Decent Samples has launched a free instrument library made by cutting a series of test tones onto vinyl and then playing them back into the computer. Record Cutter Synth is a breathy, fragile-sounding synthesizer that should be perfect for lofi or cinematic work.

About 20 years ago, I was lamenting to my wife that it wasn’t possible to make records at home, so she did bunch of a research, discovered that consumer-grade record cutters used to exist in the 1940s, and bought me one of these antiques. Although we never managed to make a single decent-sounding record with the darn thing, it did spark an obsession for this terrible technology.

Fast forward to January 2023, I bought a Gakken toy record cutter from Japan. The fidelity offered by the Gakken is very much the same as that of the cutter from 1949, but this time, instead of using it to reproduce music, I’ve learned to exploit it as an effect instead.

The library is available to download for the free Decent Sampler for Windows, Mac and Linux (VST/VST3, AU and AAX).

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