Forums › Forums › Qu Forums › Qu feature suggestions › Additional FX: Distortion, Overdrive, bitCrusher etc…
Tagged: bitcrusher, distortion, FX, overdrive
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2020/07/24 at 4:12 pm #93631
Let’s compare comparable things guys, I am nowhere near asking for a neve replacement to my A&H desk, just adding an FX to the ones already listed as sends in the QU…
anyways…
What outboard do you currently use? And what kind of setup do you have the Qu in? (Studio/Live/Production)
I am using the QU24 in a production/home studio setup, with instruments like keyboards and drum machines connected to it as well as a computer for recording “live” sessions.
I sold most outboards (like multi-FX or compressors etc..) I previously had in order to reduce the studio footprint when I bought the QU 2/3 years back.I am getting most of what I need from the QU except from some sort of distortion/overdrive to add character so I thought I’d send the request over as I was passing by and saw all sort of other requests, never would I thought it get compared to having a GT500 instead of a fiesta… You guys really cracked me up on that one! LOL
2020/07/24 at 4:21 pm #93632I am curious.
Just why do you need distortion to add ‘character’?Color me very olde school but I always tried to get rid of distortion not add it.
2020/07/24 at 5:24 pm #93637The digital world is extremely clean…It’s very usual now days to add “controlled” harmonic distortion to a clean signal, be it drums or synths sound or even global mix to break this clean signal…
But this is nothing new as engineers used to apply this technics in the past in a creative manner to clean signals by boosting them in analog gear…2020/07/24 at 6:36 pm #93639But why?
The goal was always cleaner when I started out, and we are within epsilon of being there.
Why destroy a perfect signal? How is that at all creative?
Would using a magic marker on the mona lisa be creative?
Personally I prefer girl with the pearl ear ring. but still no magic marker ‘improvements’.What do you mean by boost? I can boost digital until your ears bleed.
You do not need distortion to do that.You said ‘to add character’. How does making the signal worse add character?
2020/07/24 at 11:39 pm #93643The Mona Lisa is a painting, it is not is not a photo taken with the best possible digital camera.
Using the appropriate tools, (not magic markers), I’d say da Vinci made something better than just capturing, and reproducing the original.
2020/07/25 at 12:56 am #93645totally agree with OP I’d like a distortion or overdrive effect added, great to blend in on a blues harp, also like pitch shift for vocal effect cant see either happening seems no updates for QU
2020/07/25 at 6:18 am #93652Goes with out saying, the electric guitar created an entire industry building products
to distort it and to a lesser degree the electric bass. A little crunch on a bass in the right song at the right place can work.2020/07/25 at 10:57 am #93658I love to add some Drive, as called by EBS, on upright bass or electric bass signals. That makes the tone a lot more creamy. But not only these instruments are candidates for a little bit of distortion. Saxes, Keys and so on and so forth. So, yes a little bit more distortion or similar kind of effects would be nice anyway.
2022/08/15 at 10:01 pm #108534At the risk of stirring up old wounds. I came across this as I am trying (maybe incorrectly) to add harmonics to a bass guitar so it can be better perceived by those listening to our service online via tablets, laptops, etc.
I can’t get the overdrive/harmonics out of the built in FX and there’s no clean way for an external insert in mixes.
Would be nice if there was a way to upload a custom FX library…
2022/08/16 at 6:50 pm #108552I am curious.
Just why do you need distortion to add ‘character’?Color me very olde school but I always tried to get rid of distortion not add it.
Harmonic distortion is different from the “crunchy” distortion that I think you have in your mind. We aren’t talking about the type of distortion that comes from a blown speaker for example. The “warmth” that analog gear is known for is really harmonic distortion that was inherent to the hardware being used. If you are “old school” enough to have grown up on analog gear, then you were using and benefiting from harmonic distortion without realizing it.
When things went to digital, the sound got very clean and lost all this harmonic distortion. It’s why people hated the original digital consoles – they sounded too clean and sterile. Ever since we have been trying to add back in that “warmth” that is lost in the digital realm. Some digital console manufactures (like Midas) add back in their own “coloring” (ir harmonic distortion) and other manufactures (Digico) purposely create the cleanest, most “transparent” signals. The more clean/transparent a signal is, the more you are going to find engineers using hardware or plugins to add harmonic distortion back into the system.
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