saturation/distortion with excellent anti-aliasing

[KBSoundSmith]

Klanghelm SDRR has three quality settings, and the highest one is good enough for me in the vast majority of cases. It's also impossible cheap for how good it is (like all Klanghelm stuff).

+1 for Klanghelm SDRR.

Another to look at is Newfangled Audio Saturate, as it as has the ability to add saturation but retain the details of the audio rather than being purely destructive.

[BackInCheck]

Use GSat+ at 4x oversampling. You will not experience any audible aliasing. I tested it and it's fine.

Another tip: use saturation very sparingly on high frequency material. I use it mostly on low to mid frequency instruments (kicks, bass, sometimes rimshots or even sometimes snares; not so much on hihats, cymbals or high pitch synths)

[BackInCheck]

Melda waveshapper can go up to 16X resampling

single band version is free, multiband version is 40$ but often go on sale for 20$

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MWaveSh ... m0VF07fbCY

Afaik free Melda plugins don't grant you access to oversampling modes

[JO512]

Melda waveshapper can go up to 16X resampling

single band version is free, multiband version is 40$ but often go on sale for 20$

https://www.meldaproduction.com/MWaveSh ... m0VF07fbCY

Afaik free Melda plugins don't grant you access to oversampling modes

I have the free version and I looked for oversampling options and don't see any.

[zerocrossing]

Waves’ BB Tubes has 8x oversampling and sounds great. Pretty cheap. It does transformer emulation too.

The Arturia distortion/saturation are all good. They don’t advertise the oversampling rate, but it’s good enough to make it so you don’t hear it. The preamp emulations all do good overdriven effects.

The Brainworx plugins I’ve tried are good too.

Basically, there are a decent amount of good choices now. I’ve been using the Louder Than Liftoff Silver Bullet plugin a lot these days.

[bmanic]

Softube stuff is also generally 4x oversampled (though they seem to be using minimum phase filters that are always fine tuned to their own aesthetic) so it's usually good enough for most common tasks.

I still think developers who code proper anti-aliasing for offline rendering would be doing the customers a huge service as there really is no short cut for some scenarios where you put a bunch of saturation in series all the way from the start of the mix right up until the end.

The absolute best way to go about proper anti-aliasing would be to have the plugins talk with the DAW and the DAW itself would upsample everything while at the same time also providing proper ultrasonic filtering at every stage between plugins where needed (the plugin would tell the DAW that it causes harmonic distortion). This would minimize the amount of steps needed for up sampling and down sampling, which in itself is a destructive process. This also means the DAW could use a supreme up/down sampling algorithm while offline rendering. Naturally this would mean plugins have to work correctly at much higher sample rates, which is unfortunately still very much hit and miss.

But yeah, we don't live in such a world where detailed things like this is taken into account. Even to this day we have big companies like Softube and Arturia who have plugins that can only do 192kHz as the maximum sampling rate.. while others have programmed their stuff to work at absolutely any sample rate (for instance FabFilter plugins can be run at several mega-hertz without any issues at all).

[kraster]

I still use Decapitator a lot but when aliasing becomes too obvious issue I'll use Kelvin.

Kelvin is like a posh Decapitator to me.

[djanthonyw]

Kazrog True Iron is one of the best. It can do extremely subtle saturation to extreme distortion by pushing the input / crush knob.

[JO512]

I have Trash 2, and I thought it aliased badly, but I just realized I overlooked the setting "oversample algorithms". I ticked that box and the audible aliasing even with high notes is minimal.

I've been liking apShaper quite a lot. Kelvin also seems pretty nice. It's a bit pricey though considering what it does, but not as pricey as Saturn.

[JerGoertz]

Goodhertz Tupe and the Shattered Glass Audio stuff are worth checking out. The SGA1566 is free and has great oversampling/etc. options, sounds class to me.

[swilow11]

Quite like Btiwigs Saturator, particularly for the LP filter which (I think) only applies to the added harmonic content. I essentially hardly touch the controls and just throw it on raw. Beefs up the sound nicely and transparently.

Newfangledaudio Saturator is nice too, can be super transparent and iirc has oversampling options.

In terms of clippers, I really find Kclip to be my go to. Again with oversampling, and tweaking the softness of the clipping can range from transparent peak shaving to more violent smashing. Try Kclip Zero which is free and pretty great.

[Igro]

Quite like Btiwigs Saturator, particularly for the LP filter which (I think) only applies to the added harmonic content. I essentially hardly touch the controls and just throw it on raw. Beefs up the sound nicely and transparently.

Not to mention their saturation modes in Filter+ plugin. Those are great too.

[swilow11]

Quite like Btiwigs Saturator, particularly for the LP filter which (I think) only applies to the added harmonic content. I essentially hardly touch the controls and just throw it on raw. Beefs up the sound nicely and transparently.

Not to mention their saturation modes in Filter+ plugin. Those are great too.

Very true. Not a huge fan of the plain distortion module but haven't really dived too deep into that.

Another nice saturator is Arturia Tube Culture. Can get noisy but as a subtle thickener, it sounds pretty great. Not sure what the highest oversampling is but it tanks my CPU pretty quickly

[jtsterays]

TrackWarmth.

[Igro]

Quite like Btiwigs Saturator, particularly for the LP filter which (I think) only applies to the added harmonic content. I essentially hardly touch the controls and just throw it on raw. Beefs up the sound nicely and transparently.

Not to mention their saturation modes in Filter+ plugin. Those are great too.

Very true. Not a huge fan of the plain distortion module but haven't really dived too deep into that.

Another nice saturator is Arturia Tube Culture. Can get noisy but as a subtle thickener, it sounds pretty great. Not sure what the highest oversampling is but it tanks my CPU pretty quickly

Yepp. Tube Culture is great. And I am into that "alive" saturation for my techno kicks. There are not that many like this on the market. I know only two other - PA NEOLD U17 and NEOLD Wunderlic, which are my favourites to date. The rest of the saturation plugins are to sterile for me (no matter how dirty they are)