How to use the Distortion effect

What is distortion?

Distortion is usually described as the result of any process that alters the audio signal shape and adds harmonics or introduces new sound to the original sound. For example, a hiss that is generated by the recording equipment or a tape machine when recording could be considered distortion. That’s a type of distortion that could in some cases be considered unwanted, but there are other audio distortion types as well.

Distortion is perhaps more commonly used to describe effects that in any way purposefully crushes or overdrives the original signal thereby causing the signal to clip.

Examples of these forms of distortion used in music production are:

• Fuzz pedals for guitars that cause the somewhat milder tone of fuzz distortion.
• Soft clipping or tape saturation that emulates driving the signal over 0dB into analog equipment and reduces the dynamic range.
• The distortion produced by sample rate reduction on older audio systems that can also be emulated with our other plugin Degrader.

Our Distortion effect has 5 ways to squash and wreak havoc on your sounds:

• Clip
• Foldback
• Waveshaping 1-3

How to Distort Audio in Soundation

Quick Distortion [Beginner]

The quickest way to distort your audio is by using one of the presets in the Soundation studio.

1. 1
   Open Soundation and create a project
2. 2
   Double-click the channel to which you want to apply the Distortion effect, this will open up the bottom panel
3. 3
   Press "+ Add effect" and select Distortion in the drop-down menu
4. 4
   In the upper right corner, you can now select one of the pre-made settings

Customize the Distortion [Intermediate]

Clip

Clip is probably the simplest and most common mechanism for distortion, which occurs in the digital realm when a signal's amplitude is restricted by a set limit, for example the bit depth of the sequencer. In the analog world this is achieved when a signal is driven beyond the gain capacity of an amplifier, effectively cutting off the tops of the sound wave.

Foldback

Foldback mirrors the signal back onto itself when the amplitude exceeds clipping level.

Waveshaping

Waveshaping (WS1, WS2 ,WS3) is a technique of distortion which explicitly alters the shape of the original waveform by forcing its amplitude to conform to the shape of a nonlinear transfer function, thereby giving the effect its own unique sound.

Gain

Gain governs the amplitude of the input signal.

Volume

Volume governs the amplitude of the output signal.