G-Sonique has announced the release of FAT+ smart analog / vacuum tube / tape saturation, a new VST effect plug-in for Windows. It costs €22.90 but is available for the introductory price of €13.90 for first 100 customers)

Here's what they say about it:

In music, mixing and production there exists 4 methods of eliminating unwanted peaks of a signal and improving the overall loudness of channels or the whole mix. They are : compression, hard clipping, soft clipping or saturation.

While compression is used most frequently it is not often the best solution to eliminate unwanted peaks and higher overall loudness because compressed signals often lose their dynamics, transients, clarity and transparency - compressed signals often sound pumped, squashed, and unnatural.

Because of this reason, more and more renowned mix engineers are often found using soft clipping and saturation of high signals driven through analog tape or vacuum tubes that enrich the sound and offer a more natural reduction of unwanted peaks and raise the overall level of loudness. Often it is best to combine saturation/soft clipping together with compression and limiting and use 3 different tools together to create more natural sounding elimination of peaks and increasing loudness.

Hard (digital) clipping = all peaks over a certain level are simply cut which can create a harsh distorted sound.

Saturation / soft (analog) clipping = all peaks over a certain level are rounded, not cut, that creates a pleasant and more natural sounding removal of the highest peaks and improve overall loudness, often more natural sounding solution than compressing the signal.

While other solutions offer you concrete emulations of some vintage machines with all unwanted artifacts, new FAT+ offers you a modern and clean style of analog saturation / soft clipping and full control over the style of saturation. You can create and set your own style of saturation from a clean sounding tube saturation from an analog mix console saturation to clean sounding saturation of modern analog tape.

For the most precise and clean sound without digital distortion or artifacts FAT+ offers 4x internal oversampling.

For more info please visit: www.g-sonique.com/fat+