Beatskillz SampleX $69 PC MAC

The sound of low-bit rate sampling is much in vogue. You could get yourself an expensive piece of old hardware to do it… or this

Looking back at the 90s – which more people are doing, as the popularity of our recent 90s issue (which sold out as fast as a jungle breakbeat) proves – it’s amazing to see, or hear, how much of that music was defined by the music production technology of the time, notably sampling technology.

The limitations of sampling back then really turned producers into creative thinkers as they had to work so hard to wrestle anything decent from their hardware – see our explainer below for more. And while the results might not have been sonically perfect, they had a character that is in demand today, and it’s a character that simply oozes out of SampleX by Beatskillz.

Lo-fi Skillz

The Beatskillz programmers have studied the original hardware circuitry to attempt to emulate everything in the original 90s hardware including the A/D converters, preamps and filters, and all of their findings have become options on this easy-to-install and understand (VST/AU/AAX) plugin.

The first section therefore allows you to select your bitrate, from 4-bits up to 24 (double click to enter the amount manually). Then you dial in the sample rate which goes from a very low 2kHz right up to 96kHz.