I’m terribly excited to introduce our brand-new effect device: Osmium Distortion Matrix. In this blog post I’ll tell you more about how we designed it and why it’s my new go-to effect. But first, check out the product page and the tutorial if you haven’t already to get an of idea what Osmium is.
There are some things that are so essential to music that entire genres would simply disappear without them. One of those things is distortion. It always has a part to play in music production—from subtle saturation and presence in a mix to destructive sound design and speaker-melting noise. An effect that’s so ubiquitous deserves a device flexible enough to cover all these use cases and still sound great. With this in mind, we set out to design and develop Osmium.
One big insight we had early on was that the distortion algorithms themselves are only part of what makes a “good distortion”. Even though Osmium’s packed with new algorithms that sound fantastic, to really shape the sound to work for different audio material you need easy access to EQ, filters, speaker models, dynamics processing, and so on. This proved to be our first design challenge: which options do we offer and how do we present them in an understandable way?
We tried different layouts and fixed signal flows but always came up with some scenario where one of us wanted to change it. For example, EQ after distortion’s great for tone shaping but EQ before distortion is also great as it affects the drive in a different way. Saturation into Bitcrush was a sweet combo to boost into more bright digital artifacts, but Bitcrush into Saturation was also sweet for subduing the digital harshness.
Can you see where I’m going with this yet?
If we wanted to make a new distortion that felt powerful and flexible, we needed to offer a lot of options for sound shaping. Heck, we wanted a lot of options ourselves! After a lot of layout suggestions and testing, the answer became obvious: make it modular.
As soon as the modularity was in place and we had 9 module slots, the potential of Osmium as a “Distortion Matrix” became abundantly clear. For every new effect module or algorithm we added, the things you could do increased almost exponentially but without increasing the complexity. The modules themselves were simple to use, and we made sure it was easy to try combinations without having to manually route anything—unless you wanted to.
The other key thing that separates Osmium from, say, Scream4 is that it’s a multi-band effect. Distortion can really mess up a sound completely, but you often want a bit more control over what gets messed up. Splitting the sound into three bands means you can have different amounts of distortion on different frequencies—or in Osmium’s case: completely different signal chains.
This is also why there’s an input and output effect slot before and after the multi-band splitter. It’s super useful to saturate the entire sound first and then process the bands separately, or to run each band through one of the newly recorded speaker cabinets, for example.
Osmium was primarily designed as a distortion matrix. The Saturation, Overdrive, Wavefolder, and Bitcrush modules contain many different flavors of distortion that sound amazing. However, with the additional effects, multi-band processing, and free routing, Osmium can do much more than we initially planned.
I’ve heard Osmium used for simple saturation, searing drive, multi-band mastering, vocal processing, guitar pedal emulation, lo-fi speaker sounds, crazy feedback experiments and much more. Make sure you check out the 200+ included patches for some examples and ideas!
We’re very proud of how Osmium turned out. Distortion isn’t just about breaking sound; it’s about shaping it. That’s where this device excels. If that sounds like something for you, I think it’s time to stop reading now and add Osmium to your Reason Rack. You’ll quickly figure out why it was named after the densest element in the world.
Mattias Häggström Gerdt
Product Manager
Osmium Distortion Matrix is available now for a special introductory price of $49/€54 until December 1, 2025, after which the price will be $69/€74. In addition, Osmium is also included in Reason+.
There are some things that are so essential to music that entire genres would simply disappear without them. One of those things is distortion. It always has a part to play in music production—from subtle saturation and presence in a mix to destructive sound design and speaker-melting noise. An effect that’s so ubiquitous deserves a device flexible enough to cover all these use cases and still sound great. With this in mind, we set out to design and develop Osmium.
One big insight we had early on was that the distortion algorithms themselves are only part of what makes a “good distortion”. Even though Osmium’s packed with new algorithms that sound fantastic, to really shape the sound to work for different audio material you need easy access to EQ, filters, speaker models, dynamics processing, and so on. This proved to be our first design challenge: which options do we offer and how do we present them in an understandable way?
We tried different layouts and fixed signal flows but always came up with some scenario where one of us wanted to change it. For example, EQ after distortion’s great for tone shaping but EQ before distortion is also great as it affects the drive in a different way. Saturation into Bitcrush was a sweet combo to boost into more bright digital artifacts, but Bitcrush into Saturation was also sweet for subduing the digital harshness.
Can you see where I’m going with this yet?
If we wanted to make a new distortion that felt powerful and flexible, we needed to offer a lot of options for sound shaping. Heck, we wanted a lot of options ourselves! After a lot of layout suggestions and testing, the answer became obvious: make it modular.
As soon as the modularity was in place and we had 9 module slots, the potential of Osmium as a “Distortion Matrix” became abundantly clear. For every new effect module or algorithm we added, the things you could do increased almost exponentially but without increasing the complexity. The modules themselves were simple to use, and we made sure it was easy to try combinations without having to manually route anything—unless you wanted to.
The other key thing that separates Osmium from, say, Scream4 is that it’s a multi-band effect. Distortion can really mess up a sound completely, but you often want a bit more control over what gets messed up. Splitting the sound into three bands means you can have different amounts of distortion on different frequencies—or in Osmium’s case: completely different signal chains.
This is also why there’s an input and output effect slot before and after the multi-band splitter. It’s super useful to saturate the entire sound first and then process the bands separately, or to run each band through one of the newly recorded speaker cabinets, for example.
Osmium was primarily designed as a distortion matrix. The Saturation, Overdrive, Wavefolder, and Bitcrush modules contain many different flavors of distortion that sound amazing. However, with the additional effects, multi-band processing, and free routing, Osmium can do much more than we initially planned.
I’ve heard Osmium used for simple saturation, searing drive, multi-band mastering, vocal processing, guitar pedal emulation, lo-fi speaker sounds, crazy feedback experiments and much more. Make sure you check out the 200+ included patches for some examples and ideas!
We’re very proud of how Osmium turned out. Distortion isn’t just about breaking sound; it’s about shaping it. That’s where this device excels. If that sounds like something for you, I think it’s time to stop reading now and add Osmium to your Reason Rack. You’ll quickly figure out why it was named after the densest element in the world.
Mattias Häggström Gerdt
Product Manager
Osmium Distortion Matrix is available now for a special introductory price of $49/€54 until December 1, 2025, after which the price will be $69/€74. In addition, Osmium is also included in Reason+.
