Bitcrush Zap

How it's made

Source

a synthetic discharge through a low-rate digital converter, not a physical electrical arc. A fundamental plus second and third partials drops exponentially from 2.9 kHz toward 150 Hz.

Body

zero-order sample holding at 3.2-10 kHz and 3-8 bit quantization produce intentional folding sidebands. A low-Q reconstruction filter falls from 6.5 to 1.8 kHz to soften the digital edges.

Layers

a quiet uncrushed half-frequency sweep supports the falling body; 14 ms of band-limited noise supplies the initial spark without masking the pitched converter artifacts. The signal stays dry and mono.

Envelope

2 ms onset, fast energy loss over 35 ms, then a rounded residual decay; zero by 210 ms at default. Quantization precedes the amplitude envelope so the tail fades smoothly instead of chopping into steps.

Variation

seed detunes the sweep by +/-1.2 percent and changes the spark. Pitch, converter rate, bit depth and decay distinguish a tiny UI zap, coarse arcade accent, low chunky hit and bright folding sting.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.