Good distortion

An old studio manager we used to know was fond of saying "I think we all know what good sounds like" at his morning team meets. Good was happy paying clients leaving with low noise and low distortion master tapes. The only welcome distortion was that produced by guitar amps and the occasional special effect. We didn't regard tape saturation/distortion as desirable and longed for transparent mixing desks and mic pre-amps.

How times have changed! It seems when we couldn't have transparency we longed for it, and now we have it .. well .. it's just too clean isn't it!

For music fans growing up in the 1970s, distortion was a big feature of cheap record decks (expensive decks weren't much better) and poor quality AM radio. We hated it because it came between us and the music. Sound engineers and listeners waged a constant battle against unwanted distortion.

Today 24-bit digital audio and DAWs have marginalised distortion and given us tools to add it only where required.

It's worth remembering that audio distortion may be defined as any change to a signal caused by a device, so even the most welcome "warming" of a signal as it passes through a much loved pre-amp transformer is distortion too.

For the most part we choose to add distortion to a pristine audio for the same reason film makers colour grade film. We want to exaggerate reality to create maximum impact. Although the jury is out on how well plug-ins can achieve this, we are fortunate to live in a time when so many hardware manufacturers are producing superb pieces of outboard to colour our audio.

The API 500 lunchbox format is a great way to add such devices to you setup and this week we have been experimenting with three devices.

We mentioned the DIYRE Color Palette in our Christmas blog post and have since taken our own advice and built one together with 3 Color modules. With 3 flavours of saturation/distortion to play with we are deeply impressed with all Peterson Goodwyn and his team have achieved. Brilliant concept and execution.

We are also currently building a Sound Skulptor EQ573, a design celebrated for its non-linear musicality.

And finally, a Looptrotter Emperor 500 is on its way. This is a hybrid saturation/compression/distortion device that we can't wait to try.

We can now say with confidence that we know what good distortion sounds like. It's the distortion we choose.

Thanks for reading and watching

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