Correct; the distortion you're seeing...

 Posted on 2/5/1994 by STRACZYNSKI [Joe] to GENIE


Correct; the distortion you're seeing is caused by superheating the air.
When it collapses again -- the heat literally burns through the atmosphere,
the same as lightning -- it would logically make a sound like a small
thunderclap...so we sampled some thunder sounds, and interlaced some of the
PPG sound with that as well.

jms