio announces the OX Stomp Dynamic Speaker Emulator pedal

See more latest ►
Most Popular
How to perfect your kick and snare with Arturia's Neve 1073 emulation

By Andy Price5 September 2023

How to use the Pultec 'low-end trick' to improve your bass and kick

By Andy Price4 September 2023

Computer Music 326 Autumn 2023: free downloads

By Computer Music30 August 2023

The 6 essential acoustic guitar chord groups every player should learn

By Total Guitar29 August 2023

The 5 chord progressions you need to play 100s of songs

By MusicRadar27 August 2023

Practical music theory: 10 things every songwriter and producer needs to know about chords

By Computer Music23 August 2023

Use the CAGED system to play guitar chords across the fretboard quickly and easily

By MusicRadar22 August 2023

How to make a Gorillaz‑style synth string patch

By Dave Gale21 August 2023

How to use distortion to enhance individual elements of your mix

By Jon Musgrave11 August 2023

Ditch the pick and start fingerstyle today with three guitar chords and this lesson

By Total Guitar10 August 2023

How to make '80s stereo synth stabs

By Dave Gale10 August 2023

  1. Marty Friedman
    1
    Marty Friedman’s guitar teacher told him to take a bong hit every time he played an exercise correctly, but the ex-Megadeth guitarist has better advice for students
  2. 2
    “Sometimes Jimi Hendrix’s girlfriend would go and buy us breakfast because we had no money”: Rod Stewart says early days of the Jeff Beck Group were no picnic
  3. 3
    “Right now I’d like to do a song, it’s a little thing by Howlin’ Wolf…”: Listen to Jimi Hendrix’s newly unearthed performance of Killing Floor at the Hollywood Bowl, 1967
  4. 4
    Watch Chad Smith play 30 Seconds To Mars’ biggest hit in one take after hearing it for the first time
  5. 5
    The Loog Piano looks like a gorgeous beginner keyboard, but is it too simple for its own good?
  1. Live Enhancement Suite will save you hours of time by optimizing the Live experience with handy shortcuts
    1
    Are you an Ableton Live user? This free workflow hack will probably change your life
  2. 2
    Watch Chad Smith play 30 Seconds To Mars’ biggest hit in one take after hearing it for the first time
  3. 3
    The Loog Piano looks like a gorgeous beginner keyboard, but is it too simple for its own good?
  4. 4
    Could Socalabs’ free Wavetable synth plugin be the open-source alternative to Serum?
  5. 5
    Paul Simon demonstrates his Travis picking style on acoustic guitar: "The thumb is always moving"

MusicRadar is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.