Hifi Amplifier Overload Simulation, Digital Clipping Simulation

[CableChannel]

Hi,

I am trying to simulate the distortion happening when you overdrive the input on hifi equipment or digital processors. I think both tends to be a bright "scratching" (I have no better english word for it) that just occurs on the actual peaks, and all plugins I have rather sound like a distortion guitar amp, much more smooth, but at the same time flattening the dynamics really strongly. How do you provoke bright and digital sounding scratches without touching the dynamics too much?

Thanks & Cheers!

[BertKoor]

It's not an often sought-after effect.
What might come close is a brick-wall limiter, that's clipping as well.

[CableChannel]

I tried it, but all brick wall limiters are so good these days, you don't hear distortion unless you really badly overload the input - but then the dynamics are completely squashed. I would like to have clipping artefacts at the peaks but dynamics intact.

[CHOOS]

Duplicate the tracks, add a transient shaper and remove the sustain as much as possible, then distort it.
Now blend the two tracks to taste

[mcbpete]

chowdsp's opamp ( https://github.com/jatinchowdhury18/Bad ... /Bin/OpAmp ) gets quite close to this sort of distortion. Put the cutoff to maximum and then play with the 'Age' setting (starts to break up around the 25 years mark)

[Ah_Dziz]

It would depend on the input and output circuitry of the equipment you're referring to. Most of it is just clipping at the end of the day but op amps clip differently than transformers which clip differently from BJTs which clip differently from FETs etc. And that's before you consider the actual design of the gain stages Class A Class AB. I'd just grab the free Melda MWaveshaper and try different transfer functions. If you have an oscilloscope you could run a low frequency sine wave into the aforementioned gear and get a decent idea of the way the wave is being distorted.

My best guess is that you are looking for hard op amp clipping which occurs when the amp trust to exceed it's supply voltage. This will he different among different op amps but the closest to it is simply hard clipping the signal with something like GClip. I'd work hard on how you want to gain stage that sort of thing so you only distort the peaks the way you want. Doing some pre and post filtering is generally a good idea when you're going for something specific like this.