Brecht De Man and Joshua D. Reiss, “Adaptive control of amplitude distortion effects,” 53rd Conference of the Audio Engineering Society, January 2014. [pdf | BibTeX | poster]

Abstract: An adaptive amplitude distortion effect for audio production is introduced. We consider a versatile model of multiband waveshaping with a limited set of intuitive parameters. We propose a method for adaptive scaling of the characteristic amplitude distortion transfer function. A number of methods to automate other distortion parameters are explored, such as automatic balance between clean and distorted signals for single band and multiband distortion, make-up gain and adaptive anti-aliasing. Automation formulas are generalised for several other common transfer functions. A formal perceptual evaluation of the automation algorithms is conducted, validating the approach and identifying shortcomings and particularities. Finally, we discuss implementational aspects and possible future directions.