Let's really dig into Rytm's gorgeous distortion...what is it?

[phading]

Is there any more information about this symmetry crackling/silence/chopping/gate effect?

When adjusting compressor settings, It almost feels like I’m controlling a gate effect, the way atk/rel change the silence/chopping duration times.

I found the following threads/posts. This reply from @Ess is the most important one to keep in mind, as there is a lot of misinformation - people claiming there’s distortion/symmetry after the compressor - denied by designers at Elektron.

Maybe somebody has something else for me to read on this subject? Thanks!

Comp volume affects distortion

Patience, patience… So… I asked Mattias, who designed the distortion circuit (and much of the analog circuitry in general) - the signal flow is correctly stated in the manual, and the distortion (which is what the symmetry affects) is indeed before the final gain stage. However, a compressor/final mix stage is naturally dependent on its input - if you send a DC offsetted signal into it, you might hear some DC clicks when adjusting the Level parameter for example. This is completely no…

Nice visual from another topic (Compression and Distortion settings - #6 by glitched):

@glitched

Before:

With negative SYM values and extreme MUP setting:

Dist 'SYM' control ? Noise floor panning

Can somebody explain a bit more about what this actually does ? Does it effect which part of the sound gets distorted ? I’ve noticed turning it to quarter past can kill unwanted noise floor in certain sounds. Oddly over headphone I find turning this, or the Comp’s ‘mix’ encoder can make the noise floor introduced pan left or right. What is going on there? This is over headphones btw, you may not hear it on monitors.