Audio Damage Bitcom - Manual (Page 6)

On OS X, the installer installs the Audio Unit and VST versions of Bitcom by default. If you click the Customize
button you can choose to not install one or more of these formats. There‘s no need to install formats that you
don‘t use, but on the other hand they don‘t take up much space if you do install them. The OS X versions are
combined 32/64-bit binaries.
If you‘re running a 64-bit version of Windows, you can choose to install either 32- or 64-bit versions of
Bitcom, or both. (There is no reason to install 64-bit plug-ins on a 32-bit version of Windows, and there are
good reasons to not do so.)
How It Works
In a nutshell, Bitcom is an unusual type of digital distortion generator, driven by a step sequencer. Each step
in the sequence has eight bit buttons. The state of the bit buttons, each either on or off, changes how Bitcom
distorts the signal. In addition, there are three flag buttons for each step. The flag buttons turn Bitcom’s
internal synthesizer on and off, allow the input signal to pass through without being distorted, and cause the
bits for the step to be set randomly. Bitcom thus produces rhythmic changes in timbre by distorting the signal
differently (and optionally adding a signal of its own) as it moves from one step to the next, in sync with your
host DAW’s transport. It’s worth mentioning that by “distort” we don’t mean just some lame soft clipping or
even the usual bitcrushing—we mean Bitcom can totally destroy your signal, leaving only a vague
approximation of the original buried in glorious digital noise.
Explaining exactly what Bitcom does requires speaking in
terms of binary math and computer operations, and that
explanation doesn’t convey how Bitcom actually sounds.
Instead, we’ll look at a series of images of Bitcom’s output
and explain what’s happening. We’ll use a sine wave as our
input signal. The simplest of all periodic signals, one cycle
of the humble sine wave looks like the image on the right—
no sharp edges, no jumps, just a smooth, continuous
undulation. It sounds pretty boring by itself, but add
together enough of them and you can produce any other
periodic sound. We’re using it here because it serves nicely
to illustrate Bitcom’s effect.