Bitcrusher VST3 plugin with bytebeat functionality

Bytebeats are short, usually one-line C-style formulas consisting of arithmetic and bit operations, integers and an increasing index t. Only 8 least significant bits are masked off from the output, which creates interesting audio effects including rhythms and melodies.

Plug-in features

• Toggling dither changes the sound characteristics on low bit depths. Mainly this adds some noise.
• When Mask output to 8 bits is enabled, the output of the bytebeat formula is wrapped to 8 bits. This produces a classic bytebeat sound. Note, that since the output is now 8-bit, the bit depth slider has little effect on the output.
• Bit depth and sample rate reduction produce a traditional bitcrush effect.
  • If you want to just use the classic bitcrusher features with no additional distortion from the bytebeat generation, tick off "mask output to 8 bits" and write "x" to the text editor.
• The left-shift slider bitshifts the outgoing audio sample mapped to an integer range by the specified amount. Adjusting this slider can increase the gain of the signal, so use discretion!

More resources on bytebeat

• In depth information and example formulas
• Online player and lots of examle formulas
• Paper by Ville-Matias Heikkilä

Guide for writing bytebeat expressions

You can include variables x (audio input) and t (bytebeat increasing index), integers and operators listed below in your formulas. Variable x is the current input sample mapped to a [0,255] range. You can use this variable in the expression along with t to merge the input audio signal to your formula or use only t.

• If you get no wet signal from your formula, try setting Mask output to 8 bits on.
• Simply adding +x to a t-formula will give some interesting results.
• Decreasing the sample rate slows down the looping speed of the formula.

Operators supported:

• Functions sin()/cos()
• Bitwise negation ~
• Multiplication, division, modulus *, /, %
• Addition, subtractionn (unary negation not supported) +, -
• Left/right bit shift <<, >>
• Less/greater than (or equal to) <, <=, >, >=
• (not) equal to ==, !=
• Bitwise AND &"
• Bitwise exclusive OR ^
• Bitwise inclusive OR |

Whitespaces are bypassed, so both x+t&x and x + t & x are valid.

Example formulas

• x+(t&t>>12)*(t>>4|t>>8)
• t*(42&t>>10)+x*2
• x+t
• x+t&x
• x+sin(t)+t&t<<8
• (t*(4|7&t>>13)>>(~t>>11&1)&128)+(t*(t>>11&t>>13)*(~t>>9&3)&64)

TODO:

• Support for ternary operator ? :
• Support for unary negation
• Add a list of formula presets