HQ VST effects to make the final mix sound warm and fat ?

[4damind]

There is only one solution: plug-ins which can capture such nonlinearities.
Try Nebula3, and there programs with sampled tape machines, channel strips or complete consoles.
Try good emulations of analog gear like the T-Racks3 Pultec.

But the thing begins earlier at mixing. If you use only clean sounding plug-ins the result will also be clean Get some better emulations which can bring some of this harmonic saturation back to ITB.
You can also try to put a limiter, like the Sonnox Limiter, on every track. First to compress a very small amount of the peaks and on the other side with the "enhancer" enabled to add some harmonics. This is not to make something louder, its to emulate a bit this different behavior of an analog signal chain. If you have enough CPU power you can also insert on every track a channel emulation or with Nebula3 such a console channel program.

But... There is not one magic plug-in. Its a combination of plug-ins and a bit knowledge. Most of the analog gear also had a rolloff in the highs. So thats often why people saying its "warmer" sounding. So you can say: too much highs too much digital sounding Yes, a high shelf at 16khz can help to make the highs a bit smoother^^

[living sounds]

Putting Sonnox Limiter with the unfortunate "enhance" engaged on every track is a sure way to reap a piercing harsh midrange mess. This is exactly what analog sound is NOT.

[rodgetkfp]

analog summing is still the way to go for most "in the box" mixers. But even in this region, you can use some plugins
to emulate some of these analog characteristics. A good example is the already mentioned method of using impulse responses ( grab yourself a copy of the discontinued -Tritone Colortone Pro- or anything similar and use the DANGEROUS 2 BUS impulse response, set this baby to mode 3A, adjust the color and trim fader, there you go... )
This is just a small example of how to achieve a more "analog" like sound in the digital world.

Rodge

[4damind]

Putting Sonnox Limiter with the unfortunate "enhance" engaged on every track is a sure way to reap a piercing harsh midrange mess. This is exactly what analog sound is NOT.

This means not to have the enhancer at 100% mixed. You should only add a little amount of even/odd harmonics. The "enhance", Inflator etc. gets some ideas from tube distortion and the psychoacoustic effect of loudness.
If you have also vintage plug-ins then you don't need this and of course there are no rules and many other ways to add distortion to a track

[living sounds]

Putting Sonnox Limiter with the unfortunate "enhance" engaged on every track is a sure way to reap a piercing harsh midrange mess. This is exactly what analog sound is NOT.

This means not to have the enhancer at 100% mixed. You should only add a little amount of even/odd harmonics. The "enhance", Inflator etc. gets some ideas from tube distortion and the psychoacoustic effect of loudness.
If you have also vintage plug-ins then you don't need this and of course there are no rules and many other ways to add distortion to a track

It's not the kind of distortion you get with analog hardware. And that distortion is not really why you use the hardware either.

[bootsie]

The reason you use the hardware is the transient response and nothing else.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

analog summing is still the way to go for most "in the box" mixers. But even in this region, you can use some plugins
to emulate some of these analog characteristics. A good example is the already mentioned method of using impulse responses ( grab yourself a copy of the discontinued -Tritone Colortone Pro- or anything similar and use the DANGEROUS 2 BUS impulse response, set this baby to mode 3A, adjust the color and trim fader, there you go... )
This is just a small example of how to achieve a more "analog" like sound in the digital world.

Rodge

but the impulse response is linear.... it's useful, but far from the summing. Tritone is not a simple convolver though, since it's adding some distortion. You still lack the dynamic effect, which is an other interesting component.

[4damind]

Tritone with Colortone is a bit special. With my understanding, the convolution is simple without the dynamic component and also without sampled distortion. Its more like a sampled response curve from an EQ... But they added this "warmth" feature which is something like a extra distortion unit (is there some extra compression? no idea).
However, it works. But its not comparable to Nebula3. I think the time of TritoneDigital with this static convolution and their worst GUIs is over. Yes and because of Pluggo is also discontinued.

[living sounds]

The reason you use the hardware is the transient response and nothing else.

There are other advantages as well, but transients are pretty important.

[djanthonyw]

Colortone will have to do until there's an AU version of Nebula.

[pattonfreak1]

Antress Deep Purple Equaliser is good as well. It is actually the only plug-in that works for my needs.

Mine too.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

Colortone will have to do until there's an AU version of Nebula.

[djanthonyw]

Colortone will have to do until there's an AU version of Nebula.

[poshook]

Colortone will have to do until there's an AU version of Nebula.

there is nothing funny, maybe your inability to make a plugin compatible with all platforms with very low latency and very low CPU usage. Tritone did it but you...

[Agreed]

No u di'nt~