Cheapo car amp distortion

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noisewreck

noisewreck

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OK... this is probably going to be on the strange side. I'm looking for a way to recreate the crappy crackly distortion that one gets when cranking up the volume on a $50 car stereo. One way is to just get the car stereo, and hook it up to the soundcard, burn a CD and play it through that amp...

My question is, how can I bring the speaker level signal down to line level to feed the soundcard? Are there such devices?

Ideally, I'd prefer to have it as an FX box so I could just use it on the inserts. Does anyone know if such a thing exists, or even a DIY possibility?
 
Drag two mics out to the car and mic the speakers. You want lo fi so a couple of 57's close to each speaker would work like a champ.
 
Behringer pedals....that's hilarious.

I think that it's the crappy car speakers that are giving you the distortion that you are looking for rather than the actual radio...? I'm not really sure.

If I were doing this, I'd get a crappy radio shack speaker - some sort of midrange thing, and then hook it up in the house with a mic on it. Sounds like if you end up frying the speaker, all the better!

I suppose that you could put the speaker in a room and use it like an echo chamber effect.

Interesting idea. What instruments are you doing to send through this thing?


Oh, another thought - they also sell those devices that are designed to hook up to a portable CD player and broadcast on a radio frequency so that you can play the portable in your car. I bought a cheap one once and it sounded just horrible. Kind of reminds me of what you have in mind - crackly, fuzzy, mid-range heavy. Just awful.

Or maybe perfect for what you have in mind. You could broadcast from your recording rig and "re-amp" on a radio somewhere else...
 
I always just have a little car speaker kicking around, with a 1/4" jack on it so I can hook it up to whatever.... Usually the headphone amp works really well because it tends to freak out quite well, sometimes a "smokey" amp or something like it works quite well too.

Depends so much on what kind of blowout you are looking for, because if it is midrange, you can use many other things, like a practice amp for guitar or bass combined with a filtered version of the original tracks, .... so many different ways to get this...
 
Thanks for the ideas guys. Well, it's not really the speaker distortion I'm talking about... although that's another idea that I have in mind. The other day I was driving my mom's car (Infinity I30), and the subwoofer on it is on this flabby board in the back behind the back seats. I was listening to some Drum and Bass with a lot of subby bass, and the subs were distorting in interesting ways as the whole thing was vibrating with the subwoofer, interacting with the rear windshield... So, I will be burning some low sinewaves on a CD and record that :eek:

The sound I'm after is not really midrangey speaker blowout/door panel vibrating kinda stuff. Hmmm... it sounds more like transistors overloading and the sound starts to break up... I can sort of simulate this in Reaktor by adding some DC offset to the audio and then putting it through a quantizer... this simulates the breakup/sputtering part, but it sounds a bit too harsh. Sometime ago, one of the transistors in the amp of my home stereo blew, and it was sort of distorting in a similar way. Now I wish I hadn't fixed it :D

I guess I'll go to Radio Shack and see if they have something that will bring a speaker level signal down to line level.

@ timboZ: I think you're onto something there :D

@ smtcharlie: I'm doing industrial/noise/powernoise stuff, so pretty much any victim would be fair game, but most likely candidates would be sampled/electronic drums and pads/drones.
 
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