Distortion

[Nomak]

When people are talking about distortion applied to kick drums and bass etc via a mixing desk do you mean distortion from an effects unit or making the channel distort by lowering the fader and turning up the gain?

[djdonovan]

I think it could be either. Both are essentially the same thing i.e. the same process is happening which creates the distortion. The bandwidth for which the voltage (signal) is fluctuating is being narrowed and the voltages that are above that narrow bandwidth are cutoff which creates a clipped wave, and of coruse whenever you get clipped waves or sharp edges you get sharp sounds. Unless you are going for a specifc distorted effect, I think poeple will opt to drive the gain higher. I personally like to mix things together i.e. outboard disortion mixed with the driven channel into a compressor. You can esentially eq the sound based on the mixing of those two components. Same way engineers eq mics without touching the eq section when you have more then one, each mic and placement will have a different characteristic to it.

Donovan's 2¢