How to make your own distortion plugin

Describe the distortion

In Studio 56 in your browser, say what the sound is and how hard the distortion should push it. Descriptions like these work well:

• A Rhodes warmed up by soft tape saturation
• A germanium fuzz bass that keeps the low end tight
• A lead through an overdriven guitar amp
• A bitcrushed pluck that gets grittier as one knob turns up
• An 808 with clipping that makes it louder and keeps its punch

What you get

The AI builds the sound and wires verified DSP blocks like drives, fuzz, tape, amps and filters into it. You can see where the distortion sits in the sound and play it in your browser the moment it’s made.

Put it on a track

When it sounds right, send it to your DAW. It plays inside the Studio 56 plugin on an instrument track in Ableton Live, Logic Pro, GarageBand, FL Studio and most other DAWs except Pro Tools, with the distortion as part of the sound. Studio 56 doesn’t make an effect for an audio track, so it can’t distort a vocal or a drum loop you recorded.

Change it later

Every knob stays yours to change. You can ask for a filter after the drive or a softer fuzz, or rewire the blocks yourself, and the synth guide shows how to describe the sound under the distortion.

What it costs

Building a sound by hand is free with no limit, and your first 3 asks to the AI are free. Pro is $10 a month, and the AI builds about 70 sounds a month on it. You can use what you make in songs, videos, live shows and commercial releases. The one thing you can’t do is sell the sounds themselves.