Saturation Plugs Free and Paid Discussion

Lately, for drum rooms, I've been liking BSA Escalate. Couldn't be any simpler to use and I like what it does to room mics. I also have used it lightly on overheads.
Softube Tape is on every drum track. It's pretty subtle but shaves off the nasty transients slightly.

Shameful push, I have to mention my own company Klanghabitat 😁. We have two plugins, Cassiopeia and Lyra_mb. We also have 500-series hardware if anyone is interested.

The thing is that we starve the tube aka limit the headroom of the tube which makes the saturation allot more subtle with a wide sweetspot. Sounds good on everything, drums, vocals and guitars. A different approach and we've gotten great feedback from our customers.

www.klanghabitat.com/

To tame the transients I find that the VoosteQ Model N does a good job and the price is really low.



I have Lyra_MB but I often tend to forget it... What source do you use it on? And for what purpose?

I also use Saturation Knob in parallel on the drums, I find that it works really well. On the other hand, it aliases a lot so should be avoided on many sources.

I can vouch for Cassiopeia. It’s particularly good on percussive stuff. Kelvin is solid. Mixwave’s Coil plugin is fussy but sounds very good. Flywheel and Satin are my go-to’s for “tape”.

For free, Fuse’s V72 plugin is great. Also Airwindows has a bunch of good saturators - I use Focus on every mix.

Thank you for your answer, it's true that the little I used it each time I put something in it was better. I'll try to use it a little more. I know this is not the subject here but are you planning any updates? I find that it is missing some small functions such as a preset manager and a way to link parameters (notably saturation and intensity). The addition of linear phase filters could also be interesting, including the anti aliasing filter.



And you're welcome for the support, you do a great job

Lately I've been liking to use the UAD Culture Vulture in parallel at the top of my sub-mixes along with Satin in Studer mode followed by Satin in Type A. And I've got Softube Trident A-range before Satin for the filters and the saturation. Eqs with less saturation can't play that role. If the UAD Harrison has saturation, guess we can count that too. On tracks, the saturation of the UAD 1176 and the PA902 are both very helpful. When I run out of UAD DSP, I'll swap in Decapitator since it got pretty close to a hardware Culture Vulture in one of those saturator shootouts on Youtube. Maybe when I build a better computer I'll be able to run the Silver Bullet on sub-mixes. Right now I can't get enough cpu to pull it off. Never heard of Klanghabitat and I will take a look for sure. Dopamine can be a decent substitute for Satin's type A, but it creates a thicker, more compressed sound.

There's probably a decent amount of saturation in FX like Softube Atlantis.

Using plugin saturation the way I am now allows me to make a lot of moves that make my ITB mixes way better than they ever were. It's what I use instead of bus compression and I don't run anything across the whole mix until I go into a master session. Then it's hardware, the PA PQ, and utility plugins. Having access to hardware has made me understand the different stages a lot better and how to better maximize the potential of plugins. You realize what can't be done by slapping hardware across a mix. And you get a good idea of what top notch hardware sounds like and can then better understand the quality of plugin emulations. The hardware is sort of a measuring stick. You could even look at investing in it as you would investing tens of thousands in audio school. The hardware might actually be cheaper and give you a better rate of return if you apply yourself, actually.

With that said, there is some quality saturation with plugins. They are faithful enough to the hardware that you can utilize them for the same purposes. The character is retained pretty well. Then you can get creative with chains of saturation plugins mixed with utility plugins to achieve some really good results.

I've used the UAD Culture Vulture a couple times (and when it was right, it was right), and I've got the Blackbox HG-2 (from PA - usually only used it for subtle stuff), Decapitator, and even though it's not technically a saturation plugin, I really like the Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe (aliasing be damned! - although I've never checked..  I like it).  Although tbh, if I'm going for some saturation, I'm usually trying to get it through transformers on the way in (I think almost every one of my pres has transformers... even the "clean" ones)

I like ST Decapitator but when it comes to the crunch (pun intended) I always end up dumping the plugin
and making the effort to send and print through some hardware.

More hassle though - so only for the special tracks :-)

I think Chris and I can both promise our exits will be as comical as humanly possible . Of course on the to much drama front I type this from my favorite breakfast spot invaded by the attendees of a writers conference. Talk about your drama confab. I am as I just told my wife for a publisher to walk over and go “ you probably have the most interesting story to tell how would you like a book deal.”😎