Distortion

Help, Support & Bugs
1

I’ve been experiencing a weird distortion problem with one of my songs.

I’ve narrowed down the problem to two instruments, playing next to eachother:
1 - A multisampled piano
2 - A VSTi (LinPlug Albino), generating a (low) pure sine

  • When I set the amplification of the sine to 0%, the piano sample is crystal clear.

  • But when I slowly rise the amplification of the Albino (from 60% and higher), the piano sample begint to distort.

  • When I mute the piano, the sine is also clear (without distortion).

But I need a higher volume for the sine, or else I can’ even hear it…

How come it distorts other channels/samples?
If this problem is no bug, how do I work around it?

2

i know it sounds dumb, but…
have you already tried lowering the master volume? :)

its just that you can get tricked, cause auto gain reduction wont work if declipper is turned on and then you can see no clipping, but you hear it…

3

Aha! Disabling that DeClipper (hidden in the Master Track Dsp Settings) did the trick!

But not the global volume drops down to 8.82%! :unsure:

And that’s softer than an average MP3… I guess I can boost that with a compressor here and there, right?

4

yes, the declipper can be sometimes evil. always normalize the song in the final mix by disabling the declipper and turning on the “autodecrease mastervolume” switch …

5

hmm, i dunno but you’d have to use the compressor on that pure sine, and that means that you can’t do much but directly shape the sine.
of course you can do that with a compressor using extreme low attack and/or release setting…

but… just out of a feeling, i would do it different…

maybe put a little bit distorsion on it so it gets some higher frequencies added. then it will be better hearable at lower volume.
compressor also adds overtones but maybe distorsion gives you a better sound here?

or use an eq on the other instruments and try to make some room in the spectrum for that sine.

or play it an octave higher?

or use an additional oscillator in albino with a triangle or maybe even square waveshape…

just my little thoughts… do i even know what i talk about? hmmm… :)

6

Thanx for the advice! :)

So when I put a little distortion on the sine wave, I need less VSTi amplification? That would be cool!

I’ll try that out as soon as my parents are awake! :P