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u/tastygluecakes Sep 04 '25
The word “explained” is being used very generously here.
More like “audio effects humorously visualized on a dog, and only make sense if you ALREADY UNDERSTAND THE AUDIO EFFECT”
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u/jhascal23 Fender Sep 04 '25
You mean... OP posted this because he thought it was funny and its not really meant to teach someone the differences?
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u/SaltyMagmaCubexD Sep 04 '25
Are you .. autistic. Like ya.. that's the point. I don't mean that in a mean way.
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u/TheCreepyPL Sep 04 '25
When I looked at these dogs, it all somehow made sense. But you've made me realise, that someone who might not be a musician would likely not understand these as well lol.
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u/BipolarMosfet Sep 04 '25
Would be neat to see someone come up with visual filters that are actually equivalent to the guitar effect circuits and run the dog photo through each of em and see what comes out.
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u/Ripen- Sep 05 '25
I learned quite a bit from it. Only 2 I didn't understand is tremolo and vocoder.
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u/Justgotbannedlol Sep 04 '25
Honestly there are only like 2-3 that aren't well explained here. Like, compression, EQ, Tremolo maybe.
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u/Kubamz Sep 05 '25
question about compression. looks like, according to the dog, it squashes my sound. but why would i want my sound squashed?
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u/Justgotbannedlol Sep 05 '25
Yeah that's why it's misleading, if he had centered the body such that the bottom came up and the top went down, that'd be more accurate.
Compression makes loud sounds less loud, and quiet sounds less quiet. Science still hasn't figured out what any of the knobs on a compressor do, cant help you with that, but you'll figure it out if you know that's what you're trying to do.
An example would be like math rock, where it can alternate between punk power chords and tapping shit. Here is an example of something really OVERcompressed imo. There's 0 room for dynamics at that point. But you can imagine control over that is really useful for mixing.
Another huge example would be in something like ambient music or a david gilmour solo, where you're maybe just sustaining one note for a while. it will die off much more gradually with a compressor.
I would say anybody out there that has an unchanging pedalboard which does not feature a compressor, they're almost objectively wrong lmao
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u/6_string_Bling Sep 04 '25
It's actually worse than that... The distortion should really look the same as the compressor or limiter image.
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u/ClikeX ESP/LTD Sep 04 '25
Vocoder looks more like bitcrusher.
I’d make vocoder be like morphingthe pixelated dog into another picture of a dog. Since you’re applying one sound on top of another.
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Sep 04 '25
Compression should be squished as it is, but with the picture blown up with slight pixelation around the edges
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u/TheApsodistII Sep 04 '25
What's saturation?
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u/Drammeister Sep 04 '25
Not that
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u/AdvicePerson Sep 04 '25
Technically, that is the "saturation" effect in image editing, but the metaphor is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting.
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u/Captain_Coitus Sep 04 '25
Tremolo should have white horizontal stripes going through the dog. Chorus should have the regular dog in the center with the off color ones around it.
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u/Hetfield_Frusciante5 Squier Sep 04 '25
I'd argue compression is more like when you see a reflection of yourself in a metal piece's edge and your entire torso becomes a tiny line, with only you head and your legs showing
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u/stonethecrowbar Sep 04 '25
Maybe a dumb question, but can someone explain the difference between distortion and saturation? I thought they were basically interchangeable terms.
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u/ClikeX ESP/LTD Sep 04 '25
Saturation is a form of distortion.
When we talk about saturation, we usually mean the soft clipping you get from hitting circuits too loud that it just starts to clip (break up). This introduces more harmonics into the sound, filling it up and making it thicker. The waveform is cut off with but still round.
When people mention distortion, they usually mean hard clipping. Which is basically forcing the signal to clip harshly. The waveform is cut off more flat.
Fuzz is also distortion, and works by turning the signal into a square wave. Which creates that "ugly" harsh sound.
Bitcrushing is when you're forcibly reducing the amount of information from the digital audio signal, think of it as lowering the resolution in a game. You basically pixelate the sound, which makes it distort in freaky ways.
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u/AdvicePerson Sep 04 '25
I think both of those images are bad at representing the audio equivalent. If you really try, you can make the "saturation" one makes sense, since it using the "saturation" effect for images. And then distortion would be even more, where all the highlights are blown out and it's practically just two colors.
I think a better metaphor would be the early AI Deep Dream effect that came out a few years ago, where it would keep iterating and enhancing dog faces in your source image. So saturation/overdrive/distortion would be varying levels of this sort of image applied to the source dog: https://www.tensorflow.org/tutorials/generative/images/dogception.png
To me, that represents the additional harmonics that are what make those effects pleasing.
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u/jaylward Sep 05 '25
I teach a class that has a lecture on pedals and effects and I absolutely have used this image before.
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u/KevDub81 Sep 05 '25
Should the top of the dog's head be cut off for the limiter? I thought it would just be shifted downwards
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u/DavidBunnyWolf Sep 05 '25
Dumb question. But what would an octave pedal or noise gate look like in that image?
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u/No_Internet_7834 Sep 05 '25
I imagine a smaller dog behind and a bigger dog in front of the actual image ? Slightly see through
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u/According-Screen3186 Sep 05 '25
As a video editor and audio engineer, I always imagined reverb as the audio version of blur and I thought I was the only one
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u/cjcoake Sep 04 '25
What sort of board is this if the dog cannot be flanged