distortion: help

[Lag]

can someone explain to me the exact way distortion changes sound? i know there are a lot of different distortions but i dont know how any of them function.
for example, in reason: whats the difference between overdrive, tube, tape or digital distortion?

[stjohn]

one goes 'wah wah' the other goes 'woo woo' third goes 'dubidy dubidy' and the last goes 'blip'

:cheese:

[rounser]

From what I gather:

Overdrive clips the waveform and you end up with squarewaves. Sometimes sounds good (lovely on acid IMO), but that could just be because you've increased the signal level so much by overdriving it, not sure how it differs from digital distortion.
Tape & valve distortion add harmonics, although they differ in which ones they add. I think valve adds even ones, tape odd, or something like that (where valve sounds better apparently). Tape saturation refers to how when you clip the signal on tape, it doesn't squarewave, but rather results in a warmer kind of distortion where the signal folds back in on itself (or something).
The most common type of digital distortion involves a signal hitting the roof, and because digital can't represent anything over 0 db, it goes "no signal" and flatlines the waveform at the top or bottom of the headroom until it jumps back into range. Results in pops, clicks, obviously damaged and very harsh sounds which are usually frowned upon, but occasionally sounds awesome, and you can often get away with it on drums without anyone noticing. There are other types of digital distortion than just clipping which usually result in hyperaggressive sounds (try Flexor if you have a creamware card).
Decimation/bitcrushing is another one to consider, where you reduce the bit rate or sample rate on your sound. Can make basses sound beautiful, can add crunch and hiss to drums, and can make synths sound like they're going through a vowel filter...but usually requires filtering to get the best out of it IMO.

[Lag]

wow
thanks a lot