KVR Audio

kevvvvv · Post by **kevvvvv** » Wed May 10, 2023 4:37 pm

I struggle with all my saturators because of the loudness bump they all give.

The increased loudness fools me every time into thinking the new saturated sound is better.

Then today I read a "best saturator" review at Music Radar

https://www.musicradar.com/news/best-saturation-plugins

Not one of these so called best appears to have autogain.

Also the article has strong links to pluginboutique, as if the article were some kind of payment for advertising with them.

And while the article is good at trying to differentiate 10 top saturators, the "no autogain" feature is sidestepped like the elephant in the room, which makes me suspect the experience of the author,
Matt McCracken the Junior Deals writer, who looks qualified to write, but somehow forgot to mention autogain.

So .... is a saturator without autogain worth buying in 2023?

Digivolt · Post by **Digivolt** » Wed May 10, 2023 4:54 pm

I don't really mind a lack of autogain because I can just use letimix gainmatch to do it for me, yeah it's couple extra steps but if the saturation is good it's probably a worthy sacrifice of time

El°HYM · Post by **El°HYM** » Wed May 10, 2023 5:02 pm

If it at least has input & output gain, you could just map those to a rotary encoder and use it similar to hardware. Not too sure about that list though, as it could almost be from 2012 or something?

Nug Wrangler · Post by **Nug Wrangler** » Wed May 10, 2023 5:41 pm

if it atleast has output gain its fine by me

Niowiad · Post by **Niowiad** » Wed May 10, 2023 5:50 pm

kevvvvv wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 4:37 pm https://www.musicradar.com/news/best-saturation-plugins
Not one of these so called best appears to have autogain.

I have two from that list, and both have some way to compensate gain.
- SDRR with that 'AGC' switch you see on the right.
- BlackBox HG-2 has the 'Density' knob on top of the GUI. It's best used as a "master" auto-compensated gain parameter to drive the plugin more or less at a comparable output level, after all other stages have have been set up for a desired shape/color to the sound. But if you mean stuff like compensating just for the internal stages, it's true it does not do that. It only does "overall" IN/OUT gain compensation.

I have some plugins which don't compensate gain, and honestly it has become second nature to quickly adjust the output knob at a comparable level. If needed, soloing the track and giving a peek at the master meter.
Sometimes with autogain I even have to increase the output with plugins which I feel are doing "too much compensation", mostly happening at very high drive settings.
I used to obsess about always 100% perfectly level matching stuff to not get fooled by loudness (often with dedicated loudness matching tools), but nowadays I don't care as much on most occasions.

And there are definitely times where I don't even want any level matching and I just go for the "dirty" boost.

martiu · Post by **martiu** » Wed May 10, 2023 7:51 pm

the best saturator is not on this list - PSP Saturator

MidnightRunner · Post by **MidnightRunner** » Wed May 10, 2023 8:12 pm

RC-20 is great. one of my best investments.

musicproducerdee · Post by **musicproducerdee** » Wed May 10, 2023 8:57 pm

In my experience, manual gain has always worked better, even with plugins that have auto gain. Anyways, I do use auto gain as a starting point, but most of the times, I end up adjusting the output gain manually, as per preference.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Wed May 10, 2023 9:15 pm

I would prefer not having auto gain myself. It throws me off as I usually just adjust those things as I adjust everything else. So when the plugin starts futzing with the output level, it's more confusing than anything else. I might feel differently if auto gain worked better in most of my plugins. It usually ends up louder than it should be with AGC on. I turn it off where possible.

mothra · Post by **mothra** » Wed May 10, 2023 9:35 pm

God forbid you buy a plugin where you have to adjust your input and output levels yourself and actually listen to what is going on! THE HUMANITY!!!!

martiu · Post by **martiu** » Wed May 10, 2023 9:43 pm

mothra wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 9:35 pm God forbid you buy a plugin where you have to adjust your input and output levels yourself and actually listen to what is going on! THE HUMANITY!!!!

How dare you? HOW DARE YOU KIND MISTER ?

jens · Post by **jens** » Wed May 10, 2023 10:09 pm

mothra wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 9:35 pm God forbid you buy a plugin where you have to adjust your input and output levels yourself and actually listen to what is going on! THE HUMANITY!!!!

Exactly what I was thinking...

Amon1973 · Post by **Amon1973** » Wed May 10, 2023 10:19 pm

Voted "I can live with manually...", but it would have been "I deactivate auto-gain immediately in any plugin that provides it". It usually doesn't work 100% accurately and sure I never found any plugin which have accurate auto-gain on all sources.

CrystalWizard · Post by **CrystalWizard** » Thu May 11, 2023 12:31 am

jens wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 10:09 pm
mothra wrote: Wed May 10, 2023 9:35 pm God forbid you buy a plugin where you have to adjust your input and output levels yourself and actually listen to what is going on! THE HUMANITY!!!!
Exactly what I was thinking...

+1

kevvvvv · Post by **kevvvvv** » Thu May 11, 2023 12:43 pm

I'm almost conditioned now like Pavlov's dog to hear the volume go up when a distortion is engaged.

Late at night I hate excessive mouse effort for fiddly stuff like distortion levelling. There are plenty of better things to do like comparing different distortion tones instead of levelling up.

But I appreciate some of the plugins reviewed above have some form of agc, so thanks for the heads up.

KVR Audio

is a saturator without autogain worth it in 2023?

Is a saturator without autogain worth buying in 2023