OffSiteNoise - Peff's Scream4 Waveforms

One of the things I want to do with this blog is direct readers towards interesting articles written by other people. I will call these OffSiteNoise posts. They will probably be Reason-related, although some may cover more general topics like music theory or audio synthesis theory.

So here's the first OffSiteNoise post!

Following my previous post about the Scream4 tape phase inversion, I wish to highlight the observations reported by Peff for the other Scream4 distortion algorithms. You can read all about it with pretty pictures of mangled saw-teeth right here.

Scream4 Tape Algorithm - Phase Inversion

Peff points out here that the Scream4 'tape' algorithm has an effect of inverting the output waveform at lower frequencies. This can have the effect of canceling with the original signal if mixed back (e.g. as a Send Effect). He posts a couple of solutions and a good example that illustrates this "feature".

I have seen many examples where the tape algorithm is used on drums - this is definitely something to keep in mind if you're not using it purely as an insert.

I did my own test with an Oscilloscope application, listening on my sound-card's "stereo mix" or "What U Hear" channel, and as you can see in Figure 1, mixing the 'taped' signal with the original (blue) cancels out a huge part of the original signal (red). Only the higher frequencies remain.

Figure 1

My test RNS file is here.