emusonacid!

do you guys ever use the distortion efx, or do you use the normalize feature to normalize your sample, boost to the first 6, then boost some more to clip? or do you use a software based plug in for your distortion?

just curious what is the best way to get distortion.

tell me what you guys use.

cheers

i really like the distotion +chorus effect,only use it mildly though but it can sound great.software wise i use logic overdrive, but this again i use sparingly as it gives crap results when usin some software filters.
would love a dedicated hardware machine such as a tube compressor to distort my sounds with but not yet,still enuff to learn without one.

I find gaining a sample to distortion is useful if you're going to use that distortion as part of the sound - i.e. give you something to filter on top of your bassline. I've never actually tried it on drums (slapping myself on the forehead), I'll have to do that!

I can't stand the Emu's distortion effect, it sound nothing like any kind of distortion I like. I want to like Logic's distortion and overdrive, but I find that it's an all or nothing proposition when using them - I can't seem to dial in an in-between amount of the effect, if you know what I mean.

So, for distortion on my drums, synths and the like, I use a Chandler Tube Driver rackmount in the send loop on my mixer. It'll brighten up your drums like there's no tomorrow, and add some serious presence and weight to any synth I run it on. It's just an overdrive, not a full on distortion unit, but I find it adds exactly what I need, pretty much every time. Incredibly cheap, too. Combined with the Z-plane filters and RNC, I can get some really sickening sounds :)

sherman tank

Don't underestimate the power of the gain function :script:

A little bit of gain (1-10dB over normalize) with drum sounds can really fatten those babies up. YUM!

---If you are gaining or applying much resonance with the filters then DON'T do this unless you want some ugly audibles - If you're just x-passing then DO it.---

plugin distortions are a permanent source of disapointment for me. warp vst is pretty good but i feel bad using it as it's a crack (pretty sure it's unistalled anyway). i tried my brothers distortion pedals for his guitar but found them unusable rough and when i toned them down they were pretty weedy. i eventualy tried a pod line 6 and was blown away!! i figured that maybe distortion pedals are designed to be used in conjunction with some sort of speaker modelling to round of rough edges so i now plug my synths/emu into the afformentioned distortion pedals and then into the pod

If you are looking for warm natural analog distortion, check out the Sans Amp PSA-1. It's a rack mount guitar preamp with MIDI and preset memory. I spent 4 months looking for the best solution for dirtying up the synths in my rig (after using digital overdrive in my DP-4) and this thing is by far the best bet. Just my two cents....

i put a Marshall 9001 tube preamp in the rack



...and sometimes resample into an ensoniq mirage



:crunch: