Overdrive

Parameters

Pedal-style drive: an optional resonant band-pass pre-filter into an exponential soft-clip, then a tone tilt.

Controls and display

OS works exactly as it does on Saturation (above) — and matters more here, because overdrive is the dirtiest curve in the set: at high Drive on a bright source, 4 is the difference between grit and fizz. Only the soft-clipper is oversampled; the band-pass and the tone tilt are unaffected.

Surface (the focus field): the track's spectrum twice — the input as a faint fill, the output as the bright line — with the grit the drive adds filled warm above the input and what the band-pass takes away filled red below it. On the same picture, against the 0 dB line, the FOCUS band-pass is a curtain (in the focus pane drag its peak dot across for FREQ and up or down for Q; double-click for 800 Hz / 0.70; with the filter off it reads FOCUS OFF · THE WHOLE BAND IS DRIVEN) and the TONE tilt is a dashed line pivoting on 3 kHz (drag its far-end dot; double-click for flat).

The column reads PUSH — how far the level the shaper sees sits above the ceiling, the one number that says how hard you are driving (warm when driven, red past 6 dB) — with the THD and SQUASH cells and the BEND glyph: the transfer curve with the ceiling as a wall at exactly −DRIVE dBFS (drag the wall for drive; double-click for 12 dB). The six knobs sit under the field (FREQ and Q dim while the filter is off) beside the PEAK IN / PEAK OUT cells; under the column the FOCUS deck carries the Filter toggle, the band cell and THE SHAPER SEES — the peak after the filter, which is what the bend actually works on (with a tight focus on a bass it sits far under the raw peak: why a drive pedal needs more DRIVE on a bass).

In the focus pane the FIELD · SCOPE chip swaps the field for the bend scope: the wave bending into the ceiling — the input as a faint ghost, the driven output bright, the squash filled between them, the ceiling as ± dashed lines (drag for drive) — where an overdrive's difference from the clipper is visible: no flat top, no corner, the shoulder starts at zero, and TONE rounds or sharpens the edges. The same switch as view.od_scope.