Help me understand saturation and its uses please

[plexuss]

Naturally occurring distortion in analogue circuits is often quite dynamic, varying with among other things characteristics of the environment. The vast majority of distortion implementations in plugins is static and doesn't reflect the impact of distortion in real analogue circuits. For me this lowers the value and usefulness of digital distortion implementations in audio work as its inaccurate analogue emulation and rarely sounds good.

[bmanic]

But this is good. I was kind of expecting everybody to tell me how great saturation is and that I simply must use it on this source or that one, blah blah blah. Now I know I can just go to work and not use it at all and I won't be missing anything, unless a particular situation calls for it.

You'll be missing a lot. At the very least try to do the example I mentioned in my lengthy post at the end. Add some subtle harmonic distortion to all of your tracks, then start the mix from there. Now compare it to a version where you didn't add that distortion.

Please note that I really do mean only saturation that you can't easily hear at first.. just enough so that you hear things are slightly changing but not actually being clearly saturated.

This is a great ear training exercise as well.

Here is a great free plugin for all your subtle saturation needs:

https://www.tbproaudio.de/products/gsatplus

Basically this has been the norm of mixing before digital came along.. and saturation _is_ a big part of the sound of everything that was done before digital, because it was pretty much impossible to avoid it.

Cool plug, I'll definitely pick it up and give it a try. Any pointers? Use more even than odd harmonics? How many gain stages to use?

That makes me very curious, I want to go see what it's like.

Just dial it so that it sounds good to you. There are no rules.

Even harmonics are usually easier on the ear while 3rd harmonics are more forward and immediate sounding. I don't remember how the various stages work in that plugin though. Probably just saturation stages in series I assume, so more stages would mean higher orders of harmonics added.. but I could be wrong about that.

I suggest dialing it up until a point where the saturation is obvious to you, then dialing it down a bit. Then render or start mixing right away from there (if I remember correctly, that plugin is relative light on CPU usage but if it isn't, just offline process your files and start mixing from there).

[Mind Riot]

Just dial it so that it sounds good to you. There are no rules.

Even harmonics are usually easier on the ear while 3rd harmonics are more forward and immediate sounding. I don't remember how the various stages work in that plugin though. Probably just saturation stages in series I assume, so more stages would mean higher orders of harmonics added.. but I could be wrong about that.

I suggest dialing it up until a point where the saturation is obvious to you, then dialing it down a bit. Then render or start mixing right away from there (if I remember correctly, that plugin is relative light on CPU usage but if it isn't, just offline process your files and start mixing from there).

Groovy, thanks for the heads up and the plug suggestion. I'll post back when I've tried it and see what kind of results I've got.

[elxsound]

Not sure if it’s already mentioned but a big reason to use saturation in mixing is to make things audible on all different listening devices.

Those added harmonics can extend the listening range of different sounds so things are not cutoff when moving to mobile phones. (As one an example)

There’s more to it than that, but there is a use.

[BONES]

So the idea here was to illustrate how I think saturation should be used effectively, and why, because that was the question at hand. If you want "a typical indie production" sound, then use it.

Here's the thing, that "typical indie production" is not very good. It sounds like it was done on the cheap and it makes you wonder how much better it might have sounded if they'd had access to a better studio. As I said, it's something most of us have spent decades trying to get away from.

You seek warmth. I seek clarity. To each his own. I simply don't want people who are just getting in into the music scene now to think that going back to the 70's or 80's is something they should be automatically striving to accomplish.

I'm just trying to dispel the myth that "warmth" is something worth achieving. If you think it's something you want then by all means smear away, as long as you're not trying to convince others it a goal worth attaining.

Albums sounded great back then not because of analog but in spite of it....

I really hate it when I have to agree with Teksonik but he is right on the money here. I'd go a step further and suggest that the "warmth" you seek is there most of the time and doesn't need to be added. It is very rare that I want to use a sound that I think sounds too "digital" and needs to be warmed up. Most devs these days build it into their plugins, whether they are trying to emulate some old piece of shit hardware or not.

[whassup]

This.

Too bad that he only made a few of those very informative, cool videos.

[_leras]

Is English your first language?

Probably, but it got too philosophical, surely morw than it needs to

It's hardly philosophical to say there are different types of saturation and distortion.

There's a huge range of tones available from different types of distortion.

My point was just that I think, tonally, that saturation and distortion suggest different sounds. Not sure how that's even contentious issue tbh.

[jens]

The vast majority of distortion implementations in plugins is static and doesn't reflect the impact of distortion in real analogue circuits.

Nope, that's nonsense...

[_leras]

The vast majority of distortion implementations in plugins is static and doesn't reflect the impact of distortion in real analogue circuits.

Nope, that's nonsense...

I also think that's not true for all saturation/distortion tools. After all it's an effect that affects things over a certain level.
Ohmicide from way back even had an input level light so you could set the optimum level. Plenty of others have input level knobs.

[_leras]

So why use saturation? Because it is a natural physical phenomenon and thus desirable in almost all context, to a certain degree. Virtually every single acoustic instrument, heck even your voice, can be considered being "distorted". The harmonics produced via varying methods is what makes up part of the tonality and character of a sound.

This thread is in its nature typical of a generation of musicians who only (or at least mostly) understand music as a digital phenomenon, I think.

I'd say its more indicative of the fact that *everyone* is working digitally these days.

There have been lots of tools aimed at recreating the "mojo" of classic recordings saturation is just one of these.

Off topic: The biggest change from the classic recordings is probably that everything is more compressed and inflated these days and has less headroom and more listening fatigue. This one seems particularly hard to fix as even the classic recordings are being remastered en mass, and more often than not sound worse than the original.

[elxsound]

warmth vs clarity is not a necessary argument in terms of using saturation. It's not limited to a very limited idea of what indie music might sound like, or recording styles of the 60s and 70s.

Intentionally applying saturation to achieve wanted results is very much a modern way of mixing and some of the biggest hits, award winning mixes, use saturation in the mixing process. These are very "clean" sounding mixes, so it's definitely not about sacrificing clarity.

While I know this might start an entirely different conversation about listening to modern pop music, but look up credits for Jaycen Joshua, then check out some of his videos as he talks about what he uses in mixes.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5981822/awards/

[legendCNCD]

One man's "warmth" is another man's muddy and smeared.

Is it that you think saturation by default does this always or you did not eq it properly? Just asking

You seek warmth. I seek clarity. To each his own.

I'm just trying to dispel the myth that "warmth" is something worth achieving. If you think it's something you want then by all means smear away, as long as you're not trying to convince others it a goal worth attaining.

I am just having oddities around the "muddy and smeared", as thats not something I want either. I seek both 'warmth' and 'clarity'. I do not think saturation/harmonic saturation is by default muddying or/and smearing.

[Mind Riot]

Just dial it so that it sounds good to you. There are no rules.

Even harmonics are usually easier on the ear while 3rd harmonics are more forward and immediate sounding. I don't remember how the various stages work in that plugin though. Probably just saturation stages in series I assume, so more stages would mean higher orders of harmonics added.. but I could be wrong about that.

I suggest dialing it up until a point where the saturation is obvious to you, then dialing it down a bit. Then render or start mixing right away from there (if I remember correctly, that plugin is relative light on CPU usage but if it isn't, just offline process your files and start mixing from there).

Well, I tried it out, put it on all channels with some mild settings and did some careful listening with it on and then bypassed and back and forth. It's certainly obvious that it's there; it makes everything a bit more bold and forward, it's a nice effect. I'll try some stronger settings, I kept things pretty mild; both harmonic controls at 25%, 2 stages of saturation, clipping at -0.6 db.

But it is certainly an improvement if you keep it under control. I can see why people like doing it so much, it just makes everything sound stronger and more polished.

Thanks again for the heads up about the plug. It does its job well and free is always good. I've got other saturation plugs I'm going to try, Klanghelm's SDRR II in particular comes to mind.

I'm also having some fun with some tape saturation on the master bus, I've got UADs Oxide tape sim and IK's Tape 80 or whatever it's called. They both sound amazing but I think they're too strong an effect to have on every channel, or am I wrong about that? It just seems like it would be too much, too much added bass, too much distortion of the original signal.

Anyway, this is all a lot of fun to play around with and I think it will improve my mixes permanently.

[bmanic]

Yeah the UAD Oxide is really heavily colored and because the metering is so slow and sluggish (as are some real VU metering) it's extremely easy to overdo it. You can use Oxide in a lot of places but be sure to turn off the noise or it will become a problem (flip the NR toggle switch to on). Also you may want to "flatten" the EQ curve with an EQ before or after the plugin as it heavily boosts the bass. I've got a preset for flattening the EQ of Oxide in both 15ips and 7.5ips settings for Kirchoff EQ. If you happen to have that plugin I could send you the preset. Or I could post a picture of it so you get a general idea of what it's doing.

The trick is to simply experiment with saturations of all different flavors as it all makes quite a big difference at the end of the chain. It affects everything from EQ decisions, compression, etc. Also be sure to test adding some saturation to your auxiliary busses like Reverb sends, Delay sends etc.

Klanghelm SDRR II is a really special plugin! It is completely unique in both it's operation and sound. It is one of those magical "nothing else sounds quite like it" type of plugins (neither hardware nor software!) and I can very highly recommend it.

A final thing you can experiment with is using pre and post EQ emphasis. This means you use a symmetrical EQ (one that can cancel itself out when you boost in one instance and cut the exact inverse in another) to feed the saturation with different EQ curves. For instance you can very effectively combat aliasing by having an EQ before your saturation plugin and use a high-shelf (I always recommend shelf as it affects the phase the least destructively) around 5 to 10kHz and then cut it heavily, like -12dB.. then insert your saturation plugin and then finally another instance of the EQ with an identical shelf but with the inverse gain. This will give you very different flavor of your saturation. You can also feed your saturation with certain frequency ranges and thus force them to get a lot more harmonic content than other ranges. This can help sit elements within the mix without really EQing them. Again, all of this makes a big impact down the line and will affect how you EQ and compress the signal within the mix.

[Mind Riot]

Yeah the UAD Oxide is really heavily colored and because the metering is so slow and sluggish (as are some real VU metering) it's extremely easy to overdo it. You can use Oxide in a lot of places but be sure to turn off the noise or it will become a problem (flip the NR toggle switch to on). Also you may want to "flatten" the EQ curve with an EQ before or after the plugin as it heavily boosts the bass. I've got a preset for flattening the EQ of Oxide in both 15ips and 7.5ips settings for Kirchoff EQ. If you happen to have that plugin I could send you the preset. Or I could post a picture of it so you get a general idea of what it's doing.

The trick is to simply experiment with saturations of all different flavors as it all makes quite a big difference at the end of the chain. It affects everything from EQ decisions, compression, etc. Also be sure to test adding some saturation to your auxiliary busses like Reverb sends, Delay sends etc.

Klanghelm SDRR II is a really special plugin! It is completely unique in both it's operation and sound. It is one of those magical "nothing else sounds quite like it" type of plugins (neither hardware nor software!) and I can very highly recommend it.

A final thing you can experiment with is using pre and post EQ emphasis. This means you use a symmetrical EQ (one that can cancel itself out when you boost in one instance and cut the exact inverse in another) to feed the saturation with different EQ curves. For instance you can very effectively combat aliasing by having an EQ before your saturation plugin and use a high-shelf (I always recommend shelf as it affects the phase the least destructively) around 5 to 10kHz and then cut it heavily, like -12dB.. then insert your saturation plugin and then finally another instance of the EQ with an identical shelf but with the inverse gain. This will give you very different flavor of your saturation. You can also feed your saturation with certain frequency ranges and thus force them to get a lot more harmonic content than other ranges. This can help sit elements within the mix without really EQing them. Again, all of this makes a big impact down the line and will affect how you EQ and compress the signal within the mix.

I do have Kirchhoff actually, if you'd like to post a pic of your patch, might be less hassle.

These are all intriguing ideas, I'll likely try out every one of them. Thank you for being so generous with your knowledge and experience.