RPS Effects Bit Reactor Bitcrusher Downsampler

We are gonna get down and dirty today, folks, with a pedal that throws all caution and sonic civility to the wind, then steps on it and smashes it to pieces. The Bit Reactor is a hardware bit crusher and downsampler, creating vintage video game noises and producing real-world signals with a stream of 1s and 0s. Want a wild and wack effect that gets into octave and fuzz territory, all while conjuring up auditory memories of your youth (well, our youth, anyway, we’re old)? Then here it is for you, in all its marvelous glory.

The controls here are few, but each is extremely important to the sound produced by the Bit Reactor. The Sample starts things off, controlling the sampling frequency and determining the maximum frequency that can be accurately reproduced in the output. AS you turn it down, the high end frequencies are no longer recreated, but reappear (via aliasing) at different, inharmonic frequencies, for out-of-this-world mayhem. The notes you play will act very differently at different Sample settings, which can also be controlled by an external Expression pedal (see demo below), for real-time adjustments and insanity.

The Crush knob features 8 settings, each with its own LED, that represent the number of bits being used in the signal. Here you get a wide range of tones, from a subtle bit crush at 8 bits to a full-on, super-clipped, square wave distortion when set at 1 bit, and a slew of exploration in between. Level finishes the controls off, setting the output volume, which can change dramatically depending on the settings of the other two knobs, so keep an ear out!

Hard to explain, fun to experiment with and a true eye-opener in the effects world, the Bit Reactor is a real noisemaker’s dream contained in a baby blue box. IF you long for a somewhat digital-sounding pedal that’s really all analog, getting back to the nitty gritty of NES and Atari soundtracks from decades past, you’ve found exactly what you’ve been searching for right here. Cheers to our new pals at RPS Effects for the first of their 4-pedal lineup we’ll be reviewing and demoing over the next couple months – if this one is any indication of what’s to come, we absolutely cannot wait.