Thenatan and SanjayC offer the Underwater FX ($50 value) audio effect as a FREE download for a limited time.
Underwater FX is a lo-fi multi-effect inspired by Drake’s music. Thenatan audio claims that they spent weeks coding until they developed “an all-in-one tool trying to replicate the sounds of popular songs made by Drake.”
I’m not sure what Drake song Thenatan used as the reference, so I can’t say if the plugin delivers on its promise. Listening to the audio demos on the developer’s website, the effect sounds like a combination of low-pass filtering and bitcrushing.
EDIT: Our readers Samuel and Ike described the effect much better in the comments section below. Apparently, it’s downsampling with antialiasing, resulting in a less harsh but also darker sound.
To be honest, I’m not proud of not knowing that this low-passed and bitcrushed sound is now “a thing.” I guess I’ve reached that point in life when you realize you’re not part of the young generation anymore. And it goes deeper than simply not getting the latest music trends.
I recently discussed launching a BPB forum with a colleague, and he told me something along the lines of: “Tomislav, forums are a thing of the past. Discord is where it’s at now. It’s a must.”
Disco… what?
Anyway, back on topic.
Underwater FX features a streamlined control scheme and an animated GUI. The control knobs let you fine-tune the filter cutoff, filter slope, bitcrushing amount, and the drive amount.
The filter slope control has a surprisingly broad range, letting you set the value anywhere from 12 dB to 96 dB (in 12 dB increments). The plugin also features a low-cut switch that effectively cuts off any frequency content below 80 Hz.
So, it seems that the idea is to combine low-pass filtering with bitcrushing and subtle distortion to get a dark lo-fi sound. Whether or not this will make you sound like Drake, I don’t know. The plugin definitely sounds good, though.
Yes, you could achieve the same effect with freeware plugins (even our BPB Dirty Filter and BPB Dirty Spring plugins can do it), but it’s always nice to speed up your workflow with a specialized tool.
The GUI is animated and freely resizable from 100% to 200%. I couldn’t figure out if the animation somehow reflects the audio processing or if it’s simply there to look cool. However, the volume meter in the upper-right corner definitely shows the audio amplitude.
Underwater FX costs $50, but you can get it for FREE during a limited-time promo that Thenatan launched in collaboration with SanjayC. Use the coupon code sanjaycdrake at checkout to claim your free copy.
You can check out SanjayC’s video about the offer below.
Underwater FX is available in VST2, VST3, and AU plugin formats for Windows and macOS. Both 32-bit and 64-bit digital audio workstations are supported.
Download: Underwater FX (FREE with coupon code sanjaycdrake)
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16 Comments
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks to BPB reader Aris for the info about the Underwater FX freebie.
konstabel
on.. claim they spent *weeks* coding.. :D
that has to be a quality emulation of what drake does! thx for making my day! now off to trying to scroll through the lines board..
Tomislav Zlatic
onHaha, I chuckled there, too. :)
Caliko
onDiscord is garbage. You’re not missing much.
samuel
onto maybe add some context, the actual ‘drake effect’ is protools’ lofi. 40 (drake’s engineer) has said a few times, that although most people think he is just lowpassing everything, he is actually reducing the samplerate, it’s just that protool’s lofi downsamples without adding that nasty aliasing (or however it’s called), which most other plugins do.
from what i understood thus far, the only bitcrushing plugin that also downsamples without adding aliassing is d16 decimort (i think. definitely something from d16)
if this is just a filter though, who tf needs this :D
samuel
onall this being said, i did not know discord basically replaced forums, so i need to get on it finally, i guess
Tomislav Zlatic
onThat’s what I’ve heard. I’ll give it a try, too.
Ike
onSamuel, you are almost right. The “Drake Effect” is basically downsampling (not bit-reduction), without introducing aliasing (oversampling feature applied). There are quite a few plugins other than the ProTools stock plugin and the d16 one. Toneboosters TimeMachine did this way before all the other ones and it’s free (version 3) and it’s the best by any margin. Also, recently Cymatics Origin plugin has exactly that feature and more!
samuel
onthank you for the correction (still get some terms mixed up sometimes) and thanks for the recommendation. wasn’t aware of other plugins doing this, specially free ones.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks for the clarification about the effect, much appreciated.
Mike B
onWow… Thanks for all that info. I have all three of those plugins. I’m going to test them out.
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks for the info!
m
onthe face on the plugin looks like marvel’s killmonger (from the boack panther movie) to me.
Then again, I have only heard the name drake and I know he’s a rapper, but I’ve never seen him.
Dave Younger
onI have applied for Drake & the previous Thenatan Vinylizer offers but have not received either plugin or a notification from Thenatan.
Anyone else having issues?
WTFaulkner
onIzotope offers a free Vinyl plugin… try that if you don’t hear.
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/vinyl.html
phil huston
onYou know if anybody in the lofi production field had balls they’d use a two transistor fuzz with the bias cranked down starving the last transistor instead of all the *clean* distortion or bit crushing.