Fruity Waveshaper is an FL Studio stock plugin that can dramatically reshape the waveform of your sounds. This can add pleasant distortion or soft saturation to your tracks. This works especially well on kick drums that need a little more power or even 808 and bass sounds.
Waveshaper has two modes. By default, it’s in unipolar mode which translates to 0db to maximum input from the bottom to the top of the graph. Switching this to bipolar mode will make the middle of the graph 0db instead. I normally stick with unipolar mode when using this technique. Simply grabbing the middle tension point and dragging it up with increase the amount of saturation/distortion to your sound. Often, I find this is plenty to get the sound I’m looking for in a kick or bass.
You can use the PRE knob to increase the signal input into Waveshaper. The more you increase this, the more your signal will drive into the level of distortion. Decrease the MIX knob to blend the wet and dry signal together. The POST knob will adjust the output level of the overall sound.
The FREEZE option will lock any of the graph settings in place to keep you from accidentally changing it. The STEP option will allow you to quickly draw points into the graph by freehand. The SNAP setting will adjust the step points you create to the nearest cross-point in the graph. Use these options to fine-tune your level of distortion. When it comes to the Oversample option, just use your ears and listen for any artifacts in the sound that you don’t like. This can help to eliminate those. CENTER will rebalance the final waveform output by removing any DC offset you might have caused from this effect.
Feel free to check out some of the presets to really get to know the different sounds you can get from this plugin. You’ll notice that this even has soft clipping presets, which mimic the settings in Fruity Soft Clipper, which adds subtle saturation to a sound and can help level it off. The advantage inside Waveshaper is the ability to fine-tune the clipping beyond the controls of Fruity Soft Clipper.
Have fun reshaping your sound waves!
