Drive

In the desktop app. Drive is a device of the desktop app, arriving in its beta; the web studio does not have it. The examples on this page are made with a reference version of the effect, applied to sound from the studio’s engine: they show what each control does, and the device itself may differ a little in character.

What it is for

Drive pushes a sound until its wave bends, the way an amplifier, a tape machine or a guitar pedal does when turned up too far. Bending a wave adds harmonics, so the sound becomes brighter, thicker and rougher. A little is warmth: the sound fills out and is easier to hear on small speakers. A lot is distortion.

Reach for it when a sound is too clean, too thin or disappears on small speakers. A bass that cannot be heard on a phone often needs harmonics, not volume, and Drive is what makes them.

Drive

How hard the sound is pushed. Low settings round off only the loudest moments. High settings bend all of it. Drive also evens a sound out, because the loud parts are bent the most, so a heavily driven sound has little difference left between soft and hard playing.

Shape

How the wave is bent. A soft shape rounds the peaks gradually, like tape or a valve: warm and thick. A hard shape cuts them off flat, like a fuzz pedal: buzzy and aggressive.

Tone

How bright the driven sound is. Drive makes a lot of new top end, and not all of it is pleasant; turning Tone down keeps the thickness and removes the fizz.

Level

Brings the level back down after the push, from 24 dB down to 24 dB up. Driving a sound also makes it louder, and louder always sounds better at first, so judging Drive by ear is easy to get wrong. Turn Level down until bypassing the device does not change the loudness: then you hear only what Drive adds to the character.

Mix

The share of driven sound in the result. Blending a heavily driven sound under the clean one keeps the clean sound’s low end and clarity and adds the driven one’s harmonics on top. See Mix.