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Distorting drums with bit depth and sample-rate reduction plugins

1 When using digital distortion, note the difference between bit-depth and sample-rate reduction. Bit depth is the dynamic range of the signal – the difference between loud and quiet parts – while sample rate determines the highest audible frequency, always half its value. Let’s apply both to my TR-808 loop.

2 I’ve inserted Native Instruments’ Bite – a digital distortion plugin – on my grouped TR-808 bus. The Bits and Sample Rate parameters start at their defaults of 16-bit and 44.1kHz, which is your standard CD quality. Lowering the bit depth will have an increasingly profound effect on the sound…

3 As the bit depth gets lower, the recreation of the audio waveform is quantised to fewer and fewer possible amplitude values, reducing the range of volume levels that it can represent. This is particularly evident in the sustain tail of my kick drum, which gets very flat indeed around the 3-bit mark.

4 Dropping the Sample rate has a less dramatic impact, essentially working like a low-pass filter as the highest audible frequency is lowered. Some digital distortion plugins – Bite being one of them – include a Jitter control, which randomly modulates the sample rate very quickly for added noise.

5 Last month, we assigned an envelope follower to control the amount of analogue distortion applied, adding grit to the transients in a beat without damaging sustains. The same works for digital distortion, as shown here using FabFilter Saturn’s Destroy digital distortion algorithm and onboard envelope follower.

6 So far, I’ve applied digital distortion to the whole kit, but for more processing control, it can be called up separately on each element. Here, I’ve got separate instances of Bite and Togu Audio Line’s TAL-DAC inserted on my kick, snare/ clap, hi-hats and toms channels, letting me balance distortion across them.