Digital is perfect. Digital is a blank canvas. Uncolored. Which is kinda boring. Modern music needs treatment. Needs saturation and noise.

So that’s why I bought this new tool which can fuck up a signal in a nice way: the RX950 Classic AD/DA Converter. It’s available as Rack Extension for Reason or as a VST or AU plugin. It mimics the AD/DA convertor of the classic Aka S950 sampler. Back in the early 90s I used the Akai S950 sampler a lot. I also used the Akai S1000 a lot, which was 16 bit instead of 12 bit, which I preferred at the time. Back in the day we were using tape machines and we all hated stuff which coloured the signal too much. But nowadays it is the total opposite: I LOVE stuff that can add spicy flavours to a super clean dull digital signal.

The RX950 Classic AD/DA Converter can deliver. When you set the input at a low value you will notice the quantisation noise. And when you set the input at a hotter level some lovely non lineair odd harmonic saturation will be applied to the signal. The sound becomes thicker, more complex, adding to the RMS value of the signal, sounding louder while not at all changing the peak level. This alone, that input parameter, is already a perfect tool for getting a fatter signal.

But you can degrade the signal even further with the Audio Bandwidth parameter, which sets the sampling frequency. Setting it at a lower setting will not result in aliasing errors like most bit crushers, it’s a far more smoother bandwidth “changer”.

And last but not least the lovely Low Pass filter of the 950. Which is a super useful classic Akai Low Pass filter.

This device is a classic so I bought it straight away. LOVE IT!