Is it just me, but do most "wow complex" distortions just sound garbage?

[soundmodel]

I've mostly used just Trash 2's presets, but today I shut down everything else and simply tried the Trash module.

I think all of the other settings there sounded pretty bad except for those that happened to have quite clean (e.g. a half-sine) transfer curve.

So to me all the other "wow what a complex curve" were just pointless.

Why bother then?

Could be an analog-digital thing too. The digital distortions just sound bad, when the equivalent thing as analog electronics would sound lively and smooth.

[vitocorleone123]

I always thought Trash was trash, but it's just a preference thing.

I think it depends on what you use and the content you use it on. I did end up buying 2 analog hardware things that can add saturation and distortion (Acidbox 3, Karacter Qube).

Software I'm using more regularly these days includes
* Destructor
* Saturn 2
* Silver bullet
* The Scream
* X-Saturator

[chk071]

I've mostly used just Trash 2's presets, but today I shut down everything else and simply tried the Trash module.

I think all of the other settings there sounded pretty bad except for those that happened to have quite clean (e.g. a half-sine) transfer curve.

So to me all the other "wow what a complex curve" were just pointless.

Why bother then?

Could be an analog-digital thing too. The digital distortions just sound bad, when the equivalent thing as analog electronics would sound lively and smooth.

TBH, I also find a lot of software distortions to be bland and lifeless sounding (including Trash).

What do you think about NI Dirt?

[imrae]

I think the problem is intermodulation distortion (if we generously assume that aliasing is suppressed succesfully.) With complex material, extreme waveshaping creates a very noisy spectrum that is not nicely related to the material.

By using complex distortion on a simple signal, or simple distortion on a complex signal, we get a more harmonic and intelligible result.

Things like raw oscillators, single guitar notes and electronic drums can work sensibly with waveshaping.

[bmanic]

I've mostly used just Trash 2's presets, but today I shut down everything else and simply tried the Trash module.

I think all of the other settings there sounded pretty bad except for those that happened to have quite clean (e.g. a half-sine) transfer curve.

So to me all the other "wow what a complex curve" were just pointless.

Why bother then?

Could be an analog-digital thing too. The digital distortions just sound bad, when the equivalent thing as analog electronics would sound lively and smooth.

In the analogue domain, when you push past the "good sound" you get into crazy weird and nasty spiky distortion just as you do in the digital domain. The only difference is that you won't have any aliasing which is a huge part of the difference in sound when you push things extremely hard.

Most pleasant subtle analogue "mojo" is a sort of tanh/sinusoid or some other kind of smooth and simple curve.. as far as I know (and I'm absolutely a layman when it comes to electronics or DSP so I may be completely wrong here). My point is: When you want pleasant sounding distortion, even when pushing quite far, keep the curve fairly symmetrical and simple. When you go nuts you get folding and all kinds of weirdness that can be very cool in some situations but on complex signals it just becomes noise.. usually nasty noise.

[ampetrosillo]

It doesn't have to be symmetrical, it can also be asymmetrical, this means you'll have less "headroom" and more even harmonics generated (which do not necessarily sound as nice as they say, in fact this is a bit of a meme).

[bmanic]

.. which is why I said "fairly symmetrical".

You don't have to go very far asymmetric to get into "buzzy" territory and get some issues with DC offset. So if you do want to go severely asymmetrical make sure you put a DC filter after it. Or I hope in the case of Thrash that there is a built in DC filter somewhere. Haven't tried the plugin so I don't know if that's the case.

[Uncle E]

The site below has a detailed analysis of how the Big Muff works. You can see that the distortion itself is slightly rounded off but is basically just a square wave, what really makes the distortion characteristic is the signal shaping before and after the clipping section:

https://www.electrosmash.com/big-muff-pi-analysis

A similar thing happens with guitar amps, the signal is being shaped before and after every single tube stage (plus the tubes themselves add capacitance). You can simulate this signal path by chaining multiple instances of Trash, making use of the filtering and convolutions in each of them.

[classic]

Arend´t distortions mend to sound garbage?

[legendCNCD]

The NeuralDSP amps do sound more lively than a lot of other distortions, I've noticed..

[zerocrossing]

One man’s trash is… and all.

It all depends on context. Sure, the mild analog style saturation is going to sound nice on a ballad vocal, but maybe not for an Industrial song.

I no longer think it’s useful to talk in terms of “analog vs. digital.” Just pick the right tool for your project. I’ve heard software that sounds every bit as good as analog hardware.

[mothra]

I don't know, I've got stuff like ColdFire, Rift, etc.. I still use something like Decapitator or just the input gains on the channels in UAD's API Vision strip 99.9% of the time. I stopped using all the 'complicated' distortions when it became extremely difficult just to get something simple and 'overdriven' out of them the way I wanted it. Great for completely destroying something, but it's TOO much most of the time. Was very glad when Minimal came out with the Hybrid Filter, because the morphing filter was all I really ended up using inside Rift anyways.

Totally get what @zerocrossing is saying, perfect for Industrial or stuff that is all smashed to hell and almost unlistenable, but not when you're just going for dirty stuff or an overdriven console kinda sound.

[soundmodel]

I think the problem is intermodulation distortion (if we generously assume that aliasing is suppressed succesfully.) With complex material, extreme waveshaping creates a very noisy spectrum that is not nicely related to the material.

By using complex distortion on a simple signal, or simple distortion on a complex signal, we get a more harmonic and intelligible result.

Things like raw oscillators, single guitar notes and electronic drums can work sensibly with waveshaping.

But e.g. MWaveFolder is quite smooth.

I wonder what the gold standards of digital distortions for any material are. For reference.

[soundmodel]

I always thought Trash was trash, but it's just a preference thing.

I think it depends on what you use and the content you use it on. I did end up buying 2 analog hardware things that can add saturation and distortion (Acidbox 3, Karacter Qube).

Software I'm using more regularly these days includes
* Destructor
* Saturn 2
* Silver bullet
* The Scream
* X-Saturator

The Saturn was not harsh but it was too white noise like, i.e. not much of character or weight. Maybe it is not in the "wow look, so complex curves" category. Might demo those other ones.

Imo Scream 4 is still good, sounds good about 80% of the time, but the distortions are kind of boring when for Trash I was looking for new types of distortions.

The Trash sounds would be okay if they didn't have the harsh parts.

[soundmodel]

Maybe the Trash module is just not very good for most of the time, dunno. I don't know where most of the functions there would sound good.