One degrades the audio you already have. The other throws it away and replays your melody on four modelled chip channels. That is the whole difference.
Decimort is a well-regarded bitcrusher and sample-rate reducer from D16 Group, built to put authentic vintage-sampler degradation on any source you feed it. If your goal is "make this recording sound like it went through old hardware," a dedicated degradation plugin is the right tool and TALLBOY is not a replacement for it. TALLBOY is a chiptune resynthesiser: it pitch-tracks a monophonic source and rebuilds the performance on four modelled handheld-console sound-chip channels, so the output is a synthesised chip voice playing your line rather than your recording with damage applied. Different jobs. TALLBOY happens to include a conventional decimator too, which is why the two overlap at all.
A bitcrusher is a processor. Your waveform goes in, the same waveform comes out with less amplitude resolution and less time resolution. Turn it up far enough and you get crackle, aliasing and foldover, but the thing making the sound is still your recording. That is exactly what you want when you are chasing the texture of an old sampler, a game console's audio path, or a cheap digital rack unit.
A resynthesiser is a different animal. TALLBOY listens to your track, works out what pitch you are singing or playing and how loud, and then discards the audio entirely and drives a modelled sound chip with that information. What comes out has none of your original waveform in it. It is a pulse wave, or a 4-bit wavetable, or a burst of LFSR noise, performing the melody you just played.
This is why a bitcrusher alone never quite sounds like chiptune. Crushing a vocal gives you a crunchy vocal. Resynthesising it gives you a chip voice singing your hook - which is the sound people actually mean when they say "8-bit."
| TALLBOY | Decimort | |
|---|---|---|
| Core approach | Pitch-tracked resynthesis onto modelled chip channels | Bit-depth and sample-rate degradation of the incoming signal |
| What comes out | A synthesised chip performance following your pitch and envelope | Your source, processed |
| Sound-chip voices | Four — two pulse channels (four duty cycles), a 32-sample 4-bit wavetable, LFSR noise keyed off transients | Not a synthesiser — no oscillators |
| Host-synced arpeggiator | Yes — 1/4 to 1/32, UP / DOWN / UPDN / RAND / CHRD, four octaves, 400 ms glide | Not an arpeggiator |
| Bit reduction | Yes — CRUSH ROM cartridge, 1–16 bit | Yes — its core purpose |
| Sample-rate reduction | Yes — rate divide 1–64 with jitter, post filter down to 540 Hz | Yes — its core purpose |
| Vintage sampler authenticity | Not the goal — the flavour is handheld console, not rack sampler | The explicit design goal |
| Works on drums, chords, full mixes | Decimator section only — chip resynthesis needs one clear pitch | Yes — degradation works on any source |
| Best on | Vocals, bass, single-note leads and hooks | Drums, loops, samples, anything you want roughed up |
| Price | $20 one-time, no subscription | Commercial plugin — see D16 Group for current pricing |
| Copy protection | No iLok, no dongle, three machines per licence | See D16 Group's site |
| Formats | macOS VST3 / AU / AAX universal, Windows VST3 64-bit | See D16 Group's site for current formats |
| Free demo | Yes — macOS and Windows | See D16 Group's site |
| Interface | No knobs — a D-pad and a four-shade dot-matrix screen | Conventional plugin controls |
We only list Decimort details we can state with confidence. For pricing, formats, system requirements and demo availability, check D16 Group directly — those change, and we would rather point you at the source than guess.
Three independent cartridges, each of which can be pulled out:
Monophonic pitch tracking drives four modelled channels: two pulse channels with four selectable duty cycles, a 32-sample 4-bit wavetable, and an LFSR noise channel keyed off transients so consonants and pick attacks land as hardware noise rather than mush. This is the cartridge that makes TALLBOY a different category of plugin from a crusher.
Host-synced from 1/4 down to 1/32, with UP, DOWN, UPDN, RAND and CHRD modes, a four-octave range and glide up to 400 ms. Feed it a held bass note and it becomes a chip bassline; feed it a vocal and it turns the melody into an arcade motif.
The conventional part: bit reduction from 1 to 16 bits, rate divide from 1 to 64 with jitter for that unstable-clock smear, and a post filter that sweeps down to 540 Hz. This runs on anything, including drums and full mixes, and it works whether or not the resynthesiser is loaded.
Eject all three cartridges and TALLBOY is true passthrough - it nulls against dry. There is no always-on "character" tax.
These are not competitors so much as neighbours. Decimort does degradation properly and does it on anything - that is a real, permanent use case and no resynthesiser replaces it. TALLBOY answers a different question: what if a sound chip played this line instead of my microphone? If that question is the one you have been asking, no bitcrusher at any price will answer it, because degradation and synthesis are different operations. And if you want both, TALLBOY's CRUSH ROM is in the box for the same $20.
Free demo for macOS and Windows. No email required, no iLok, no subscription.
Try TALLBOY Free Get TALLBOY — $20Related guides:
TALLBOY vs Lo-Fi Plugins • Bitcrusher vs Decimator • Chiptune VST Guide • 8-Bit Vocal Effect