Sidechain distortion/ clipper?

[studiowaveform]

I'm trying to recreate the sound that a kick drum makes to other sounds when ran through something hot.

But do it without the kick drum being present in output the signal.

Anyone know a tool which does this nicely? I was thinking maybe there's a superfast comp or EQ that has a sidechain that I could use for this but really I just want a straight-up nice sounding saturator

[kritikon]

Sounds like an odd thing to do, but something like Spectralayers might be the thing. I have it, but don't use it as part of Cubase so I'm only going on hearsay, but it sounds like it's that kind of transformative thingumajig? Or convolution, but I guess you'd have to make your own impulse of a distorted kick, or find one somewhere...there's a sticky convolution impulse thread here on the effects section - might be worth checking out for the many and varied links for impulse files...

[imrae]

I made a Eurorack module for this! https://phaseboundary.com/2022/05/01/eu ... ope-thing/

The trick is to mix an envelope signal with the audio and send it into a DC-coupled distortion effect. So the envelope acts as "bias" to create a lot of asymmetric distortion.

In software one could do something similar by routing a (sidechain) envelope follower to bias/asymmetry parameter of a distortion plugin.

[zerocrossing]

I'm trying to recreate the sound that a kick drum makes to other sounds when ran through something hot.

But do it without the kick drum being present in output the signal.

Anyone know a tool which does this nicely? I was thinking maybe there's a superfast comp or EQ that has a sidechain that I could use for this but really I just want a straight-up nice sounding saturator

What DAW are you using? I know that Bitwig lets you use audio from any track to modulate any exposed parameter of any plugin.

[Calagan]

Ableton Live can do this, if you use Envelope Follower : place it on the kick track, and then map the output to the saturation unit you want to control.
In the plugin land, Saturn is also able to do this : use the kick track as side-chain input, then assign inside Saturn the sidechain to an envelope follower, and the output of this envelope follower to the dry/wet or the drive button of Saturn.

[studiowaveform]

I'm worried that modulation rate might not be audio rate, and give a different sound than running audio together in a plugin.. maybe it won't matter if it's just a kick I'm wanting to use, sub 100hz

Unless anyone knows if any of the env followers run at high rates. (Using Ableton, thinking about moving to bitwig)

I'll have to experiment (currently on holiday)

[imrae]

For envelope approach I would look at DriveShaper or Saturn. If you're worried about missing initial transient it might be worth using some time-adjustment plugin in sidechain to create lookahead.

If you really want an audio-rate effect then it is going to sound more like the kick is present, whatever you do. Still, it could be fun to try mixing with a phase-inverted kick so that the dry kick signal cancels and only the distorted portions are heard. This will work better with relatively hard clipping but it could be fun to play with the clipping knee size.

[studiowaveform]

Thanks, I'll look into Saturn and driveshaper

[audiorea]

Still looking? I was searching for something like this too. and I found something interesting plugin.

It starts at 9:47.
I’ve been using Khs Ring Mod until now, but I’m thinking about buying FLVTTER.
If you sidechain a kick or bass into Khs Ring Mod and set the modulator to input, you can get some really cool sounds too.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Anyone know a tool which does this nicely? I was thinking maybe there's a superfast comp or EQ that has a sidechain that I could use for this but really I just want a straight-up nice sounding saturator

Our Destructor distortion plug-in has a side chain input to trigger its dynamic distortion section to let you exactly do that.

There is actually a tutorial showing this type of side chaining with a kick and a very basic distortion here. You can definitely apply a more realistic distortion curve if you wish and still get it triggered by the side chain.

I would be fun to hear your experiments!