KVR Audio

The Chase · Post by **The Chase** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 12:29 am

I pretty much grabbed waveshaping by the balls today. I always kind of considered it to be a harsh/digital form of distortion but at school today I learned the mathematical significance of how it ticks and came home to the FL Studio fruity waveshaper to see how wicked it really is if you know what youre doing

I think everyone should give it a try. Basically any waveshaper with spline/curve control and upsampling can bare you sick results.

grymmjack · Post by **grymmjack** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 3:15 am

care to educate us ?

Churchy · Post by **Churchy** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 3:29 am

i use it occasionally, haphazardly!

am very interested to actually learn how it works!

PaulSC · Post by **PaulSC** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 3:43 am

I like it best when it's available in the signal path at the individual voice level. Once you start running a polyphonic signal, or multiple tracks, through a waveshaper, things can turn into undifferentiated noise pretty fast.

Virsyn TERA has the most powerful waveshaping resources of any synth in my arsenal. (I wish there were a software version of the Shaper and related modules from my old Kurzweil K2500, but that stuff is still unique.)

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:15 am

Yeah whats up teach, care to give a lecture or do I have to come Chase your toilet?

martian · Post by **martian** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:29 pm

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1374.html

shamann · Post by **shamann** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:52 pm

My favourite waveshaper:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=101340

JackDark · Post by **JackDark** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:53 pm

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:02 pm

Now this is serious fun.

http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=3

Entheogen · Post by **Entheogen** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:05 pm

<3 cyanide.

I love shaping waves.

Liquidclear · Post by **Liquidclear** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:11 pm

I've always been fond of the waveshaper in Vaz Modular...

Jack:

What's up with that ancient *mac* pic?

funkadil · Post by **funkadil** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:11 pm

My favorite was the sonicfoundry one from acid 4. Sadly I dont use warez anymore. But that 8 bit one looks awsome! I thought it was some kind of bitcrusher effect but it just works in that 8-bit range, hence the name, no sample-rate crap that I assumed! I like the cyanide 2 also, but not as much As I will like 8-bit!

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:19 pm

my favourites are Gclip, tapebus and elephant clip mode. camel crush/phat is a great one, too, although I wish it did oversampling as it's quite crucial on anything higher than 2rd order polynomials.

I have to say I'm somewhat past mere waveshaping thanks to that little tool of mine down at the sig.

JackDark · Post by **JackDark** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:26 pm

Liquidclear wrote:I've always been fond of the waveshaper in Vaz Modular...

Jack:

What's up with that ancient *mac* pic?

Whats up with not checking your email?

:p

The Chase · Post by **The Chase** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 2:26 am

camsr wrote:Yeah whats up teach, care to give a lecture or do I have to come Chase your toilet?

Well kind-of knowing it for 2 days doesnt really give me lecturing leverage [and plus I suck at words and explaining things] but here's my take on it. In waveshaping, X is the input and Y is the output - with the curve dictating the formula between the two. Y=X is obviously uneffecting the signal as Y=-X is the input signal inverted and Y=0.5X is the input signal at half the range and etcetera. Say that a signal ranges from -1 to 1 (as it's bound to here and in most cases):

(pic found on the net)

On both axis' you've got the range, -1 to 1. I imagine the input signal coming in through the left and coming out the top (given a bipolar waveshaper). With a sine wave going in:

see how the thresholds I created are analogous with the clipping on the waveform? They line up perfectly. With simple curves it's easy to visualize the output with a sine wave going in. Here are color-coded thresholds with their corresponding results, using a more complicated waveshaping curve:

See how the blue is left as a linear straight line, and therefore is literally linear as it does not effect the signal above its threshold. The Yellow, purple, green, and kind-of-sky-blue-ish-teal color are limited to one value, and therefore quantize the signal at those points. The red has a curvy...erm...curve, so the output signal corresponds accordingly.

So it's basically a rule of thumb that sharp angles on the waveshaper will give you harsher results. With a bunch of crazy sharp points it's easy to create white noise from all the harmonics added - especially with a more complicated input signal. See here the positive waveform values are curved and the negative values are more geometric:

To me this basically means curvy for thicker/fatter distortion and more geometric for chiptuney mangling - adding that waveshapers can give a lot of control for the chiptune quantization I want (like flexable, assymetrical bitcrushing)

If I said anyhting wrong here please correct me

Have some ReeCes with only waveshaping types of distortion used (32-bit waves so they might clip in media players)

Waveshaping Appreciation