soft clipping

Soft clipping is a response in which a signal becomes progressively more non-linear above a certain level, so some distortion occurs before full clipping is reached¹. Players often describe the resulting sound as smooth, warm, dynamic, and touch-sensitive². The term is used to describe overdrive and distortion circuits, including pedals with soft clipping diodes³, circuits that combine soft and hard clipping⁴⁵, and tape-style saturation effects⁶⁷. It is also used to describe tones ranging from soft clipping to overdriven amp or light distortion sounds⁸⁹.