26392__gain_to_50dB_inv_mix

Sound created for Dare 2025-04 "Sound Design challenge #1 - Volume"
https://freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/44951/

This pack contains several sounds that were inspired by this sound:
https://freesound.org/people/Sadiquecat/sounds/792018/
It brought to my attention that massive gain boosts could be used to bring out tiny background sounds or digital artifacts. Gain boosting a sound to the point of clipping also opens up additional creative possibilities, which I explore in this pack.
As sound sources I have selected a variety of test tones. I wanted sounds that were simple and fairly invariant, but also wanted to avoid the 'pure sine wave tone'.

After creating a version of the sound that had been boosted to the point of significant digital clipping, I inverted it (i.e., inverted the polarity of the sound) and mixed it back with the original. This creates in teresting wave shapes that you can see if you download the sound and zoom in on the wave using a sound editor or your DAW.
This kind of wave distortion is similar to a type of wave-shaping called "wave-folding".

Since the starting wave-shape of the source sound was already clipped, the resulting wave-shape has a platteu between the two 'ears'. A sine wave would create a U shapped dip between the two 'ears' instead of a platteu.

Source sound:
https://freesound.org/people/flashyrox/sounds/26392/