Hey,

Can anyone point me to a good source for learning how to use distortion. Every time I use distortion it just ends up sounding washed out and like inside a box. I can't seem to get a good distorted guitar that's teallr punchy, hard, distorted, present and up close.

Whenever I look online about distortion I either find someone talking about guitar pedals or some theoretical stuff. I'm working in a daw and I already know how distortion works in theory. I just can't seem to wrap my head around it.

Anyone here know what I mean?

Cheers,
aCouch

 

It would help to know what the actual signal source is. Are these guitars actual DI (direct in) recordings of a guitar, or are they output from a guitar emulator that takes keyboard (MIDI) input?

For virtual guitars, (in the box, not actually micing up an amp) you need something which emulates the amp, and speaker. Some packages have distortion pedals in them as well. I'd suggest starting with something like Amplitube, Guitar Rig, or some such package. However the most fun is mixing the amps with different speaker emulators and using IR's (impulse responses) or Nebula Cabinet emulation presets such as Ownhammer.

I've tested many combinations, and so far my best results have always been micing up that amp. It's just more forward, and sits better in a mix than any emulation method I've found.

It's a deep rabbit hole!

 

The source signal could be anything. Including guitars, synths, Brass, violin etc. I just don't really understand how to work with it really. I have guitar rig. It has some nice presets, but again I'm completely clueless of what the things are doing separately, and for example, if I like a preset, but feel like it needs something "x", then I don't know how to work with all those smps and cabinets and whatnot. Here's a question, why do "cabinets" always make the sound like it's in a small box. Why would anyone want that...

Anyway, sorry for Uber noob rant and questions

 

In absolute and technically distortion is distortion , but from what you write I'm guessing you should go for soft like fab filter saturn, fxpansion Maul, Izotope Trash or Blue Cat Audio Destructor (top of my head, many others in this sort of soft), rather than guitar rig or amplitude which are very good when you want to emulate distortion for a guitar you've recorded, modeled guitars and basses or some guitar samples you have in a beat, but not ideal for other materials or/and genres other than rock, specially if you don't know what you're doing much (like the use of a cabinet emulation if you do edm, or rap is rather marginal, it's supposed to sound like it does, it's what cabinet do, but it's not a type of fx, sound you find in all genres). You'll probably also more use saturation shapes in the few soft I've proposed (tape, tube, etc) rather than "hard" distortion. That's how you manage to both dirty up your sound, while still managing to keep something not too destroyed.
Note that cabinet emulation can also be used creatively (trash by izotope is very cool for that, you have IR of fish bol or phone booth or many fun stuff, in the cabinet emulator included), and not just to make a sampled guitar sound more realistic...
Ultimately grab a few distortion saturation units, test the different shapes (that's what distortion and saturation comes down to, on paper) on different materials (they don't effect bass, guitar or drums the same way) and you'll find the balance you're looking for after a few tries. Saturation and distortion also often go hand in hand with bitcrushing, when you use them creatively, so you might wanna explore those bit and resolution crushers tools too.

 

Maybe you are just using too much distortion. It's usually the case when starting with distortion effects.

There is saturation, overdrive, distortion, fuzz, waveshaper, bitcrush (i.e., sample-rate crush), etc. All have different "color" and they all can be applied differently and various degree.
Start with saturation and work your way through the different effects. Look at how they add harmonics.

Play a single sine wave, add any type of dist/saturation/waveshaper and analyze the sound with your ears and with a a spectum analyzer (with Voxengo SPAN for example).

 

Last edited: Aug 24, 2018

Ahhhh, ok. I think I kind of get what you're asking now.

Regarding distortion solely as an effect, distortion pushes the waveform's amplitude until it (the distortion device or vst) clips which is when you hear the washed out in a box sound begin.
It's a different matter with guitars though, as that washed out sound is usually what you're after. As for cabinet emulation, it should affect the full range sound somewhat so that the emulated sound becomes more like one would expect when recording an actual rig.
The best suggestion I could offer you for Guitar Rig is that if you have any close friends that play guitar, perhaps ask one of them to go through Guitar Rig with you and maybe they would be able to intuitively explain some of the things you see in there as well as where and when to use them. Also, there should be many youtube examples and walkthroughs for it that my help you demystify some of it.
I'm initially a guitar player so the concepts of amp simulation made sense to me as well as stomp boxes and effects and finally cab simulation. If that's not your background, that's why I suggest getting a friend to go through it with you.
And no need to apologize for being a Noob. I was too.
I'll also admit as far as using distortion with keyboard type parts goes, there's probably some here much more experienced with that than myself who could outline best use of distortion for those parts. And I see several have chimed in already.

 

sit better in mix- here some infos to help maybe
https://guitargearfinder.com/guides/tips-for-a-great-guitar-amp-tone/
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/19959-tone-tips-getting-heard-not-buried

 

Thank you for all the detailed answers. I have a lot to go off on from here now.

Cheers!

 

I read that article yesterday evening,it is interesting about learning different kinds of distortion/saturation/overdrive:
https://www.waves.com/add-harmonic-...campaign=weekend-content-analog-models-aug-24