Free MP3 Inspired Lofi Distortion

In a recent interview on the JUCE Blog, developer Arden Butterfield shares his insight and inspirations for MAIM - (MAIM Ain't an Implementation of Mp3). MAIN is an open source effect plugin that is both a work of art as well as a nostalgic tribute to the digital vibe of the 1990s. It's a digital MP3 style distortion, sure to bring back memories of waiting 4 hours to download one 3 minute MP3, legally, of course. 

Read the full interview on the JUCE Blog, and download the plugin from the Github link below...

Here's Arden's description of the plugin...

Yeah, so my plugin is a distortion effect for digital distortion. It's got a bitrate knob that you can turn down, but it's not a bit crusher. 

Comparison of the MP3 compressors in MAIM

It uses MP3 encoders at its core to give the sound a really heavy MP3 distortion -- but with a bit a twist. One of the twists is there's two MP3 encoders inside of there. Which is actually really important because the MP3 codec standard leaves some leeway to the makers of the encoders.

How MP3 works, speaking very broadly, is it removes parts of the frequency spectrum that are deemed inaudible or less audible or less necessary to understand what the sound is. And exactly which parts to remove is left up to the designers of the encoder. There's some standards, but over the development of MP3s, the game has ramped up a lot. The really early encoders, like the one I included, the Blade encoder from 1999, was pretty rough.

Read the full interview here: https://juce.com/made-with-juce/arden-butterfield-from-wildergarden-audio/

Download the plugin here: https://github.com/ArdenButterfield/Maim

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