Distortion

A one-control symmetric soft clipper with direct and antiderivative-antialiased processing modes.

What it does #

Distortion multiplies the input by Amount and bends it progressively toward a bounded output instead of cutting it off abruptly. Low levels remain close to linear; higher levels compress and generate mostly odd harmonics for a centered symmetric waveform.

Controls and ports #

Control	Label	Official description
amount	Amount	Amount of gain applied

Practical uses #

• Add moderate Amount to thicken basses, drums, and oscillators without a hard edge.
• Level-match after the module to separate harmonic change from simple loudness.
• Enable anti-aliasing for exposed high-frequency material; compare it off when lower CPU or a rougher sound is preferable.

Things to know #

• Amount is pre-shaper gain, so it changes how much of the nonlinear curve is visited.
• The direct path uses a fast tanh approximation rather than an exact analog circuit model.
• Soft clipping still aliases when it creates harmonics above Nyquist; the HQ path reduces rather than abolishes this.
• A symmetric centered curve mainly creates odd harmonics, but asymmetric input produces a different spectrum.

Technical details #

A high-confidence Nitro implementation candidate supports the technical summary, but the visible-module mapping remains inferred.

The exact grid/shaper/distortion body computes y = drive*x for four sub-samples. With HQ off it evaluates a seventh-order tanh approximation. With HQ on it passes the same transfer through an antiderivative-antialiasing softclip2 operator whose state is reset at start. No automatic output-gain compensation is present in the recovered body.

Nitro port	Type
x	InputAudioPortType
drive	InputAudioPortType
HQ	InputValuePortType
out	OutputAudioPortType

Open questions #

• Recover or measure the exact direct tanh approximation and HQ transfer at large inputs.
• Quantify alias rejection, latency, transient behavior, and CPU cost with HQ on and off.
• Confirm visible Amount mapping, stereo independence, state reset, and parameter smoothing.

Version and sources #

Checked against Bitwig Studio 6.0.6. This page combines Bitwig's module metadata, the existing Grid course and guides, and Nitro analysis where the mapping is strong enough to support a technical statement.

Related material #

• Grid Modules course reference

Return to Bitwig Grid Modules or the Grid Modules course lesson.