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EFFECTS EDIT
Page 180 CD3000XL OperatorÕs Manual
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 field allows you to switch out the distortion/ring mod section from the chain of
effects. This is useful when you want to switch this section of the effects out but don’t want to
upset the control settings.