Quote:
Originally Posted by chrisj  It's not directly harmonic content, it's just an effect of the transfer function. Like you can produce harmonics (when you input a sine wave) using Chebyshev functions... inverse saturation is just like taking a wave and saturating it, but backwards. The peaks remain hot but the quieter places on the transfer function become even quieter. The reason people don't do this is it sounds like crap, but it also causes the apparent sound source to appear farther away- has some uses as a building block. I'm going to revise Shelves and hopefully I can produce demos that will make this more apparent. I'm picturing doing a mid-suck effect using this- ought to do nice things. |
Reading this prompts me to say that such techniques are in use in the Inflator plug-in when the curve is et to -ve.
Also much of the basic sound of many class B tube designs can be attributed to this effect as well. One of the tricks in designing these amps was to get the bias value to produce this effect to exactly the best degree. It seems to increase the punch by actually expanding the dynamic range on an immediate (non time related) basis. But of course it produces distortion as well - over most of the signal range.
Anyway you can make a freq response version of this by using an EQ with the right bump response feeding the inflator then mixing it back with the original signal that has an EQ in exact symmetrical cut. You can make some very interesting and subtle sounds like this :-)