Soundtoys PhaseMistress - Manual (Page 21)

Analog Flavor
The analog flavor control is used to adjust how the input and output behaves (or
doesn’t behave) when it is overdriven. To access this control, click on the small but-
ton to the left of the Analog switch to see the analog flavor pop-up menu. For best
results, experiment with different sources when tweaking this control:
• Clean: Maximum non-distorted range, with fairly hard clipping
• Fat: Smooth low-frequency distortion
• Squash: Similar to above but more compressed
• Dirt: Smooth broadband saturation
• Crunch: Exaggerated high-end clipping
• Shred: Lots of asymmetrical clipping
• Pump: Extreme pumping compression
Input and Output Level
The Input and Output level controls are used to (you guessed it) boost or attenuate
either the input or output of PhaseMistress. The default setting of the controls
approximates "unity gain" (what goes in comes out the same level) and should pro-
vide the best overall "normal" sound quality when set to these levels. The LEDs
beneath the Input and Output knobs provide visual display of the input and output
signal levels. The yellow LED indicates that the signal is 6dB below clipping. The red
LED indicates maximum signal level, and possible clipping which may or may not
sound so good depending on the switch setting and what your ears like to hear.
These controls are particularly useful in the Analog mode, allowing you to control the
amount of saturation and distortion in PhaseMistress. You can crank either the Input
or the Output to create distortion and cranking both to extreme levels can really futz
with your sound.
Distortion combined with phasing can be lots of fun. If you saturate the input stage
(by turning up the Input level), the distortion and harmonics added by the saturation
will be filtered by the PhaseMistress phase effect. If you saturate the output stage by
turning up the Output level, the signal will be phased first and the distortion and har-
monics will be added post-phasing.
These can sound quite different and there are a lot of variations available using both
input and output saturation at different levels. (Keep in mind that the greater the
harmonic content the more pronounced the phasing effect will be so overloading the
input will increase the presence and appearance of the phasing effect. Conversely,
most guitarists plug into a phaser before going into their distortion but in this case
the subtleties of the phasing effect will be less pronounced as it is distorted.
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