free distortion plugins for EDM vs. Ohmicide

[TIMT]

Even though most of this stuff and dance music in general of that period was more than likely recorded to DAT, there was probably the odd group or tune that used portastudios and cassette decks. R2R was probably fizzling out at this period, but of course there are exceptions to the rule

Anyways, give this a try https://fuseaudiolabs.com/#/pages/product?id=300811205
And ChowTape. Some of the better models of tape cassette saturation, artefacts etc(would of provided a link, but the ChowDSP release site isn't loading for me)

[bszp]

TAL bitcrusher.
PhreePhuzz
ChowCentaur
HY-MBDrive

[GaryG]

For free, I'd definitely say have a look at Mars Distortion from Robot Planet, I think it has twelve different algorithms so fun to flip through, seeing what fits etc.

https://www.robotplanet.dk/audio_plugin ... istortion/

[dionenoid]

Back in the days we used to simply clip the mixer, and it sounds to me that the sound examples given by the OP used that same trick.
And to get close to that sound you could use any clipper, there are lots of free ones. But i'd recommend SIR Standardclip or Venn Audio V-Clip, both are cheap and have a wide range of sounds.

As for distortion : The main plug-ins used by guys in that genre were Trash, Camelphat or the free Camelcrusher, and Tone2 Filterbank. Ohmicide has always been buggy and unuseable for many, so i cannot imagine it being used much.

[heavymetalmixer]

For extreme stuff there's also Tritik Krush: https://www.tritik.com/product/krush/

[Eauson]

No, i wouldn't call any of that EDM

This would be more pertinent to your requirements given these examples https://www.airwindows.com/mackity/

^ this
Or the new
https://www.airwindows.com/mackeq/

[juno987654321]

So much to be explored now!
I think it'll take me weeks again!

But that's OK. I'm here to learn!
Thanks especially much for the information about how I might be able to crack the sounds I'm currently trying to get. Yes, those were some more problematic sounds I got stuck with and those led me to post this thing here. I knew there's some special kinds of distortions in them, but what exactly? - it was a mystery to me. Then I read that there was this Ohmicide, heavily advertised everywhere, that could do everything but it wouldn't really have helped me if I had just bought it. I knew it would be cleverer to ask the more experienced guys here how to do this properly and so again it turned out that it's better to ask before you do things...
Now I have more tools that might work with and they may be exactly the tools I was looking for. Can't build a house without the proper tools. And music, especially if made on a computer, is just another form of craft.

[TIMT]

Back in the days we used to simply clip the mixer, and it sounds to me that the sound examples given by the OP used that same trick.
And to get close to that sound you could use any clipper, there are lots of free ones. But i'd recommend SIR Standardclip or Venn Audio V-Clip, both are cheap and have a wide range of sounds.

As for distortion : The main plug-ins used by guys in that genre were Trash, Camelphat or the free Camelcrusher, and Tone2 Filterbank. Ohmicide has always been buggy and unuseable for many, so i cannot imagine it being used much.

Did you listen to his examples???most of that stuff predates VST's, let alone any of the VST's you listed

[Ah_Dziz]

Trance and techno from the 90ies like in these songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9346vKpsh1E
Kleine Maus at 31 sec.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX1akxy51P8
Love sees no color at 2:20 min. e. g.

or some special saw sounds with vocal qualities etc. as in here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGUsqIPurNQ

Herz an Herz, at different passages


I don't know if you would call this EDM but to me it's nice music to dance to and it's electronically made so I call it EDM.

"EDM" has become a catch all phrase for contemporary popular club music (Dubstep, Trap, Bass, Drill, etc.). Once these styles became a big pop phenomenon it all got lumped under "EDM". What you're going for (while being electronic dance music in the strictest sense) could be better described as "trance and techno from the 90s". If you had asked that question I would have said. "No you don't need it as it didn't exist then or anything let me it and those artists did fine."

I do think it's a worthwhile effect to have. Just the preset morphing can make some sounds that go far beyond just distortion.

[juno987654321]

Back in the days we used to simply clip the mixer, and it sounds to me that the sound examples given by the OP used that same trick.
And to get close to that sound you could use any clipper, there are lots of free ones. But i'd recommend SIR Standardclip or Venn Audio V-Clip, both are cheap and have a wide range of sounds.

As for distortion : The main plug-ins used by guys in that genre were Trash, Camelphat or the free Camelcrusher, and Tone2 Filterbank. Ohmicide has always been buggy and unuseable for many, so i cannot imagine it being used much.

Did you listen to his examples???most of that stuff predates VST's, let alone any of the VST's you listed

But maybe "Camelcrusher" and the other plugins that this guy recommended could also help with it now that we use VSTs and effect plugins instead, so I wouldn't have to get all that hardware stuff that they used back then and decorate my room with that. (I think my room would also be too small for more and I don't like to remove dust from hardware stuff so much.)

I don't think I will need Ohmicide (for a start). Maybe some other day...

[Unaspected]

Audiority have some great free plugins for distortion.

https://www.audiority.com/

I never did seek to replace Ohmicide when I went 64 bit and discovered that Ohmforce wanted additional payment for the privilege. Though I recall Maul by FXpansion interested me at the time. Trash is an obvious one and very popular. It might be that your DAW has a capable waveshaper, like that found in FL Studio. It'll be difficult to find something with the features that Ohmicide offers, as others have suggested. There might be something in the Reaktor library.

Not that I had to stop using Ohmicide, of course - but I chose to phase out its use. I did like to employ it more as a subtle colouring tool - rather than destroying signals. Though the feedback was very useful for industrial sounds.

Anything that uses a hyperbolic tangent function or tanh() is going to give you some very familiar sounding distortion if you're into industrial genres like Crossbreed, EBM, Techno, Terrorcore, Frenchcore, etc.

[TIMT]

Back in the days we used to simply clip the mixer, and it sounds to me that the sound examples given by the OP used that same trick.
And to get close to that sound you could use any clipper, there are lots of free ones. But i'd recommend SIR Standardclip or Venn Audio V-Clip, both are cheap and have a wide range of sounds.

As for distortion : The main plug-ins used by guys in that genre were Trash, Camelphat or the free Camelcrusher, and Tone2 Filterbank. Ohmicide has always been buggy and unuseable for many, so i cannot imagine it being used much.

Did you listen to his examples???most of that stuff predates VST's, let alone any of the VST's you listed

But maybe "Camelcrusher" and the other plugins that this guy recommended could also help with it now that we use VSTs and effect plugins instead, so I wouldn't have to get all that hardware stuff that they used back then and decorate my room with that. (I think my room would also be too small for more and I don't like to remove dust from hardware stuff so much.)

I don't think I will need Ohmicide (for a start). Maybe some other day...

I see your point, but there is a lot more to that older desk type of distortion than just some generic waveshaping functions e.g tahn or whatever. If you was after a more recent and contemporary "EDM"sound then some of those suggestions would make sense as there's often nothing particularly sophisticated about the distortion used in those timbres. Desk distortion wasn't sophisticated either in terms of its application, but the underlining complexity of the circuitry did a bunch of heavy lifting that the artist never need consider(part of the beauty of outboard)

Between that Mackity, MackEQ, and some kind of cassette emulation, you should be sorted though for what you are after. I think relying on stuff like Ohmicide or some oversampled clipper is just going to add far too many extra steps to get the results you wanna get. The path is not as straight forward as sticking with straight emulations if you go that route.

[dionenoid]

Did you listen to his examples???most of that stuff predates VST's, let alone any of the VST's you listed

Did you read my post ? I said that back in the days we used to clip the mixer.

But anyway, that kind of music is still made, up to today. I should have written "the main plug-ins that they used later".

Again, use a clipper plug-in. As that will sound closest to clipping the mixer and thus closest to the sound examples that were posted.

[Jakob / Cableguys]

You can give our DriveShaper a try. Right now it's free with any purchase at PluginBoutique. And just got a 10/10 rating in MusicTech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS4bufon5Xk

[dumle23]

SKnote makes good distortion stuff also in pedal stomp format..