Audacity includes a wide range of built-in effects, but surprisingly there is no distortion effect. Time to remedy that…
Here is a simple distortion effect with 10 types of distortion. Each preset modifies the shape of the waveform in its own particular way. There is also a slider control to set the amount, or “drive”. At the minimum setting the amount of distortion is the minimum for that preset. At the maximum (100%) maximum distortion is achieved.
The presets include:
- Smooth Drive,
- Bright Distortion,
- Soft Distortion,
- Peak Noise,
- Quantize Distortion,
- Cross-over Distortion,
- Hard Clip,
- Peak Invert,
- Rectifier,
- Crazy Distortion
The best way to discover what each type sounds like is to try them.
For coders out there, the core of the effect is the “SHAPE” function:
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Downlad Wave Shape Distortion (right click to “Save As”)
Hello.
I had to edit name of effect, because there is a conflict between Audacity distortion and Your distortion, so I have changed name to wave shaping distortion. This effect is interresting.
Haha, that was not a problem when I wrote this plug-in as Audacity didn’t have a distortion effect back in 2014. In fact, Audacity’s current “Distortion” effect is based on this plug-in.