Distorted Realities
Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Peter Wetherbee
Not just for heavy guitar, distortion flows everywhere through the world of music; learn to use it like a warm breeze or an icy storm
STIFLING LIMITATIONS
Most of us who record, mix and master music witnessed the “limiting wars” of the last decade, in which engineers would limit and compress a final mix to extreme levels, attempting to fit the most perceived loudness into the 16 bits of a commercial CD release and sound as loud as possible over the radio. The downside, of course, is that making everything as loud as possible sacrifices dynamic range, and everything ends up sounding pretty cruddy and — ironically — smaller.
You can achieve superior results by using a plug-in such as McDSP Analog Channel on the master bus. It emulates the subtle and refined distortion characteristics of a high-end mixing console — typically featuring intrinsic soft-clipping and compression elements — and the advantage is that there are musical components to the process far more pleasing to the ear than simply crushing the dynamics of a mix. Much has been made of the difference between “mixing in the box” (bouncing a mix within a DAW down to a stereo master) and summing computer tracks out through a high-end mixing console. By putting Analog Channel or another such plug-in on your DAW's master bus, you can gain some of the subtle but important harmonic saturation of analog summing without the expensive hardware. (See audio examples 26 through 27.)
WARM IT UP, TAPE
Recording to analog tape introduces pleasing, controllable distortion in the form of compression and nonlinear EQ response. Many engineers prefer recording drums, bass and other rhythm instruments to tape precisely for that reason; unfortunately, tape machines, tape and other necessary related tools come at a much higher price than recording the same session digitally, so digital recording often prevails.
I recently dumped the stereo mixes of a rock record that had been recorded and mixed digitally in Pro Tools to analog ½-inch tape as the first step in mastering, to achieve some smoothing and gelling of the mixes. This process imparted some of the very subtle and musical characteristics of recording to analog tape, which include a slight compression and harmonic engagement with the tape itself. Although this subtle use of distortion was never noticeable as such, the result was a richer-sounding mix, smoother on the top and fatter in the low end. McDSP Analog Channel can also achieve similar results with its series of tape-machine emulations. (See audio examples 28 through 29.)
The potential enemy here, when adding varying degrees of harmonic saturation to individual instruments or even an entire mix, is mud. Too much of a good thing can fill up too much space, and excessive layers of rich textures can simply make murky soup. The trick is to use your sonic enhancements tastefully and sparingly, to bring richness to key elements and let them stand out instead of having everything saturated.
I hope this discussion of distortion in its many manifestations will inspire further exploration and fearless experimentation in the wild world of overdrive and harmonic saturation. Keep your heads up for next month's similar venture into delay, reverb and other spatial effects.
Listen to all the related audio examples at remixmag.com.
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