Just made this video to show the result of using different overdrive settings on samples. I kept the sample level at 100, and matched the levels a little with the amp vol settings. The first thing I noticed is the difference between the sample played in a daw and on the AR. The AR is warmer, and loses some high end. It also surprised me how good the overdrive actually sounds around ~20.
I often use overdrive lightly, like up to 10 at max, but I guess this is mostly because without adjusting the output level it just gets so loud it sounds bad. From now on I’ll try to use it in more extreme settings.
Do you guys know whether the different filters (even when not filtering) lead to different end results with the overdrive? It seemed so when I tried. Curious to hear you guys’ insights on this!
Hehe, yeah! Samples with a little overdrive sound so nice, I can hardly go without^^
I always assumed it does, because similar to A4/AK, the overdrive on the AR is overdriving the filter (=gain going into the filter circuit) and thus the different filter types should affect the sound of the overdrive.
Makes sense… Maybe even the resonance would then influence the overdrive sound, this would give you a lot of possibilities for shaping the drive sound.
I often wondered wether samples sound different through the filters when they’re at 127 (or 0 for the high pass ones). To my ear the 24 db and 12 low pass filters sound different even when off, but the high pass and 24db low pass sound about the same. There’s no loss of high end using the lowpass compared to the high pass ones as far as I can tell.
Interesting, on each of the three loops the AR overdrive has its sweetspot which brings a nice portion of punch and definition. Nice.
I’d guess it does.
On my AR Mk1, the low pass filters cut some of the high frequencies when cutoff is set to 127. I can open it more with the envelope and effectively let all frequencies through, but without using the filter env, it cuts some of the highs.
Hi pass with cutoff at 0 seems to be flat, though!
You’re making me excited to experiment with running stuff through the PortaStudio, not just for tape compression, but the analog EQ and gain from the preamps.
