← Black Diamond Distortion

Black Diamond Distortion Manual

This manual walks through everything in Black Diamond Distortion — every panel, control, and workflow — in the same order as the video tutorial.

Each chapter stands on its own: jump straight to the part of the plugin you're exploring, or read it front to back.

  1. 01

    Overview

    What Black Diamond Distortion is, plus a numbered map of every control with links to the chapter that covers each one in depth.
  2. 02

    Installation

    How to install Black Diamond Distortion on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and where the plugin and its factory content end up.
  3. 03

    Gain Staging

    Input gain is your drive and output gain is your makeup - plus inverse gain linking, auto-normalize (NORM), phase-coherent Dry/Wet, and DC blocking.
  4. 04

    Presets & the Community Browser

    The .bddpreset and .tfunc file formats, your local preset library, and the in-plugin community browser for previewing, downloading, and sharing presets and curves.
  5. 05

    Capturing Hardware Distortion

    Use Black Diamond Probe, the free companion plugin, to scan the distortion curve of real hardware and save it as a preset you can load in Black Diamond Distortion.
  6. 06

    Transfer Function Editor

    Stack curves in mixer lanes and drive them with the Morph dial - Blend, Scan, or Series - then pick an editing mode for each lane.
  7. 07

    Harmonic Exciter

    Generate curves that excite exact harmonics, one mixer lane at a time - and why input level changes what you hear.
  8. 08

    Spline Editor

    Sculpt the curve with a few powerful anchors - odd symmetry, multi-select, grid snapping, and gesture recording for the Morph dial.
  9. 09

    Brush Editor

    Draw the curve freehand, smooth it with the roller, or roughen it with the spray, smudge, and texture brushes - plus magic wand commands for the whole curve.
  10. 10

    Equation Editor

    Type math, get distortion - classic waveshaping equations, plus the m variable that wires the Morph dial into your formula.
  11. 11

    Curve Browser

    Load a .tfunc curve into a single lane without touching the rest of the patch - factory shapes, Probe captures, and community hardware snapshots.
  12. 12

    Character: Hysteresis, Bias & Surge

    Give your curve physics - magnetic hysteresis modeled around your drawn shape, DC bias for asymmetry, overflow clipping modes, and time-varying Surge saturation.
  13. 13

    Tone Shaping

    Two independent tone stages bracket the distortion - resonant ladder filters, shelves, and impulse responses, with a live frequency-response overlay on the display.
  14. 14

    Modulation

    Two modulator slots - envelope follower or LFO - mappable to most of the plugin's dials, plus per-lane curve modulation, sidechain input, and DAW automation.
  15. 15

    Oversampling & Global Settings

    When 16× oversampling helps and when 1× actually clips cleaner - plus the init preset, themes, update checks, and the optional account settings.