Beginner's Guide to Distortion

Dan Worrall explains the basic concepts of distortion, harmonics and intermodulation using both test tones and real-life examples.

[SsgtHolland]

These tutorials by FabFilter and Dan Worrall are so far above the standard of Youtube or any other source. These are THE most valuable, enjoyable and informative guides on audio. Bar none.

[GrischaEkart]

For a non-guitarist, the pre / post distortion EQ comparison is just amazing. thx!

[nsjx]

insightful. To be honest, it’s the first time I’ve heard someone talk about the intermodulation between certain harmonics that occurs during complex signal clipping. Thanks for laying this out Dan!

[KaitavSapreMusic]

Just brilliant! No surprise when it is FabFilter and Dan Worrall.

[controlfreak]

Really wish Dan Worrall would upload videos on his channel more often

[sean_wave]

Everyone's a beginner if compared to Mr. Worrall

[SuperRedstoneman]

As a hardcore addict I love how distortion easily enables something simple to span half the spectrum and interact with filters and added signals to make something completely insane that no physical object could ever make. What this video really lacked imo is a showcase of the raw signals in an oscilloscope plugin as well as showing a waveshaper. You can easily see then how multiple bands of frequencies interact together and how a sub takes over when played over other instruments even when they're at similar volume. I also saw some tutorials that explained how an asymmetric distortion shape that reacts differently to the positive and negative parts of the signal adds even harmonics and might be better if you don't want it to sound like a square wave every time you turn it way up.

[MartinvonBargen]

Dan is the Mr Kipling of the audio world. He makes exceedingly good tutorials

[ster]

Those videos from fabfilter are so valuable. Everything is explained so well to a deeper level too, it's just awesome and super helpful.

[isaach]

Fabfilter videos rock! some of the best plugin tutorials out there and some of the best plugins out there too.

[popupproducer]

Thank you so much for this. Use Saturn all the time and this really helped me understand why I was getting certain results.

[davidhine]

thanks so much dan, i wish 20years ago me got to watch all this stuff! these vids are so good.

[jonytube]

Wow, I’ve seriously overlooked Saturn. Now I’ve got GAS again :(
Excellent video as always, Dan. Cheers mate.

[dantei.]

Hey! Is that track used in tutorial released somewhere? I'd love to listen to it!

[thorwaldjohanson]

Another amazingly interesting video. Coming more from a visual background and looking at the issue of aliasing, especially viewing the spectrogram display, I have a question. It seems to me that instead of calculating frequencies, certain effects might be calculated with visual methods, such as vector calculations, voxels etc. Many years ago I wondered the same when removing electronic hum from a recording. I didn't have a silent section to use as a noise-stamp and all automated methods I tried failed. I ended up using a spectrogram view, where the hum was a nice straight line. I just selected it with a long tight box, and turned the level way down. Rest of the audio was unaffected and the hum gone. Can you tell me as a sound engineer, whether graphical methods are used in Audio, if yes, where? I would find that most interesting. Sincerely, a new fan :)

[MY_]

You have the best explanation videos. Thank you so much!

[theovergoat]

Just one question...where can I listen to the music in the video though??

[davidhine]

...even the comments on dan's vids are better than nearly everything else on youtube.

[CharlesFerraro]

Looking forward to the next in this distortion series. How distortion effects dynamics is something I've only understood in the last couple of years. Hope you talk about bias (a lack of symmetry in the shaping function graph) and how that effects whether the distortion produces odd vs odd/even harmonics. A bias control that introduces even order harmonics (with the odd ofc) will actually diminish the amount of sustain in the distorted signal. Not good if you're trying to use soft clipping to maximize the volume of your mix. I've never talked to anyone who understood that.

I talk about that phenomenon in one of my vids if you want me to dig up a link. Thanks for the vid, Dan :)

[nichttuntun]

Very helpful. It's always great to repeat the basics to get a stronger foundation. Thank you. Great lesson. Fantastic plugin. Cheers