Fabfilter Saturn unwanted noise

[GabrielRodrick]

Hi!

I love Fabfilter Saturn Distortion plugin but the background noise (I suppose its a analog flavor) he adds is giving me a lot of trouble.

Anybody knows a work around for this?

Thanks!

[cyphersuit]

Can you name some presets containing that noise?

[GabrielRodrick]

Good question...

I think all the presets but the following:

Back in he day O
Broken tube 66
Mix da loop i sm
rhythmic smudge bm
smudge add II SM
smudge add SM
Clear Hi Gain O
Power 30% SM
Dream Scape bM
Dynamic SSpace Tremolo bM
Smudge Filter bM
Stereo Space Tremolo bM
Clean Amp and Warble O
Clean Tube Amp I - 3 Bands SM
Smoothness FL
Space Tremolo bM
Hall Piano Dynamic Enhancer O

The presets giving me trouble are "Magic Mastering" and "Electro DRS Subtle Sweet" and are placed in a couple of bus tracks.

[@midnight]

is HQ mode enabled? and is the plugin input below 0dbfs?

[Mario-C.]

What sources are you using it on ?

[Atomisk]

Check the feedback knobs for each band. I can't check it right now but I have a feeling that would probably reduce the "unwanted noise". Alternatively, a gate might be your best solution.

[GabrielRodrick]

I'm using it on drums bus. The noise is really low, meters would show arround -100db all the time with one instance of Saturn , I just don't like plugins that add any sort of noise and correct me if I'm wrong but a gate wont work much because its in a drums bus that is processing signal almost all of the track.

[cyphersuit]

Good question...

I think all the presets but the following:

Back in he day O
Broken tube 66
Mix da loop i sm
rhythmic smudge bm
smudge add II SM
smudge add SM
Clear Hi Gain O
Power 30% SM
Dream Scape bM
Dynamic SSpace Tremolo bM
Smudge Filter bM
Stereo Space Tremolo bM
Clean Amp and Warble O
Clean Tube Amp I - 3 Bands SM
Smoothness FL
Space Tremolo bM
Hall Piano Dynamic Enhancer O

The presets giving me trouble are "Magic Mastering" and "Electro DRS Subtle Sweet" and are placed in a couple of bus tracks.

i tried magic mastering and i cant hear any noise being introduced. Electro DRS sounds clean too. Maybe the noise is already in the source material....

[GabrielRodrick]

Yea, I know its almost impossible to hear, but the noise is there, and when I add a bunch of Saturn instances or other noisy plugins to the mix, that's when I start to get cranky about it. Other distortion plugins like Decapitator, Trash and MMultiBandDistortion add no background noise. Some other plugins like waves Api Collection have the option of turning it off.

And I know its Saturn the one with that noise, just insert any audio track, an instance of Saturn, and a meter will show you that there is noise there. I know you can think that there is no way to perceive it, but I just like my mixes to be as crystal clear as possible.

[Gamma-UT]

And I know its Saturn the one with that noise, just insert any audio track, an instance of Saturn, and a meter will show you that there is noise there. I know you can think that there is no way to perceive it, but I just like my mixes to be as crystal clear as possible.

It's a distortion unit. The solution is simple. Turn the mix knob down. You won't get any distortion, but you won't get any noise either.

[ViktorW]

I never noticed but it's true, I amplified the silent Saturn outut by 40-50dB and there I can hear it. Saturn adds noise.
All its distortion models except "smudge" add noise, and different type of noise each time, depending on the model. The "power amp" one seems to be the loudest.
Maybe it's somehow necessary for their distortion/saturation algorithms to work the way they need to?
Also interesting, Cubase doesn't show any movement in the channel meters until the signal goes above roughly -57dB. Below that, nothing.

[samsam]

A distortion/saturation effect that adds noise? My god, I'm shocked!

[ViktorW]

I put about 30 instances of Saturn in a project with one of the noisy presets, still couldn't hear it. I know it's there, but I couldn't hear it.
How many instances of Saturn are you using, Gabriel?
In quiet parts, gate it or draw a fade-out on the final audio render, that'd be your best solution I guess.

Maybe my ears are crap, but the noise would never bother me at all.

[GabrielRodrick]

A distortion/saturation effect that adds noise? My god, I'm shocked!

LOL... It's true, (and kind of obvious), that distortion/saturation plugins work with noise, Saturn just won't bypass the noise when no signal is going through like other plugins do. I was thinking about a way of turning off the noise in the same way Waves API EQ/Compressor offer, but those are different plugins that add analog flavor noise, they don't need noise to work, so yea, now I get it… my bad.

That being said, a gate would do the job for the quiet passages... thanks everyone for helping... learned something new.

[samsam]

A distortion/saturation effect that adds noise? My god, I'm shocked!

LOL... It's true, (and kind of obvious), that distortion/saturation plugins work with noise, Saturn just won't bypass the noise when no signal is going through like other plugins do. I was thinking about a way of turning off the noise in the same way Waves API EQ/Compressor offer, but those are different plugins that add analog flavor noise, they don't need noise to work, so yea, now I get it… my bad.

That being said, a gate would do the job for the quiet passages... thanks everyone for helping... learned something new.

Yea, I was trying to be funny there, although maybe it came across as being a dick, I dunno...


FWIW, when I owned Kombinant, some of the richest distortion settings produced a ton of noise - when you stopped playback the affected channels would still show quite a high reading on the faders. A gate on these channels really did the job.