What's your 'go to' distortion/saturation plugins?

[simon.a.billington]

Oh, a List to put my favorite plugins on.

Waves - Berzerk, anyone?


https://www.waves.com/plugins/berzerk-distortion#image

I was just talking to someone the other day on another forum about how good this little beastie is. And if you run it in MultiMod Rack you can get a 3-band version of it. Quite powerful.

I only wish they put the more full fledged Kaleidoscopes modules into it, that would have made MultiMod more flexible

[El°HYM]

It does 'Aliasing' in a pretty good way and is indeed maybe the most special effect that Waves has to offer.

[simon.a.billington]

It does 'Aliasing' in a pretty good way and is indeed maybe the most special effect that Waves has to offer.

With that much distortion its almost impossible to avoid aliasing unless you have some unreasonably large oversampling setting. Which becomes so impractical its almost impossible to work with, especially on my system. I think Waves found a good middle ground here.

Retro-Fi would be another recent creative special effect that can also be useful, if you're into that kind of thing.

[El°HYM]

I think its very good at what it does and I see Aliasing also as something useful in sound - design. When it comes to Mixing and Mastering, I would rather try to avoid it; but thats also not really the purpose of the Berzerk.

[krixa]

FXpansion Maul - discontinued
Izotope Trash 2 - discontinued

Now what? I don't want to buy stuff from developers not maintaining their products in the long run.

[Robmobius]

FXpansion Maul - discontinued
Izotope Trash 2 - discontinued

Now what? I don't want to buy stuff from developers not maintaining their products in the long run.

Both were great... Shame we got shafted.

My currant go-to is Thermal and Fury. Audiority's 'ABUSER' is good too.

[martiu]

FXpansion Maul - discontinued
Izotope Trash 2 - discontinued

Now what? I don't want to buy stuff from developers not maintaining their products in the long run.

the Arturia one is pretty good, Thermal also

[SNBeatz]

-Reelbus4 (multiple "types" that all just sound great)
-KHS distortion (especially in Multipass for MB saturation)
-BPB Saturator (the best free Saturator that i have personally heard)
-Ozone's Exciter (great for shaping and adding presence / sheen)
-Audiothing Wavebox (everything is just great about this plugin, sounds incredible and gives you a lot of control).

Speaking of Kilohearts, I put off trying Faturator for years because I just figured their Distortion snapin/plugin was the "upgraded" version, but WOW. It has the sound I was using multiple other plugins to achieve after quite some time of experimenting, but all in one super easy and simple interface. I reach for it first quite a bit lately!

The dry/wet mix slider works phenomenally

[bmanic]

FabFilter Saturn 2 for all kinds of creative and subtle things.
FabFilter Volcano for interesting overdriven filters
Audiority Pyros for all crazy over the top stuff
Arturia Coldfire for all purpose experimentation
Plugin Alliance The Oven for sweet sweet sweetness on things
Plugin Alliance Black Box for different kind of sweetness
Plugin Alliance VSM-3 again for a different flavor
Acustica Audio N4 3rd party things (mostly Tim Petheric stuff) for mastering/mixbus gentle sweetness
Tone Projects Kelvin for allround goodies and nastyness (love it on my TD-3! Often prefer it over the built in drive).

[Aiynzahev]

Ah this is a fun topic.

Elysia Karacter - Very hard nosed algorithm, but I like how overblown it is, straight up distortion but still quite smooth, you can use the mix to add just a touch or fully blow up a sound.

Softube Overstayer - I like this one a lot, just to shave off some transients, distort the top end a little or low end, for a sort of blown out euphonic sound, sorry I can't describe it better.

Cassiopeia - A new one, and I use the free version, this one I can slap on anything and it almost always adds something I want to keep. It's free, you should have it.

KUSH AR-1, Silika, Blyss. I just got these on trial, the saturation/distortion is really something.

Xpressor - This is a new one, I don't often use it for distortion alone but when I use it as a compressor I'm always engaging the 2nd distortion option. Very good for smoothing out poking transients.

Softube Harmonics Analog Saturation Processor - I don't use it much but for very subtle effect it's pretty good, especially with the added dynamics control.

Omega A & N - I don't know what they are doing but you can really add some "slap" that's still contained

SPL Twintube - Oldie but still very very good, you can push something a little or give it more character through the saturation

Wavearts Tube Saturate 2 - Amazing tube saturation, for low drive it shaves off transients in an almost unnoticeable way, but adds a subtle sweetness. If you drive it more you can proper break up though.

Arturia Tube Culture - This one is similar to Wave Arts Tube Saturator 2, but seems to be tuned in such a way as to work better on a wider spectrum, for example you can get obvious break up in the top end without totally destroying the bass.

PA Black Box - This one is obviously good but I never use it. I find it's controls too awkward to use in that each one controls the level so it's hard to balance it out.

Noise Engineering Ruina - This thing is insane, absolute destruction, and free too.

I have a fascination with distortion so mostly I just experiment with all these, I don't really need or use them in any real context very often, I find with EDM I almost always prefer clean in the end, but that really depends on the the type of music it is. If you do something more minimal and soft they can work great, but for big heavy stuff full bandwidth busy mixes, I find it's often just too much.

[MogwaiBoy]

FXpansion Maul - discontinued
Izotope Trash 2 - discontinued

Now what? I don't want to buy stuff from developers not maintaining their products in the long run.

Scary to think about but I bet over half the plugins I've ever bought will go this way within a decade or so.

Atleast when I die my kids can sell my Nintendo collection

[Michey]

I see a lot of people using PA distortion plugs (so I assume they sold a lot of 'em)
umm... maybe that is the reason their CEO is called Dirt All-rich ?

My pick trick is (are)

TimP DualTech
TimP OPTO32 Clipper (and I assume Ra6, Vari-Level 2 and n60a V2 - would follow)
ShaperBox 3 (be subtle, be overdriven, be rhythmically fuzzy or just go plain berzerk. your choice)
ConvologyXT Loaded with either of the following (100% wet as per the dev request, with the internal EQ tweaked, if needed, to follow to appropriate aural circumstances):
------------------------------------------------------------
--> AMPEX AG-440
--> AMS Neve BCM10-2
--> Collins 26U1
--> Fairchild 660/670
--> Manley VoxBox
--> RCA BC-5B
--> STUDER 169/A80/J37
** The above IR's are followed by BPB Saturator (only "Tape" amount knob is tweaked to : =<25) and a trimmer
------------------------------------------------------------
BpB Dirty LA (dirt amount)
Camel Crusher/PHAT
GSatPlus (Tubey)/SLM2 V2


Regarding the longevity of SW:
Guys, you do understand that we operate in COMMODITY era, right ? like... here today, gone tomorrow (and it REALLY doesn't matter how good it is)

[JerGoertz]

Speaking of brilliant free distortion plugins, Shattered Glass Audio SGA1566 does things in terms of warmth that few paid can. If you then have a machine powerful enough to swallow SGA1566's 4x oversampling mode, you get some of the smoothed saturation.

Gotta admit, this does sound really good. A very "analog" sounding distortion plugin.

I believe the dev said the paid version offers better CPU efficiency, along with the additional distortion models.

[worldfever]

currently
iZotope trash 2 - i know this gets a lot of love, i also use it quite a bit but never was the hugest fan of it, it does have a certain sound to me that is a bit overused. still hoping to get to use it in the future and a real its getting discontinued, this one is really a cult classic

toneprojects kelvin is amazing too for frying up basses and mixes and busses and I picked up Coldfire which is very versatile and has cool sound design options akin to izotope trash 2, although some features are missing like the convolution part and some of the more esoteric trash 2 algos.
On a lot of KVR recommendations im also trying out audiority pyros, algos sound great to me but doesnt really offer anything to me these others don't. But its very cheap for how good it sounds

I also picked up thermal and RIFT a while ago, don't use these too much yet, just use some presets here and there, don't consider them so much distortions but just boxes i can put on sounds randomly and slap on a preset to completely transform them

[Lazylefteye]

Cassiopeia is superb and an absolute bargain at €19 not in your face but just does something really nice.

My other favourite that doesn’t get the attention it should is Aroma. Great sounding and very versatile.

For my guitar I have all the overdrive fuzz and distortion I want from my HX Stomp.