Vinyl Distortion: worn-record colour in three separable layers
A worn record is not one effect. It is a band of harmonic error where the stylus misreads the groove, a brightness the cutting head pinches into the sides, and a bed of surface noise. Vinyl Distortion gives you each layer separately.
Start with the tracing layer
The first example runs a drum loop with only the Tracing Model section on: Drive 40%, Freq 1.2 kHz, Width 0.80, the global Drive at 50% and a moderate crackle bed. Freq and Width place the band where the tracing error concentrates; Drive sets how strongly that band is replaced by harmonic misreading. Sweep Freq slowly from 200 Hz to 8 kHz and listen for where the loop gains body rather than mud.
Tracing warmth and surface crackle on a drum loop
Interactive audio example
The global Drive knob gates the whole distortion: at zero the device passes the signal with only its subtle fixed colour, whatever the section knobs say. Use it as the master amount once the sections are placed.
Pinch is a different mechanism, not more of the same
The second example turns Tracing off and Pinch on: Drive 65%, Freq 5.2 kHz, Width 1.10, Soft mode. Pinch models the cutting head squeezing the groove walls - it adds a resonant, sharper distortion that can push peaks well above the input level. Compare Hard and Soft, and try Mono to fold the pinch path down when the stereo artefact wanders.
Pinch resonance sharpening a synthetic phrase
Interactive audio example
Crackle is a bed, not an effect on the signal
Density sets how many clicks per second the surface produces - low values are countable pops, high values merge into continuous frying. Volume is a plain level for that bed and does not change the signal path at all. A little goes a long way: set Density first, then bring Volume up only until the bed reads as texture between hits.
Both section models are learned reproductions of the original hardware-style processing, conditioned on their knobs; the device is currently in beta - knob positions between the calibrated settings can drift in brightness compared to the reference. The crackle layer and the all-off colour are measured directly and are not approximations.