Best Saturation plugin?

nortiks said:

BTW, Kirchoff EQ can do this as well.

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Ok. Maybe. But I don't have or want that EQ - and also suspect it can't do it exactly the same way.

Kirchhoff's visibility over the regions Infra/Ultrasonic are working on isn't as comfortable for those regions. Sonically I'm sure it's on par when it comes to making those continuously variable slope high cuts but without the same "makeup" effects provided in each of the new TDR filters, which are pretty interesting if not sometimes very effective. Which is part of why I went and bought Spectre. The relative mode in Kirchhoff is working well - not identically to Arbiter, but well. While Kirchhoff is my primary do-everything EQ, I think the TDR plugins are excellent to use and I might get them.

Maybe the best plugin saturation is the kind that produces healthy competition!

Audiority Pyros
Dist Cold Fire
Ozone Exciter ( i find this can sound almost identical to Saturn 2, minus the modulation)

Elliot A said:

Kirchhoff's visibility over the regions Infra/Ultrasonic are working on isn't as comfortable for those regions. Sonically I'm sure it's on par when it comes to making those continuously variable slope high cuts but without the same "makeup" effects provided in each of the new TDR filters, which are pretty interesting if not sometimes very effective. Which is part of why I went and bought Spectre. The relative mode in Kirchhoff is working well - not identically to Arbiter, but well. While Kirchhoff is my primary do-everything EQ, I think the TDR plugins are excellent to use and I might get them.

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The Ultrasonic filter is the only one in the bundle that doesn't have any of the "makeup" effects. And Kirchoff can do similar things to an extent to what the high pass and low pass filters in the bundle do. But the TDR filters are better mousetraps imo for the specific tasks they are designed for, so I bought them. Very impressed after using them in real projects.

Forgive me if this has already been posted in the thread, but I just thought I'd mention that one of my very favorite saturation tools at the moment is totally farkin free... it isn't nearly as feature-rich as things like Saturn or Kelvin (or even Decapitator) but damn, does it sound nice for some subtle, pleasing, tube-and-transformer-style saturation. I'm using it a ton.

Fuse Audio Labs VPRE-72

I've had the pleasure of using a number of actual Siemens/Telefunken V72 units, and I haven't had the chance to A/B any of them with this plugin. But I can say with confidence that the plugin does pretty much exactly what I would want one of the actual units to do. I would have gladly paid for this plugin as soon as it was released since I'm such a fan of the real thing, but Mr. Dratwa made it free. Is my money not good enough for you, sir?!?

proggermusic said:

Forgive me if this has already been posted in the thread, but I just thought I'd mention that one of my very favorite saturation tools at the moment is totally farkin free... it isn't nearly as feature-rich as things like Saturn or Kelvin (or even Decapitator) but damn, does it sound nice for some subtle, pleasing, tube-and-transformer-style saturation. I'm using it a ton.

Fuse Audio Labs VPRE-72

I've had the pleasure of using a number of actual Siemens/Telefunken V72 units, and I haven't had the chance to A/B any of them with this plugin. But I can say with confidence that the plugin does pretty much exactly what I would want one of the actual units to do. I would have gladly paid for this plugin as soon as it was released since I'm such a fan of the real thing, but Mr. Dratwa made it free. Is my money not good enough for you, sir?!?

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Thanks for the reminder - I haven't downloaded this one yet. I'm a big fan of Fuse Audio Labs plugins.

I'd like to throw in a cautious recommendation for Acustica Audio. For those who don't know, Acustica Audio use convolution technology to sample hardware. So, it is a bit like using a very distinctive sort of convolution reverb, but for EQ, compression, limiting and saturation. Acustica Audio say that they have made major advances in 2023 in improving the realism of their reproduction of overdriven analog hardware, and crucially also in counteracting aliasing. Other people than me maybe able to assess these claims. Going by my ears, I think that, at any rate, the sound has improved. They have also improve the memory footprint and CPU efficiency. I can definitely attest to that latter point.

Taupe is their tape focused plugin; but it is a little older and doesn't use their latest technology. Taupe does not include an oversampling option; which doesn't mean that it isn't oversampling at some set amount - I just don't know. Jam is almost up to date (improved saturation technology) and has a lot of saturation options. Pumpkin (free) and Pumpkin Pro (not free) were released in December 2023 and have their latest anti-aliasing techniques. There are lots of other plugins that include saturation. Actually, probably all of them - but where there is a preamp option, you have to turn that on or there won't be any saturation.

I'm cautious because I haven't, and don't really have the skills to, done any testing of these plugins to see what they are doing. I'm also cautious because I suspect that there might be a slight tendency for Acustica Audio saturation to sound like it is sitting on top of the original signal - as if it isn't quite fully integrated. That doesn't make much sense scientifically, but that is an impression I have. Finally, with the older plugins, they are definitely better at slight, barely perceptible saturation than noticeable overdrive.

With those caveats, I have found Taupe, Jam and Pumpkin to make a real, positive difference to the sound. Jam and Pumpkin can do quite heavy distortion as well as subtle saturation.

Bee_Abney said:

I'm also cautious because I suspect that there might be a slight tendency for Acustica Audio saturation to sound like it is sitting on top of the original signal - as if it isn't quite fully integrated.

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I have the same feeling as you regarding this matter.

Today I saw this, some sort of overview:

Regarding Acustica Audio, some have called them out for unnecessarily bloated software, NSFW (language):