Distortion (Native)

Parameters

Drive — Pre-clip gain in dB, with an extended range up to +48 dB (much hotter than the Saturator or Soft Clipper). This is the “amp gain” knob — push hard for thick, sustained, fully-distorted tones. Even at moderate settings the result is more aggressive than saturation; for warmer coloring use the Saturator instead.

Tone — Frequency of the internal tone-shaping filter, in Hz. Distortion creates a lot of harsh upper-mid energy that this control helps tame or emphasize. Lower values darken the distorted signal (suited to bass distortion or vintage-amp sounds); higher values keep the bite present. Acts on the wet signal only.

Bias — DC offset added before the clipping stage, from −0.5 to +0.5. Bias breaks the symmetry of the waveform, which generates even-order harmonics — the same trick that gives tube amps their character compared to symmetric solid-state distortion. Center (0) is symmetric; offset values produce a more “tube-pushed” or “broken” quality. Subtle settings (±0.1) work for character; extreme values get unstable and noisy fast.

Output — Post-clip makeup gain in dB. Heavy distortion pushes everything toward unity, so this often needs to come down rather than up — the −24 dB low end of the range exists for that. Set this last, after drive and tone are dialed.

Dry/Wet — Equal-power blend between the dry signal (0) and the distorted signal (1). For aggressive distortion as a primary effect, leave at 1; for parallel distortion (keeping a clean signal forward while a distorted copy adds grit underneath), pull back. Node-specific — the FX-slot version handles wet/dry at the mixer.

Additional controls

Mode — Selects the clipping curve. Hard is a digital-style hard clip — sharp, bright, aggressive. Foldback folds peaks instead of clipping them, generating complex inharmonic content (closer to wavefolding than to amp distortion). Tube approximates a soft, asymmetric tube-stage clip with rich even harmonics. Rectifier half-wave or full-wave rectifies the signal — extreme, octave-up character useful for bass and synth fx more than for clean tones.

Rectifier Type — Sets which rectifier shape applies when mode is set to Rectifier. Half keeps only the positive half of the waveform (silencing the negative half) — generates a strong octave-up component and a thin, buzzy character. Full flips the negative half positive (full-wave rectification) — denser, more aggressive, closer to ring-mod territory.

Cabinet — Speaker cabinet simulation toggle. On applies a frequency response and resonance characteristic that mimics a guitar/bass cabinet — softens the harsh top end of digital distortion, gives the sound an “out the speaker” feel rather than “straight from the converter.” Off is raw, no cabinet processing — useful when you’ll send the distorted signal into another speaker sim downstream.

About Distortion (Native)

Native Distortion is the heaviest of K2K’s harmonic-distortion family — designed for full amp-style aggression rather than the gentler coloring of saturation or soft-clipping. Hard mode is digital-clean / fizzy / bright; Foldback crosses into wavefolding territory; Tube approximates an asymmetric tube clip with rich even harmonics (bias-driven, like a pushed valve stage); Rectifier half- or full-wave rectifies for octave-up character that’s closest to fuzz / ring-mod territory. bias breaks waveform symmetry to generate the tube-style even harmonics that pure symmetric clippers can’t produce. cabinet simulates speaker-cab response — leave on for “out the speaker” feel, off when downstream nodes do their own cabinet sim. Compare with Native Saturator (gentler, color-focused), Native Soft Clipper (peak management with light coloring), Bit Crusher (quantization-style destruction, completely different mechanism), and Wavefolder (pure West Coast folding).

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