Distortion/Ring Modulation - Akai S3000XL User Manual

EFFECTS EDIT

DISTORTION/RING MODULATION

The first page you encounter is the DIST(ortion) page
Here, you can add ring modulation and distortion to a sound.
A ring modulator is a device with two inputs and one output. One input carries the audio
source and the other a sine wave signal of variable frequency. The two signals are
modulated to produce a variety of different effects. If the modulating oscillator's frequency
is low, the effect will be a tremolo effect. At frequencies of 100Hz or so, you can produce
the famous 'dalek' voices and other robotic, metallic effects on speech. At high
frequencies, the results are rather unpredictable and largely depend on the audio input
signal but, basically, they can best be described as discordant and clangourous.
The parameters on this page are FREQ(uency) and DEPTH. The FREQ parameter sets
the frequency of the sine wave oscillator and the DEPTH parameter sets the amount of
ring modulation.
Distortion is primarily useful for emulating electric guitars but you may also find it useful on
electric piano sounds and organ sounds to emulate the sound of these instruments
slightly overloading an amplifier. Of course, you can use it on any sound and you could
add a bit of 'dirt' to a drums program by adding a small amount of distortion.
The parameters for distortion are DEPTH and OUTPUT. DEPTH sets the amount of
distortion and OUTPUT sets the output level of the distortion device. You will find that
higher DEPTH settings will require you to turn down the OUTPUT parameter as increasing
DEPTH increases the signal gain quite considerably. High DEPTH settings produce
extreme distortion effects (i.e. heavy metal overkill) whilst lower DEPTH settings produce
milder 'clipping' effects.
The
effects. This is useful when you want to switch this section of the effects out but don't
want to upset the control settings.
Page 174
field allows you to switch out the distortion/ring mod section from the chain of
S3000XL Operator's Manual