Distortion

Distortion is an audio effect that alters a signal’s waveform, compressing its dynamics and adding harmonics. It ranges from subtle saturation to sharply clipped sound.

Clipping: Clipping occurs when a signal exceeds a system’s amplitude limit, flattening waveform peaks. It is a direct way distortion creates added harmonics by flattening signal peaks.
Audio signal: An audio signal is an electrical or digital representation of sound that varies over time. Distortion modifies this time-varying representation before it reaches a speaker or recording.
Overdrive: Overdrive is a guitar effect that imitates or induces the gradual saturation of an amplifier. It usually produces softer clipping and less aggressive saturation than distortion.
Electric guitar: An electric guitar converts vibrating strings into an electrical signal using magnetic or other pickups. Distortion became a defining tone-shaping effect in electric-guitar music.
Waveshaping: Waveshaping maps each input sample through a nonlinear function to create a new waveform. Its nonlinear transfer curves model many digital distortion effects.
Nonlinear system: A nonlinear system has outputs that are not directly proportional to its inputs. Nonlinearity is what lets distortion generate frequencies absent from the input.
Fuzz (guitar effect): Fuzz is a guitar effect that heavily clips and reshapes a signal into a rough, buzzy tone. Its extreme waveform flattening makes it a more radical relative of distortion.
Heavy metal music: Heavy metal is a rock music genre marked by amplified volume, forceful rhythms, and prominent distorted guitar. Sustained high-gain distortion is central to many metal guitar sounds.
Harmonic distortion: Harmonic distortion adds frequency components at integer multiples of a signal’s original frequencies. These added overtones give distorted tones their characteristic richness.
Guitar amplifier: A guitar amplifier raises an instrument’s signal level and drives a loudspeaker or recording output. Amplifier stages can be pushed into distortion, either deliberately or unintentionally.

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