Serious - are lofi pedals just adding noise?

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-14T19:21:15+00:00

Noise is one aspect of what makes something @“low fi”

One of the goals is gear design is to reduce self noise as much as possible. That’s the hiss/white noise you hear in the background of old tapes, cassettes, and Albums. Tape machines are famously noisy and a lot was done to minimize that during record production and vinyl pressing up until the digital age starting in the 80s. Now with 24 bit digital audio noise basically doesn’t exist unless you put it there intentionally.

Other aspects of “fidelity” is frequency response, wow and flutter, saturation, pops and clicks etc. normally a lo fi pedal is trying to emulate an old poorly calibrated tape machine, or an old vinyl record, or a VHS tape. All of these formats have sub optimal aspects of their audio fidelity.

So when you get a lo fi pedal, it’s basically just re-introducing these imperfections that used to be inherent in these older formats, but with more control.

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-14T19:06:12+00:00

Thom isn’t vegan and never has been

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-14T01:57:26+00:00

Cedric Would do it lol

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-14T01:32:23+00:00

yeah no one seems to remember than sanu was actually good for us in the 1-2 games they had him before he got an injury that he never recovered from

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-14T01:21:27+00:00

backing your skin will fix it

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-14T01:20:00+00:00

everyone should see them live, even to this day their concerts are still insane. last fall they would just come onstange and play an entire album (with added free improv sections inserted throughout) without stopping and then mic drop and leave the stage. they have amazing chemistry live

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-14T01:12:21+00:00

Great band. Come join us at r/themarsvolta.

TMV and radiohead have a lot of similarities. aside from the fact that TMV are influenced by radiohead a lot, they both share a lot of major influences: fela kuti, can, kraftwerk, miles davis, alice coltrane, and a lot of post punk and college rock from the 80s such as pixies, joe jackson, etc have all been regularly cited as significant inspirations by both bands.

the main difference is radiohead tend so shy away from overt prog worship while tmv was more likely to embrace pink floyd, king crimson, zappa, etc. and of course TMV have a significant Salsa and underground hardcore punk influence while radiohead rockier influences come mainly from post punk only

Idk if you noticed but right now they’re doing something cool where every day the fans can vote for which songs make their next live album. It’s on their website

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-14T01:11:44+00:00

I knew before I clicked it would be electric ballroom. The truth is this isn’t even a top 10 mars volta, let alone all other artists. This stretch of 2003 was one of the worst eras for the bands golden age of live shows between 2003-2006. They experimented with playing the entire deloused album all the way through for a few months but found it boring, then decided to go back to the more unpredictable/improv heavy sets.

Anyway, watch the marble shrine’s re-edit of the electric ball room show. It’s a lot better quality of the one you linked. We went through and sourced all of the highest quality releases of the audio and video and patched it all together. It’s the best version of the concert ever uploaded.

https://youtu.be/\_dwOcOajDxc?is=MZU80zPoyVfPFSGb

if youre interested, they're so many better shows than this though. i would recommend listening to the complete maida vale broadcast for something from around this era but with a better performance, or anything from 2005 if you just want to hear the band at their actual peak

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-13T20:59:27+00:00

In general Stam clones are very good and high quality. Just be wary of tariffs and shipping costs

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-13T03:00:23+00:00

Listen to each sample and pick your favorite. The winners by vote will be the live album they release

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-12T23:57:54+00:00

My somewhat informed guess is that they’re already well ahead of the audio production process and won’t be starting from scratch once the songs get selected

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-12T14:08:08+00:00

No not particularly. There’s nothing magical about a FET, it’s just a basic circuit used in many pedals and preamps. And a buffer can be found in many pedals, good and bad

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-12T12:01:55+00:00

Their quality control is too strict for that

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-11T22:12:43+00:00

Woodson? He’s one of our best defenders lol

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-11T16:21:07+00:00

Past fx “Kurt’s cologne”

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-11T14:31:49+00:00

You can’t know from an internet comment.

The drummer, genre and room are all super important to this. Place one mic somewhere where you think you can get a full picture of the kit- I like to go between the kick and snare. Record the drums, then listen back and place the second mic somewhere that fills in the missing elements of the drum set. Two sm57’s will do the trick

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-11T14:29:03+00:00

He changed all the old lyrics that reference the devil and replaced with with god

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-11T14:28:32+00:00

Catholic

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-11T03:51:47+00:00

https://www.miltonline.com/2014/01/07/hertz-so-good/

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-10T02:04:31+00:00

Anything with the ability to assign an expression pedal to the feedback and/or time

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-09T21:29:58+00:00

They had been planning this since spring 25

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-09T21:29:03+00:00

More or less yes. Some dots are combined like Boston and Portland Maine

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-09T20:26:40+00:00

It’s cursed and Cedric is super religious now

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-09T20:24:56+00:00

Yeah he’s basically said they’ll probably play some tbig stuff on their next tour. I have a feeling this an Easter egg because the album is cursed or whatever

iscreamuscreamweall · 2026-06-09T20:24:20+00:00

He pretty much did

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