Goodhertz Lossy, The Strangest MP3 Artifact Plugin for Experimental Music Production
Updated: 3 days ago
Goodhertz Lossy is a plugin that recreates the sound of badly compressed digital audio: low-bitrate MP3s, broken phone calls, dropped video streams and skipping CDs. It costs $79, runs as AU, VST, VST3 and AAX on Mac and Windows, and has seven loss modes, from standard MP3-style smear to packet loss and packet repeat. This guide covers what each control does, how Lossy sounds, how to use it on vocals, guitars and drums in band music, and why a plugin that makes audio worse has ended up on so many good records.
Goodhertz's own page lists artists like Phoebe Bridgers and Lorde among its users, and there is now a Chase Bliss pedal version. That tells you something. Lossy is not a novelty for joke tracks. It is a way to put distance, memory and damage into a sound, which is exactly what a lot of alternative music is about.
Goodhertz Lossy at a glance
What it is: a lossy-compression simulator. It degrades audio the way MP3 encoders and bad internet connections do.
Price: $79 from Goodhertz.
Formats: AU, VST, VST3, AAX on Mac (10.13 and up) and VST, VST3, AAX on Windows 10 and up, all 64-bit.
Loss modes: Standard, Inverse, Phase Jitter, Packet Repeat, Packet Loss, Standard + Packet Loss, Standard + Packet Repeat.
Other sections: a reverb (before or after the loss), a band-pass or band-reject filter, and a mix control.
Also exists as: a Chase Bliss guitar pedal, made with Goodhertz.
What Lossy actually does
Lossy audio formats like MP3 save space by throwing away the parts of a sound the encoder thinks you will not notice. Push them too hard and you hear it: a watery, swirling, metallic smear in the high end, and a flattening of transients. Lossy recreates that process on purpose, and lets you choose how much and how fast.
The main controls are Loss Amount (how much is thrown away) and Loss Speed. Slower speeds smear the sound spectrally, faster ones make it more garbled. The Lossy manual lists every parameter.
The loss modes, explained
Standard: the classic low-bitrate MP3 sound. Swirly, watery top end.
Inverse: you hear only what the encoder would have thrown away. Ghostly and thin, great for atmospheres.
Phase Jitter: smears the phase of the signal, a wobblier and stranger kind of degradation.
Packet Loss: dropouts, like a bad phone or video call.
Packet Repeat: fills the dropouts with frozen fragments, like a skipping CD.
Standard + Packet Loss / Packet Repeat: the MP3 smear and the dropouts together.
Around the loss section sit a reverb you can place before or after the degradation (before means the reverb gets damaged too), a filter with normal or inverted modes, and advanced settings like stereo, joint stereo or mono processing and perceptual or flat weighting.
How to use Lossy in band music
Vocals: the phone-call verse
Put Lossy on a vocal with the filter narrowed to a phone-like band and Standard mode at a low amount. It sounds like a voice memo or a call, which is a strong way to make a verse feel private before the chorus opens up. Automate the mix so the full vocal comes back at the chorus.
Guitars: memory, not distortion
On clean or chorused guitars, a little Standard or Phase Jitter makes a part sound like it is remembered rather than played. That works well for dream pop and shoegaze intros. On a send with the reverb set before the loss, you get a damaged ambience that sits behind the band.
Drums: dropouts as rhythm
Packet Repeat on a drum bus or room mic, tempo-matched by ear, creates stutters that sound like a CD skipping. Use it for one bar before a section change. On a whole song it gets tiring fast.
Sound design and transitions
Inverse mode on a pad, a feedback swell or a room recording turns it into a ghost of itself. Try it on the tail of a song, or print a few seconds and use them as an intro.
Why degraded sound works on records
Our opinion: a lot of modern records are too clean to feel anything. When everything is perfectly clear, nothing sounds far away, and nothing sounds like a memory. Damage is a way to create distance and time inside a mix. Tape did it, cheap samplers did it, and now lossy compression does it for a generation that grew up on MP3s and video calls.
The rule is the same as with any strong effect: use it on purpose, in one place, and commit to it. We have written about the value of imperfection in the death of perfect and how to make your music sound human in the AI era.
Alternatives to Lossy
If you want degradation of a different kind: Klevgrand Degrader for bit crushing and sample-rate reduction, Aberrant DSP SketchCassette II for cassette wobble and hiss, AudioThing Wires for wire-recorder grit, and iZotope Trash 2 for distortion. Lossy is the one that sounds specifically digital and specifically broken.
What an earlier version of this article got wrong
The first version of this post listed a price of around $69 (it is $79), described controls for "bit reduction" and "internet noise" that Lossy does not have, and named presets like "Dial-Up Disaster" that we cannot find in the plugin. We have rewritten it from Goodhertz's manual.
Goodhertz Lossy FAQ
What does Goodhertz Lossy do?
Lossy simulates the artifacts of heavily compressed digital audio, like low-bitrate MP3s, broken phone calls and skipping CDs. You control how much audio is thrown away, how fast, and whether you also get dropouts or repeated fragments.
How much does Goodhertz Lossy cost?
Lossy costs $79 from Goodhertz. It runs as AU, VST, VST3 and AAX on Mac and Windows.
What is Inverse mode in Lossy?
Inverse mode plays only the part of the signal a lossy encoder would throw away. The result is thin, ghostly and very useful for atmospheres and transitions.
Is there a Goodhertz Lossy pedal?
Yes. Chase Bliss makes a Lossy guitar pedal in collaboration with Goodhertz, based on the plugin's algorithm.
How do I make a vocal sound like a phone call?
Band-pass the vocal to roughly 300 Hz to 3 kHz and add a small amount of lossy compression or distortion. In Lossy, narrow the filter and use Standard mode at a low amount, then automate the mix so the full vocal can return.
Keep reading
Made a record where the damage is the point? We mix shoegaze, post-punk and indie rock for artists who want character kept, not cleaned up. Send us the rough mix.
