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

[rollasoc]

Tape Machines (sounds great, subtle, very CPU heavy)

One instance almost kills my aging machine. Average load can go from 30% to over 90% when I switch it on. So I just don't use it, when I have other less CPU tape machines. If I do use it in the future, it will be offline processed.

Back on topic.
PSP buss processor
PSP Vintage Warmer 2

are my stock mix bus plugins. (along with Arc and Reference 4 and Waves WLM Plus)

[lwj]

-Black Box Analog HG2
-True Iron, although I prefer to use it on individual sounds.
-Softube Tape, again also much better if you add more instances across a mix
-Wavesfactory Spectre, workhorse saturation for everything.

In fact, the HG2 is the only one that’s consistently on my master, I mix into it. I love saturation but I prefer to use it much earlier on. On the master it can sound kind of caked on, and I just don’t like to do anything complex to the sound there. Since I stopped ‘ozoning’ my track afterwards I learned to mix a hell of a lot better, and louder.

[Mr. Spock]

- Kazrog True Iron (can't go wrong with that)
- Satson Buss (occasionally)
- Drive section of the new Fuse Audio EQ (my favorite right now)

[acousticglue]

Sat X only has a couple settings to me that can be usable.
SDRR is nice in small dose.
Main thought is do most of thinking before master but there is no right or wrong

[Pingafuego]

I try one of these:
CLA Mixdown
Slate VTM
Ozone (tape or multiband exciter)

[LoveEnigma18]

Thanks guys

[foosnark]

I had forgotten about fxPansion Maul. Its multiband mode frankly sounds terrible to me, but in single-band mode, some of the distortion flavors give a nice saturation if you don't push it too hard. It was discontinued, but I happened to have it sitting in my old plugin installer folder so I'll make use of it.


I tried out Saturn and have mixed feelings. If there was a smaller, cheaper version that specialized in saturation, without the creative distortion/mangling stuff, I would buy it in a heartbeat. I might still pick it up if deeply discounted, but I'll probably always be a little annoyed by it.

What I would want would be just a single band with highpass/lowpass, a slightly reduced model selection, and drive, mid/side and wet/dry knobs. Auto gain compensation. Resizable GUI (it looks like it should resize and not just have wide/narrow modes, and it bothers me all out of proportion that it doesn't). No multiband, modulation, graphic EQ, feedback or weird models.

[jochicago]

What I would want would be just a single band with highpass/lowpass, a slightly reduced model selection, and drive, mid/side and wet/dry knobs.

Take a look at Soundspot Ravage. Not exactly your entire wishlist, but it's an interesting and simple featureset to start, then the deep LFO stuff for when you want it.

[foosnark]

Take a look at Soundspot Ravage. Not exactly your entire wishlist, but it's an interesting and simple featureset to start, then the deep LFO stuff for when you want it.

With a current sale price of $10 it seems worth a look, so thanks for pointing it out

EDIT: turns out not to have the flavor I want. It was worth a shot though.

[foosnark]

Ah, I think Wavesfactory Spectre is what I was looking for. It's multiband but in a friendly and freeform sort of way, and it's got the mojo I like.

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

+1 for TB ReelBus 4.

[SoundPorn]

Ravage is more distortion and movement then saturation but Soundspot does make an incredibly underrated Soundgoodizer type vst called Hiku, I'm not exactly sure what its entirely doing but i put it on anything to give it weight and/or widen it out. It only has 2 controls an intensity dial and a 2 band splitter that monos below the cutoff and widens above it. It sounds like instant track polish.

Take a look at Soundspot Ravage. Not exactly your entire wishlist, but it's an interesting and simple featureset to start, then the deep LFO stuff for when you want it.

With a current sale price of $10 it seems worth a look, so thanks for pointing it out

EDIT: turns out not to have the flavor I want. It was worth a shot though.

[AKJ]

Is there any version 2 of SDDR available? I see it mentioned in earlier posts.

That's the current version.

https://klanghelm.com/contents/products/SDRR/SDRR.php

Thanks mate. I did not see '2' anywhere, but I guess it is implicit.

Yes, there is a SDDR2 (was free for V1 users), but imo V1 sounds quite a bit better (seems the algos have changed)

[Ploki]

Voxengo Warmifier and u-he Satin, either or both. Not on master usually (tho i did put out some masters with Satin).

Warmifier sounds like gently pushing something through an analog preamp. very subtle, but it does something sweet. I bought it on a whim, and didnt use it for quite a while, then decided to give it another go and i can't do without it now. It's just instant "extra something"

man, i need to try out klanghelm.

[Ploki]

I tried out Saturn and have mixed feelings. If there was a smaller, cheaper version that specialized in saturation, without the creative distortion/mangling stuff, I would buy it in a heartbeat. I might still pick it up if deeply discounted, but I'll probably always be a little annoyed by it.

i got it in the bundle, and didn't know what to do with it (aside heavy distortions) - until i stopped pushing the drive knob and started pushing input instead. (if you hold option, you can push input and at the same time pull output so you keep your gain)
i found it to be much more subtle this way and needing last post-eq fixes.