CARTRIDGE - Console Era Drum FX Plug-In

Run your drums through four generations of game consoles. Most bitcrushers sound like a bitcrusher. CARTRIDGE models the sound chips themselves, as four cartridges you plug in: a 4-bit handheld, a 7-bit home console, a 16-bit system with its famous echo, and a 32-bit CD-ROM machine. Insert one and everything follows it, from the bit depth, sample rate and DAC filter to the console's own quirks, right down to the resolution and palette of the screen. Then layer in square-wave fuzz, a noise channel that tracks your hats, echoes that drop a generation with every repeat, and a DAC you can drive until the peaks wrap around.

How it works

1. Put it on your drums. A loop, a drum bus, a single snare, or the whole kit.
2. Insert a cartridge. POCKET 4 is a 1989 handheld at 4 bits and 8.2 kHz. HOME 8 is a 1985 home console with 7-bit DPCM at 16.7 kHz. SUPER 16 is a 1991 system with 8-voice BRR at 32 kHz. DISC 32 is a 1995 CD-ROM console running ADPCM at 22 kHz. Swap carts and the whole era changes with it.
3. Turn up CRUNCH. Push past the console's native spec, all the way down to 2 bits and three octaves below its sample rate. Steer the damage toward bits or toward rate, and dial in as much raw aliasing as you want.
4. Add the chip and the noise. Chip blends square-wave fuzz into the kit, with pulse width and an octave-down divider. Noise is an LFSR channel keyed from your hats or snare. Both run into the converter, so they get crushed right along with the drums.
5. Let it echo. A tempo-synced echo whose repeats pass back through the converter, each one a generation lower than the last.
6. Push the DAC. Up to 24 dB of drive into Soft, Hard or Wrap clipping, where loud peaks overflow and flip to the other side. Add Bad contacts for flipped bits, dropouts and the occasional stuck sample.

What's inside

• 300 presets in twelve folders: Polish, Texture, Rhythmic Echo, Space, Weight, Snare Design, Hat Design, Lo-Fi Kits, Console, Crush, Glitch and Extreme. More than half the bank leaves the drums clean and builds layers around them. All level-matched, so stepping through them compares sounds, not loudness.
• Four cartridges, four quirks: each console has its own character control. Speaker on the handheld, slew-limited DPCM on the home console, gaussian-smoothed BRR on the 16-bit, and slope overload on the CD-ROM's ADPCM.
• Two views: Console puts the screen, four macros and the cartridge slot up front. Circuit lays out every stage in signal order with its own on/off switch, so you can hear the kit with any stage taken out.
• A screen that plays along: drawn at the loaded console's real resolution and palette, and reacting to your kick, snare and hats.
• Deep chip and noise controls: 12.5, 25 or 50% duty, octave down by one or two, tone and gate on the chip; long or short LFSR mode, 16 pitch steps, key source and decay on the noise.
• Save your own: keep any sound as a user preset. They're files on your computer, shared by every DAW, easy to back up or pass to a friend.
• Built for sessions: every control is automatable and MIDI-mappable from your DAW, with A/B compare, undo and zero latency.
• Audition loops built in: starter loops from the Vault catalog, the whole Vault library to preview, or drop in your own WAV.
• Licensing that stays out of the way: saves with your DAW project, works fully offline after activation, use on up to 3 machines.

Free for Vault members

Have a Vault membership? CARTRIDGE is included. Just sign in inside the plugin. Pair it with the Vault catalog and you can put a session drummer's real performance through a 4-bit handheld speaker.

Compatibility

• Formats: AU, VST3, AAX and Standalone (Logic Pro, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper, and more)
• Platform: macOS 11+ (Apple Silicon & Intel) and Windows 10+ (64-bit)
• Use it on: a drum bus, a single drum, a loop, or a full mix

FAQ

Can I try it first? Yes, and there's no clock on it. The free download is the complete plugin running on your own drums, every preset included. The output mutes briefly every 45 seconds until you activate.

Is this a sample pack? No. CARTRIDGE is an effect. It works on the drums you already have, whether that's a live kit, a loop, or a programmed pattern.

Isn't this just another bitcrusher? A bitcrusher is one stage of it. Each cartridge models a specific console's converter, filter and coding quirk, and the chip, noise, echo and DAC stages go well past what a plain crusher does.

Can it be subtle? Yes. More than half the presets keep the drums clean and add texture, weight, echo or polish around them. The heavy crushing lives in the last four folders.

Does it add latency? No. CARTRIDGE runs at zero latency, so it's safe on tracks you're recording through.

Does it work offline? Yes. Activate once and CARTRIDGE never needs the internet to run. No dongles, no iLok.

How many machines? Three, with self-serve deactivation.

Do I need a Vault membership? No. The $49 license is yours forever. Membership includes the plugin along with the whole catalog.

Manual

The complete CARTRIDGE guide, covering installation, activation, the four cartridges, the Console and Circuit views, Crush, Chip, Noise, Echo and DAC, and the presets: read the CARTRIDGE Manual.

Have any feedback, suggestions, questions or bugs to report? Please contact us here and we'll follow up with you ASAP!