What are you go-to mix bus and master bus "saturation" plugins?

[simon.a.billington]

Any thoughts on:
- elysia Compressor (just the saturation section)
- Softube Harmonics?

Planning on demoing tonight but curious in the meantime.

Are you talking about the Soft Clipper on the Alpha... or driving the output section the mpressor hard and gaining it back with a trim plugin?.

I was referring to the soft clipper. I've since bought it and it's absolutely lovely

I quite like that myself.

[perpetual3]

I like newfangled audio saturate, ik tapes and Acustica audio celestial. Saturation in Kush Novatron too. Wavesfactory Specter. Creative intent tantrum.

[simon.a.billington]

Looks like Abbey Road Saturator can also be added to this expanding list, unless I missed seeing it mentioned. It sounds pretty good to me.

New one on my list too, although I bloody misspelt it somewhere above!! Haha!!

I've got to say but was pretty inventive for the engineers to come up with the out of the box method method. I guess the same could be said for their ADR technique. Brilliant minds.

[Good Times]

I upgraded my PC in December to be able to use Tape Machines and similar CPU hogs. For Tape Machines is was definitely worth it. Big improvement to my songs!

What are the specs of your new Machine

Sorry for the late reply, still getting used to this forum.

I'm on Windows 10, Studio One 4. I asked for a new processor that maximizes the CPU per core and was recommended an Intel i5-9600K, 3.7 GHz, 3696 MHz with 6 cores. An SSD drive also made a difference.

One instance of Tape Machine still leads to a 19% CPU hit. But that's okay because almost all of my other plugs barely register. Things like Clariphonic or Black Box HG-2 are at 5% CPU, most below 2%. (Gotta add that I mix at 1024 samples.) Before the upgrade I felt too limited in the plugins I can pick to do the job best.

I'd upload a file showing you the difference of sound with and without Tape Machine but I can't see how to upload an MP3.

[JerGoertz]

I own tape, saturator and exciter plugs from every major dev out there (many just included with bundles for other things). I rotate through them from time to time to see if there's something that i've been missing by NOT using them. Usually, I just wind up going back to the one plug that reliably gives me what I want:

Nomad Factory Blue Tubes Analog Trackbox

This plug has been around since the stone age, and I know that many here have long ago written off Nomad Factory as a vestige of long forgotten era. However, this thing delivers. The presets are actually useful, and the sound is as warm as you want it to be.

Oddly, Nomad has a couple of great tape plugs, but the Trackbox still does it better IMHO.

I like it, too. I wondered if my ears were suspect for liking such an old, obviously outdated plugin.

[El°HYM]

I recently threw a Fuseaudio TCS-68 on the Masterbus; kind of by accident or non-intended, yet worked out brilliant. As for 'digital-distortion' I kind of get lost with these, or cant really hear that 'sound' anymore... so the more subtle and warm it sounds, the better for me. FA has some Gems here, as does Chris from Airwindows.

[BERFAB]

I own tape, saturator and exciter plugs from every major dev out there (many just included with bundles for other things). I rotate through them from time to time to see if there's something that i've been missing by NOT using them. Usually, I just wind up going back to the one plug that reliably gives me what I want:

Nomad Factory Blue Tubes Analog Trackbox

This plug has been around since the stone age, and I know that many here have long ago written off Nomad Factory as a vestige of long forgotten era. However, this thing delivers. The presets are actually useful, and the sound is as warm as you want it to be.

Oddly, Nomad has a couple of great tape plugs, but the Trackbox still does it better IMHO.

I like it, too. I wondered if my ears were suspect for liking such an old, obviously outdated plugin.

It's not "outdated" if you're still using it.

[Jade_one]

Black box sometimes, Fielding reviver is cool too

[3ee]

Black box sometimes, Fielding reviver is cool too

Fielding Reviver seems very interesting... are there other plugs that generate one or a very limited number of harmonic partials?

[Ploki]

Black box sometimes, Fielding reviver is cool too

Fielding Reviver seems very interesting... are there other plugs that generate one or a very limited number of harmonic partials?

https://www.voxengo.com/product/shinechilla/
https://www.meldaproduction.com/MCharacter

i wouldn't put any on master tho.

[3ee]

Black box sometimes, Fielding reviver is cool too

Fielding Reviver seems very interesting... are there other plugs that generate one or a very limited number of harmonic partials?

https://www.voxengo.com/product/shinechilla/
https://www.meldaproduction.com/MCharacter

i wouldn't put any on master tho.

Thanks! Yeah, I need it for the master channel so it needs to be at least on par with Fielding Reviver, I am searching for alternatives to compare!

[bmanic]

I think the saturation part of Tone Projects Unisum is pretty good. Hopefully Rune will implement more control over the process (he calls it HYGGE which apparently means "cozy" in Danish).

Still, it sounds great on a lot of stuff.

.. having said that, it's nothing at all like Fielding Reviver which is just a very clean basic harmonic adding effect (which is not to say that it's bad at all, on the contrary, as far as I remember it was super clean with absolutely minimal aliasing).

[Ploki]

I wonder how fielding produces the harmonics.

+1 on Hygge. It really is cozy.

[3ee]

I'm currently avoiding checking out Unisum too much ... I'm afraid I'll like it too much...

Guys, I just tried to fine-tune Venn Audio V-Clip amplitude to get similar results and it works (+seems to sound better to me from some quick tests) ... even though there are some extra harmonics they are far below given the shape, so try the Sine type (input +4, ceilin -2, output -4) this is to emulate what Reviver is doing 2nd OFF, 3rd 100, output -6

[MogwaiBoy]

SlickEQ M (High and Low exciters)
Voxengo Warmifier / OVC-128 (what a combo!!)
Kazrog True Iron
SDRR (Desk mode)
Analog Obsession KONSOL (I really hate to admit this, but it's good)

All in the tiniest doses.

There's also a few Acustica plugins that you just chuck on the "Pre" button and nothing else, that do the 3D thing. Coral2 is very classy in this regard.

Recently got Elysia Phil's Cascade on sale. I'm starting to turn off PA as a company but this is quite a special processor. Almost anything Reimund (Black Rooster / Fuse Audio) touched at PA is Gold and the Elysia plugins are just about the only ones that actually oversample to get close to analog. Prefer this one over HG-2.

Fielding DSP Reviver is pretty amazing after all these years. I don't use on the master but it's great on certain tracks (though I often come back and find myself removing it). No noisefloor, no frequency curves imposed, no "tolerance modelling" Marketing hype - just pure scientific odd/even harmonic generation in a simple interface for a good price. 64-bit double precision and super super clean, next to no aliasing. I hope the company are still active.

Demo'ing: FireCobra. This is doing more than saturation but has a strong "betterizer" vibe - although it looks and feels gimmicky on the outside it seems to be very sophisicated in sound and processing.

Curious about: Wavesfactory Spectre. Intending to demo this one. Seems to be on the modern/sophisticated side of things, at least in interface and how you interact with it like it's an EQ. I keep hearing good things about this so I want to check it out.