Degrader — Retro listening room

Give a playing tab the sound of vinyl, tape, radio and vintage hi-fi. Shape your sound, save presets and listen locally.

A little less perfect. A little more character. Turn your browser into a retro listening room. Degrader gives music, podcasts and other tab audio the warmth, colour and imperfections of old records, tape machines, radios and vintage hi-fi. Start playback, open Degrader and click Engage this tab. Choose a preset or build your own sound, then close the panel and keep listening. HIGH-QUALITY AUDIO ENGINE Degrader is powered by a custom, high-quality DSP engine built for real-time listening. Smooth saturation, carefully shaped tonal colour and natural-sounding pitch movement bring depth to its retro effects. Built-in output peak control helps manage strong signals, while HQ mode is enabled by default. Everything runs locally on your computer. EXPLORE DIFFERENT ERAS OF SOUND Choose from six media: vinyl, cassette, reel-to-reel, FM radio, AM radio and a clean CD reference. Explore three vinyl profiles, four cassette types and three reel speeds. Pair them with vintage hi-fi, portable cassette players, a boombox, personal-stereo headphones, a pocket radio or three distinct tube-inspired amplifiers. Add speaker voicings to the vintage hi-fi system for another change of character. Go from a gently softened LP to a worn bedroom mixtape, a warm studio reel or a small kitchen radio. SHAPE THE SOUND YOURSELF • Character controls the strength of the medium's coloration. • Drive adjusts how hard the playback system is driven, from gentle warmth to stronger saturation. • Wear adds ageing and playback imperfections. • Wobble controls pitch movement independently. • Optional noise adds hiss, crackle and other textures. It starts switched off. • Optional Dropouts adds brief tape dropouts to cassette and reel-to-reel. It starts switched off and works independently of Noise. Turn it on when you want that worn-tape effect. Keep it subtle for everyday listening, or push the controls for a more obvious lo-fi effect. FIND YOUR FAVOURITES Start with 12 factory presets, including Vinyl evening, Bedroom mixtape, Boombox summer, Studio reel and Night FM. Save your own named presets and recall them across tabs. Each tab remembers its sound settings during the browser session, while saved presets remain available after restarting Chrome. Choosing a preset keeps your Noise and Dropouts preferences. LISTEN AND COMPARE Automatic level matching helps reduce loudness differences when changing the sound. Use Bypass to compare processed and bypassed playback, and adjust Output to your preferred level. Input and output meters show signal activity and peaks. HQ mode offers higher-quality processing; switching it off reduces processing load. An optional Low latency setting requests a smaller audio buffer where Chrome supports it. A LITTLE RACK ON YOUR DESKTOP The Mini Rack interface brings animated records, cassette hubs and reel-to-reel spools to your browser, with equipment artwork and responsive tube lighting. Choose Amber, Silver or Burgundy, or switch to the compact classic interface. Mouse and keyboard controls, optional tooltips and a Settings panel keep adjustments close at hand. YOUR AUDIO STAYS WITH YOU All processing happens on your computer. No account, additional application or microphone access is required. Degrader does not record or upload audio, and sends no analytics. Settings and presets are stored locally. Chrome 116 or later is required. Degrader processes one selected tab at a time, rather than the whole browser or operating system. Browser-internal pages and some protected streaming content cannot be captured. Stop processing releases capture and restores normal playback. The effects are stylized impressions, not measured replicas of specific hardware. Degrader is independent and is not affiliated with hardware manufacturers or streaming services.