Request from a mastering engineer (MCompressor style saturation)

[sparella]

That preset sounds amazing on a piano. A clean attack and a crunchy sustain.

I actually use a Pigtronix Philosophers Twin parallel compressor pedal (that has distortion built in) to accomplish this live, but yeah, this actually does sound pretty good. I think I'll just use the plugin in post from now on!

It's a bit different from distorting the sustain half of the transient crossover. With this you can just distort the R of the ADSR envelope if you want. Thats not really possible with the transient crossover.

[sparella]

I do think there will be a difference in sound from upwards expanding volume and upwards expanding saturation.

Another technique you could try would be to isolate the delta of your MCompressor expander preset on a separate track and run saturation after it. Then you gently push up the track's fader to taste. This way only the expanding volume gets saturated and the rest stays clean.

[Held]

Another technique you could try would be to isolate the delta of your MCompressor expander preset on a separate track and run saturation after it.

That's a neat idea, so I tried to create it in MXXX.

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Use the Comp module to control the compression, the Saturator module to control the saturation and the Input 2 in the Mixer to control the amount saturation.

I couldn't make it sound good, on the material I tried, but maybe someone else can make it work.

[El°HYM]

There is actually a plugin called DynaQ which does exactly what you are asking for. Yet it is also surely possible to replicate with some Melda stuff, like described above. Would also be interesting to see a dedicated plugin with an optimized workflow and such. Just an Idea.

[BackInCheck]

If your DAW has a built-in envelope follower to modulate the parameters of other plugins, this should be easy to set up.