We all know what distortion sounds like. We’ve heard it in heavy metal tunes, cheap iPod docks and the crummy speakers at Taco Bell drive-thrus. And we’ve all read distortion specs on things like ...

It's hard to imagine rock music without guitar distortion: Jimi Hendrix's albums would be unthinkable. Punk rock couldn't have happened. Metallica might have wound up sounding like Barry Manilow.

A look at the evolution of the technologies that give rock its signature sound Fifty years ago, a faulty connection in a mixing board gave birth to fuzz, which is a term of art. Although it came to ...

Guitarists will do just about anything to get just the right sound out of their setup, including purposely introducing all manner of distortion into the signal. It seems counter-intuitive, but it ...

Music making is increasingly digitized here in 2020, but some analog audio effects are still very difficult to reproduce in this way. One of those effects is the kind of screeching guitar distortion ...