Crowd Sourced Distortion Curves

[Liam]

I'm sure you know more about this than I do, but my understanding is that software distortion modules, at least the ones that emulate a real guitar amp or similar technology, usually use an impulse response file from the amp (just a sound recording of an impulse played through the amp), then do a convolution of the sound you want to distort with the impulse response, which maps the sound characteristics of the amp onto your sound. There are free-to-use IR files for all kinds of amps. Not sure if that's a way to accomplish this in OS though.

It also occurs to me that if OS can separate its sounds into frequency bands (which I assume it can, since EQ is possible) then if distortion can be applied selectively to only high frequencies, say, you could emulate an Exciter plugin, and that might also make a distortion effect more useful if you want to distort bass (since you often only want to distort the mid+higher frequencies of a bass sound to avoid sonic chaos).

I'll try to play around with some curves anyway if I can figure out how this stuff works.

We have convolution filters, but that's a separate thing. Right now I'm just trying to figure out the best way to use a wave shaper.

Applying the wave shaper selectively to different frequencies is a cool idea, but might be too complicated for OS. We're trying to strike a balance between power and simplicity, so I just want to put in a few presets.