PIGAGA

What is PIGAGA?

PIGAGA is a creative tool that intentionally "degrades" clean digital audio. Using a variety of presets such as AM radio, old telephone, cassette tape, underwater, and broken speaker, it cuts high-frequency components and adds noise to produce sounds with a nostalgic and unique texture. While its sister tool "GABIBI" degrades images, PIGAGA provides the same experience in the world of sound.

How It Works

This tool uses the browser's built-in Web Audio API to perform the following processing:

• Band Limiting (Filtering): High-pass and low-pass filters allow only specific frequency bands to pass through, recreating the narrow-band sound of radio or telephone audio.
• Distortion: The WaveShaper node generates clipping to create gritty, rough sound.
• Bit Crush: Intentionally reduces sample rate and bit depth to recreate the coarse digital sound quality.
• Noise Synthesis: White noise and hiss noise are synthesized to recreate the background noise characteristic of analog equipment.

Use Cases

• Music Production Effects: Add a "lo-fi" texture to vocals and sample sources.
• Video Production: Degrade audio for flashback scenes or dream sequences to set the mood.
• Podcast / Streaming Sound Effects: Easily create audio material for phone-call conversations or radio-style talk.
• Game / App Sound: Produce 8-bit or retro VHS-style sound effects and BGM.

Preset List and Features

PIGAGA includes 13 degradation presets. Each combines different audio processing techniques to recreate a unique texture.

• 📻 Radio: Narrow-band feel like AM radio. Band limiting at 400Hz-3kHz with light distortion recreates the nostalgic broadcast sound.
• 📞 Phone: Sound quality like a landline phone call. Narrow band limiting and bit crush add digital roughness.
• 📼 Cassette: Sound unique to magnetic tape. Recreates high-frequency attenuation, hiss noise, and wow flutter (subtle pitch wobble from rotation irregularities).
• 🌊 Underwater: Muffled sound as if listening underwater. Only low frequencies pass through, with reverb added for resonance.
• 🔊 Broken SP: Audio clips like a broken speaker. Hard clipping and bit crush create severely distorted sound. *Watch your volume.
• 🎮 8bit: Retro game-style chiptune sound. Reduces sample rate and bit depth to create a chiptune-style digital sound.
• 📢 Megaphone: Harsh, clipped sound as if through a megaphone. Combines band limiting, heavy distortion, and light reverb.
• 🚻 Liminal: Sound reverberating in a vast empty space. Dual delays (short and long reflections) recreate the eerie spatial feel of liminal spaces.
• 📡 Shortwave: Sound like international shortwave broadcasts. Periodic fading (volume fluctuation) and heavy noise recreate unstable radio reception.
• 📹 Old Video: VHS tape-style degradation. Covers analog media characteristics including heavy wow flutter, 60Hz hum noise, and tape hiss.
• 🚇 Train PA: Muffled sound like train or station PA announcements. Combines low-pass filter, reverb, and light bit crush.
• 👻 Ghost Tape: Eerie sound for horror productions. Slow pitch wobble, random audio skips, and long reverb create an unsettling atmosphere.
• 🎙️ Voicemail: Answering machine recording quality. Extreme band limiting, low bitrate, and compression recreate the characteristic muffled sound.

All presets allow you to adjust the effect intensity with the "INTENSITY" slider. You can also combine them with the white noise mix for even more unique textures.

Privacy-Conscious Design

PIGAGA performs all audio processing in your browser (local environment). Uploaded files are never sent to or stored on external servers.