Hi does anyone know how to bring out that distortion especially with sub bass lines, I think it's with the compression, I tried exciter at particular frequencies and that brought the sound I was looking for in the track a bit more.  Imagine like a grunge heavy metal guitar but only at very low sine frequencies with an LP filter preferably.  We know it's the sine wave that kicks, but it may also carry an overtone of higher frequency distortion that is favorable if compressed right with other waveforms.  I read an article from the UK mag Music Tech awhile back that talked about it, they send out cool sample cd's with the various new techniques involved.  Nothing is pure and simple subwoofer pounding like a simple sine osc, I don't know of anything else, but you can't hear much of else of it's qualities since it's such a low frequency sound.  If you blend in like a higher pitch triangle or saw osc that's like the effect I'm looking to evolve in my music, if I can help with any other techniques out there I'd be glad to pitch in my knowledge on the subject thanks!
 
LWD
 
 
 
 

Like take a low-c triangle, pitch bend it down -12 semi tones and use omnisphere Glide for that slide whistle effect, that basically sets up your "trap" style genre if that's what your into..  I can't say enough good things about omnisphere and sonar combined. 

A pure sine wave has no harmonics, and if it's very low then it's felt rather than heard.  A triangle waveform does contain harmonics and the sound will be heard, but it will be a little ugly.  Instead, try adding subtle distortion to the sub-bass using a tube and/or tape saturation plugin after the low-pass filter/EQ.  This will add harmonics above the fundamental frequency to make the sound more "heard" in addition to being felt.

Does Sonar Pro come equip with a tube and/or tape saturation plug-in?  Do you have any tracks I may listen to that shows how you used tube and/or tape saturation?
 
 

Get this for free:
https://www.softube.com/index.php?id=satknob
 

The PC format of the Softube Saturation knob is bundled with Professional.
For a comprehensive list of the plug-ins bundled with SONAR see http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Comparison.html
For a short description of the plug-ins see http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Plug-ins.1.html
 

One way to add distortion is to run the audio through any of the various guitar/bass effects and amp emulators. Either those that come with Sonar or a commercial or free alternative. Or get an MXR Distortion+ pedal and use it as an external effect. I find that for some reason that pedal seems to work very well on synths and basses, much better than many others like Big Muff variants which are capable of far more distortion when used with guitar. Hardware generated clipping and distortion still has characteristics software can't quite match (yet).

Softube's saturation knob is very good for a digital distortion/saturation tool, as has already been said. And it's free.

Getting much distortion by compression alone isn't easy, unless you're really pushing an analogue compressor or a pretty realistic digital version of an analogue compressor. Good studio-grade compressors don't distort in other than a quite subtle way if at all.

parallel processing is good for this. then you can get very aggressive with distortion on one channel and blend in just enough with your undistorted original channel. several good options for getting that distortion above. also, try bit crushing for the distortion - a track that sounds like absolute barf can blend in to improve a clean track and give it some nards.

stevesweat
parallel processing is good for this. then you can get very aggressive with distortion on one channel and blend in just enough with your undistorted original channel. several good options for getting that distortion above. also, try bit crushing for the distortion - a track that sounds like absolute barf can blend in to improve a clean track and give it some nards.

totally agree here. distortion on any bass works much better if you can blend it ...

The Klanghelm SDRR is a nice saturation plugin. There are several types to choose from plus a lot of control over the sound too. It is easy to set up parallel processing too.
 
https://klanghelm.com/contents/products/SDRR/SDRR.php