Distortion is a pretty versatile effect. If you're wondering how to use audio distortion to add warmth or some extra bite to your sounds, it does the trick. In this post, we’ll be going through the various types of this effect plugin such as Overdrive, Clip, Fold-back, Decimate and Bitcrush, so stick around if you want to learn what they all do.If you have no clue what distortion is, that's fine! This is mainly focused on digital distortion in music and sound design but can be used in many forms of audio.
Different Types of Distortion. Overdrive will simulate overloading the input with gain making it sound more aggressive or crunchy. Clip essentially cuts off anything above a certain threshold of the waveform. This flattens it out and removes some of the signal. Foldback on the other hand usually takes the point where clip would cut it off and will fold back (or flip) anything above that threshold. Decimate is quite simple, it reduces the sample rate of the signal. Bitcrush This is similar to Decimate as it takes the original sound and usually reduces its bitrate but can also reduce the resolution and sample rate too.If you would rather watch the video than reading, you can watch the video here, which includes examples of what each parameter does to a sound.
Distortion Effect ParametersAmount: One of the most common parameters in distortion effects is the amount option. This determines how harsh the distortion will be.
From what I understand, the Amount control is quite similar (if not the same) as Drive.Drive: The drive control varies across different plugins. Typically, Drive will either determine the input or output gain. This will saturate the sound (either more or less) depend on what you have it set to. At a low setting, it should create a softer sound.
As you turn it up, you'll start to hear a much warmer and full sound, adding some harshness.Filter: Having a filter on a distortion effect allows for control over what part of the frequency spectrum is affected. This is essentially an equalizer, but usually, will only come as high and low cutoff filter. Now, this is pretty good as it doesn't make EQ overly complicated, yet still provides you with the ability to choose specific frequency regions to distort. You can isolate the effect to only saturate the low end with a low pass filter.
You can also choose where the curve starts to drop off with the frequency control. To distort the higher frequencies instead, you can use a high pass.Dry & Wet: As per usual, the majority of all software effects have a dry and wet knob. In distortion plugins, you'll often find it called 'mix' which just refers to the mix of the dry (unprocessed) sound with the wet (distorted sound). Some will come as two individual controls, while others will be together in one knob or slider.
Distortion Effect Tips & TricksDistortion is an effect that will react to the amplitude of the signal that passes through the effect plugin. To change the tone of the distortion, you can increase the gain of the input signal and then reduce it after it has been processed by the effect to return the dB level back to normal.The frequency of the input signal can also have an impact on how the distortion plugin affects the signal. Automate the input frequency by using an EQ or a Phaser to create movement in the input. It’s critical to add this frequency change before the distortion on the effect chain.When dealing with distortion in a mix, it’s good to balance distorted & un-distorted sounds to complement each other. Using this effect on too many elements or simply having too much on a single sound can lead to a perhaps obvious unpleasant sound, so be disciplined with using it.Learn more about.If you liked this tutorial about how to use audio distortion in music and sound design, share this with a friend!
Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in the comments below.
I also want to bump this. I upgraded to win10 when it first came out, and I had the realtek audio/video stutter issue. I thought I could find a fix and I tried for days. I tried installing drivers from Realtek's website, I force updated my sound and video drivers. I tried running windows without my dual graphics. I couldn't find anything on anyone's site that would help, so I reverted. It's over a month past, so I thought the issue was fixed.
ONLY thing I'm happy about is that I was able to revert to 7 so easily. I am so extremely frustrated by this issue that I really want to use profanities, just to make me feel better. Audio/video is the only thing for which I use my desktop, so basically, this issue renders my computer useless.
I guess I'll wait two months this time. Win 7 works great, though! This is so annoying. My pc's audio stutters all the time.
From what i can gather, no one cares, and no one is trying to fix it. So it looks as if the only solution is to back track to windows 7?Yes, you are right, unfortunately. I re-installed Windows 10 two times, even after clean install, the problem persists. For me, it happens every 30 minutes: ndis.sys and other processes cause extreme DPC latency (200ms; yes ms, not s!), which causes system delays of about one second.
During this second, audio stutters disruptively and video is frozen.I installed a dual-boot Windows 8.1 partition on the same PC and dont have that problem here at all, with the same programs used. So it definitely is either a hardware companys fault for writing bad Win10 drivers (my network adapter is from Realtek fwiw), or Microsofts for doing something bad with the network drivers. Since it happens every 30 minutes and Windows telemetry and keylogging is supposed to be sent every 30 minutes too, I suspected that the telemetry data sending might be the cause. But even after using a Windows tweaking program to disable all telemetry and other potentially privacy-compromising Windows 10 features, the problem persisted. So Ive written this off as a general Windows 10 bug that seemingly isnt given any attention from Microsoft developers.Im glad I didnt pay anything for Windows 10, else I would be really upset that this OS cant even handle continuous audio and video output.
How To Distort Audio In Audacity
What seemed to end up working for me was tweaking the connector settings in the RealTek control app.After re-installing the drivers it had two of my three connectors set for Line-In and Mic, once I switched to 5.1 and set those to center speaker/sub woofer and rear-speakers, the stuttering in my games disappeared.I.e. Try changing your connectors so they are output only.It's working right now so I don't really want to experiment with it further to prove this conclusively, but hopefully this helps someone. Yeah, I've been getting this too on Windows 10 with all the latest updates applied. This is not a stuttering problem. This is audio clipping due to low frequency content. NASTY speaker destroying square wave distortion, just horrible. This only happens with Realtek onboard sound.
Does not happen with my EMU 0404USB outboard converter, but unfortunately that recently bit the dust, so for now I'm stuck with the onboard system. Changing sample/bit rates does not help. SRS sound is disconnected, so that's not the problem.
I'm not a gamer, so it's not game related. This is just plain old music it's happening on.
It's not software related, it happens on different DAWs, and music players.same problem across the board. I reinstalled Windows 10 pro 64bit without connecting to the Internet and installed all the latest drivers all worked well with system restore points in between each driver installed. When I connect to the Internet and automatic updates goes the update from via technologies, inc (there are 2) installs and I can no longer watch videos or play music as it is all chunky. I restore the system and everything is fine until it installs again.
Trying to watch a movie while it installs to see if that stops the error from happening. Reviving this old post but this issue still seems to be plaguing people in 2016! I experienced the same problems as described here with Realtek HD Audio and Windows 10.One good check to ensure your issue is similar is that the stuttering is NOT experienced during games but it is while streaming/watching video/etc.Solution (if you can call it that): Disable CPU throttling.1. Edit your current power plan2. Go to advanced power settings3. Under 'Processor power management' make sure that your Minimum & Maximum processor states are set to 100%.
Just to add further information, I have 4X devices running Realtek audio (with the latest W10 drivers), one with 5.1 and the others with stereo, all analogue. One uses the Dolby Surround variant of the Realtek driver package. I'm using release version of W10 Pro x64, Home x64 and Home x32. None of these exhibit the problem.My concern is that some mobos/chipsets/audio chipsets are causing a problem rather than the OS or drivers, because from my testing the OS and the drivers are both capable of producing fine sound, so the variable here is the hardware.Hopefully there is a way to work around the hardware idiosyncrasy with a driver or firmware update to your hardware. I recommend you check your mobo forum and firmware downloads.Good luck!