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As you get really loud as you go through pieces of gear you're going to
find that gear will start causing distortion.
we can also call this the non-linear range of the piece of equipment.
But what actually happens when we hit that point of distortion, that
amplitude at which the device starts acting in a strange way?
We find that, as we start pushing more and more level into that
threshold of distortion, we start getting more and more high end.
In fact, we can consider it that volume variations turn in timbre
variations. Actually Distortion makes a signal brighter
and brighter. And we can here it for example when an electric
guitar player plugs into his amplifier and turn up the Drive.
So, that's a great musical usage of distortion
but There are many times, when you want to avoid distortion.
For example when you want a clean vocal.
When you're recording a vocalist, there are numerous places in your signal
flow that it can distort. The microphone, itself, can distort.
If you have the mic too close to the singer's mouth it can possibly
distort.
So, to avoid that, move the microphone further away, maybe use a pop filter, try
to avoid those kind of loud impulses of sounds.
As you get to the microphone preamp, you should be
very careful to avoid the red range.
One more term needs to be mentioned. Clipping.
clipping is a type of distortion. It's often referring to digital distortion
There is the clipping indicator in the DAW
These are kind of red lights that pop on, if you go above that kind of digital
maximum.
So, there are musical uses for distortion and there are times we want to avoid it.
We just want to be very aware of it. distortion is related to the signal
itself.