#saugns v0.5.7 adds the "a.l" ladder effect distortion at last, 2 years after I experimented with it.

There were many things that seemed silly not to have, while adding the le, so I did all those other things first. Including frequency filter for audio generators in general, instead of placing a filter only inside the distortion.

Now a line like this at the top of a SAU script sets a Sega MD-like sound:
"S a.lC a.f2840 c.pf"

#LadderEffect #YM2612 #SAUlang

I've written a blog article about the #YM2612 ladder effect distortion. This gathers more links and provides a summary of key things I've read.

https://joelkp.frama.io/blog/dist-ladder-effect.html

*Edit* - Added some about ways to vary it from accurate emulation. This includes how to handle signals too quiet for the distortion-pulse to be present; it sounds bad to just have the pure signal then, when the real effect has silence due to quantization. I picked a middle-option between pure and silenced signal.

#LadderEffect

Here's a simple PM sound fading out, with 8x strength "ladder effect" on the carrier. The peak at the beginning lets the pure PM timbre through, then you mainly hear the added noisy timbre, which then morphs near the end.

#LadderEffect