How do you say that you applied enough distortion/compression on an instrument if your goal is maximum phatness?
I am well aware that it's kinda of a fallacy, as soon you hear a sample louder/compressed your first thought is its "better".
That can be the case, but doesn't have to be.
Whenever I have a chain of effects, including eg. eq,comp,dist etc. on a Snare, after I resampled it and put the new sample in the sampler and apply new effects, it always appears it can take even more distortion.
Then afterwards, I do it again, but now this time only the heights....feels like I could play that game forever.
A help can be plugins that always keep your output at the same level i guess, cause you don't immediately think it sounds better just cause it's louder.
Is there any analytical way to say this signal is already heavily distorted/compressed beside a spectrum/waveform analyzer?

 

When you end up with a square wave.

 

I would say your best bet is what you have already mentioned,: spectrum analyser and waveform view. Also, of course, your ears. If you are paying attention to those I believe you'll know when it's time to stop, whether a shitty sound, or a square wave/a literal brick or a too-full spectrum (to the point where it's more noise than anything), all these means will give you clues whether you distorted your sound too much or not.

 

Distort it until people ask if you're Carnage.

 

I think when it's proper combination between distorted and non-distorted elements of the mix.

 

When its enough I guess

 

I did a distortion unit plugin that compensates the output to the amount of distortion applied (moveable threshold), the result was stupid because what I was looking for for the unit was to make it louder on distortion and at the end I had to set the threshold manually, so same amount of movements as with any plugin, so I discarted it.

AAAAAnyway, depends on the type of distortion, you could use one of those console emulation with "analog saturation" (look at waves's ones) and overdrive it, most of them let you reverse-link the input gain to the output of the plugin

edit: or you could do this

 

when you have highend hardware output

 

you're talking about psycho-acoustics. Personally I'd go easy on blatant distortion and generally opt for some subtle Tube distortion for fatness without obvious nasty dirt, and maybe even a tape emulator.

I would also firmly recommend clever use of sidechain compression, whether you're making dance, rock or anything where power and energy It's desired. Using different sidechains groups for bass (quick release), other instruments and sometimes vocals, all triggered by the kik and snare. Or sometimes making the bass the sidechain trigger for other sounds to fool the ear that the bass is really loud.

good luck

 

also, like others say, you have to use your ears and sometimes go away and come back later, plus compare with similar tracks from other artists. It's so easy to lose perspective after working on the same track a few hours...

 

Something like this can analyze a full chain of plugins, loaded in a plugin chainer.
But it will not tell how YOUR signal will distort ;)
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/vst-plugin-analyser-by-christian-budde

 

How can you even ask that question?! There's never enough distortion!!
For maximum effect put 3 distortions in series. All three to the max!

p.s. That way when you fart in the mic it sounds the same as Stratocaster.

 

distort until your delusions become reality, or the other way around

 

only your ear's and the sound(s) you're processing in context with the rest of what is making up your mix can give you a meaningful answer.
Too much and it will get easily buried due to destroying the transient information and dynamic range.
As has been pointed out where something has been over done it just looks and for all intents and purposes might as well be a square wave.

 

?

 

when you start to smell the burning your getting enough. about the only thing I'm picky on is distortion, got to have my tubes, diodes are ok but don't seem to punch as much. Don't mind a bit of digital drive but I just can't get used to anything more extreme and need to waste time eq-ing out frequency's that really annoy my delicate little headache inducing ears.

 

I did that once and trump got elected president.

I use less distortion now.

 

When it sounds good.

I use multiband distortions, bitcrusher (i.e., samplerate-crushers), waveshapers, overdrive, saturation, etc. It's all subjective and contextual. At some point you go "Oh, that sounds about right! Yeah, it sounds good!". That's when you stop and move on.

You usually hear if something is compressed and/or distorted (dynamically and harmonically).

 

Last edited: Apr 2, 2017

Use gain plugin pre and post distortion. I strongly recommend blue cat's gain for this task, which has a feature to interconnect with each other in a plugin chain so that if you increase pre distortion gain by x db, it will automatically decrease the post distortion gain by x db.

There is no right or wrong on how much.