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DISTORTION
Crunchy Crunchs
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Ableton Playthrough
Max and bitKlavier Playthrough
Sample BitCrush
A distortion effect based around simulating how dynamically reducing the sample rate and bit depth might sound.
Here the sample rate and bit depth doesn't actually change, the sound of lowering the sample rate is achieved by changing the rate of a sample and hold, via the sah~ object in Max.
The bit depth degradation is achieved by quantizing the incoming amplitude values to larger and larger chunks.
Tanh~Distortion
This is a type of nonlinear waveshaping distortion that uses the hyperbolic tangent function (tanh) to process audio signals.
In this setup, the tanh~ object in Max is used to smoothly limit the amplitude of the incoming signal, preventing harsh digital clipping. The goal here is to create a more natural, warm, and subtle saturation.
This effect is combined with three filters in parallel, which can be automated to dynamically shape the distortion, allowing for evolving and expressive distorted sounds.
Wavetable Distortion
Wavetable distortion, sometimes called waveshaping, is a technique that reshapes an input signal by remapping its amplitude values to a predefined wavetable stored in a buffer~ (X axis). In Max, this is achieved with lookup~, which uses the amplitude of the input signal as an index to retrieve corresponding values from the buffer~, effectively transforming the signal’s waveform and altering its harmonic content.
A smooth wavetable shape produces gentle saturation while a more jagged or uneven shape will introduce harsher distortion, reminiscent of bit-crushing or clipping effects. This allows for a wide range of saturated rich timbral transformations.
There is also a reverb and a state variable filter, that you can mess around with. The MasterFilter is a convenient way to get more dramatic dynamic timbral shifts, and works better than the random button in my opinion.
You can draw your own wavetable, but in order to save it you must press Write, and save it as an audio file, and then add a message f.x. "read filename.aif" to recall it. At the moment it is not possible to save your wavetable as a preset, so you must select it in 'change wavetable' or 'read'.
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