Clean crisp distortion plugins

[jobinho]

I’m looking for a plugin that adds more clean / crisp saturation, so not the guitar amp variety, but something which stays relevant to the original source, adds emphasis but doesn’t destroy it. I heard someone recommend the SSL transformer for this purpose already, so will look into that one. Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks.

[eLawnMust]

Quadrafuzz>>>

[andymcbain]

Kelvin, Saturn

[ralfrobert]

Voxengo stuff:

https://www.voxengo.com/group/harmonic-plugin-download/

Some freebies, too.

[DCrown]

Waves one knob driver

[Niowiad]

more clean / crisp saturation, so not the guitar amp variety, but something which stays relevant to the original source, adds emphasis but doesn’t destroy it.

I think any plugin in the "saturator" category, if gently applied, could serve that purpose.
They gradually add harmonic content and "density" without destroying the waveform immediately.
Some break up more abruptly than others though, it's usually case-by-case.

Anyway, for particularly "transparent" saturation (at fairly high latency), there's this one, although I mostly see it as a dynamics processor.
https://www.newfangledaudio.com/saturate

[Havok]

https://thehouseofkush.com/products/omega-458a

[gentleclockdivider]

CHebbyshev polynomials

[vitocorleone123]

Blue Cats Destructor

[Robmobius]

Kelvin

[egbert101]

Ahh yes, another distortion thread.

Basically, any saturation plugin that can do oversampling. Two I can think of are Blue Cat Audio's Destructor 2, and MeldaProductions MSaturator.

In the case of Destructor 2 you can simply turn off the pre-amp and post-filter sections.

[hey212]

adds emphasis but doesn’t destroy it

Ghz Tupe is literally made for this. There is a section of the controls called "Emphasis" that gives you precise control over which parts of the frequency range you want to protect from over saturating, and to what degree. It's also just incredibly flexible and organic sounding saturation. Can't recommend it highly enough. https://manuals.goodhertz.com/3.7/tupe/ ... asisFilter

[sinkmusic]

Blue Cat Destructor, Newfangled Saturate...

[Ploki]

adds emphasis but doesn’t destroy it

Ghz Tupe is literally made for this. There is a section of the controls called "Emphasis" that gives you precise control over which parts of the frequency range you want to protect from over saturating, and to what degree. It's also just incredibly flexible and organic sounding saturation. Can't recommend it highly enough. https://manuals.goodhertz.com/3.7/tupe/ ... asisFilter

Plugins that also do this:
Wavesfactory Spectre (it's actually reverse of that)
Tone Projects Kelvin (Tone shaping pre faders are for emphasis)
Tone Projects Michelangelo (You can drive the whole EQ and then adjust per-band drive controls for emphasis without even EQing, it also has a very nice distortion to begin with)
Softube Overstayer also really pretty
Melda something, idk which. some have it

this is so incredibly useful control to have i wish every saturator had it

[kraster]

Kelvin.