187Overdrive, Distortion, and Fuzz
distortion effect can be considered a nonlinear gain control where the gain
depends on the level of the input signal. For example, we can calculate the
gain for the hard clipping function in Equation (7.3):
xfxx
x
G
x
Gx
Gx
Gx
() ()==
−
≤−
−< <
≥
/
/
/
1
1
1
11
(7.16)
We can see that the hard clipping function is linear with gain G when the
level of the scaled input signal is less than 1, and that the gain progressively
decreases as the input level increases. This is identical to the behavior of the
limiter (compressor with a very high or innite ratio). Why then do distortion
effects produce audible harmonic distortion when compressors and limiters
generally do not?
The difference between distortion, compression