"Analog" coloration?

[motomotomoto]

Sketch cassette 2

RC 20

Both workhorses

[billinder33]

Run all your busses into Kazrog True Iron or if you have a powerful computer, on each track. Stand back at the end in awe of how much thicker it all adds up to. The preamp and preamp emulations for me make a huge difference in the sound we hear on a track.

That and a good tape plugin, for me will do it.

This really. True Iron is probably the best sounding broadband saturator on the market.

Wavesfactory Spectre is the king of frequency specific saturation.

Kelvin is nice but kind of a pain to dial in relative to True Iron or Spectre. More suitable for mastering IMO, though I prefer True Iron there as well.

Saturn never really clicked with me for whatever reason. I think it's one of the few times FabFilter totally whiffed on the interface.

Never like the Black Box plugin. Too gritty and doesn't really sound like the hardware. Same opinion on the LTL Silver Bullet plugin .

[ispot]

Silver Bullet you sometimes have to gainstage before the plugin (i often only use C module gently dry/wet on busses either hitmaker/vhs mode). idc for the hardware because money, plugin is rats.

Spectre
Michelangelo
ghz tupe, wow (disable wow if not needed), vulfcomp, faraday, VCME
UAD Studer + Ampex
Softube tape (bus processor also nice)
VSS-2
Tube culture
Fuse audio comps (even just for color) + flywheel
Neold plugins (U2A my favo)
Kush plugins (AR-1, Silika, TWK, LG drive, ubk2... all nice analogizers)
Kiive Nfuse (i like the new channel strip too)
Magic Death eye / MDE stereo
RRS 550/550B (i like the trident one too)
Saturn2
one of the 100 pultec emu's

with these i can make a pretty analog sounding mix. but maybe most important: good de-esser (TDR arbiter) + flexible workhorse eq for either static or dynamic (need lookahead for catching peaks) shelves to control HF. controlling HF and boosting harmonics afterwards, boosting highs before tape, all good tricks of the trade hmm

[legendCNCD]

Run all your busses into Kazrog True Iron or if you have a powerful computer, on each track. Stand back at the end in awe of how much thicker it all adds up to. The preamp and preamp emulations for me make a huge difference in the sound we hear on a track.

That and a good tape plugin, for me will do it.

This really. True Iron is probably the best sounding broadband saturator on the market.

Never like the Black Box plugin. Too gritty and doesn't really sound like the hardware. Same opinion on the LTL Silver Bullet plugin .

Silver Bullet owners saying it sounds very much like the hardware ...
True Iron I personally would not let near any track

[El°HYM]

True Iron is fine for me, same as the not yet mentioned Dist TUBE-CULTURE, which is quite good for a digital emulation. Analog coloration can also be done in the analog realm btw.

[pchase]

Usually I run each channel of my master bus through my RAT for some colour

[El°HYM]

Since it also has a decent Filter, could be indeed quite useful on Synths. Keep in Mind that Pedals are normally focused on the Midrange, often scoped.

[billinder33]

Run all your busses into Kazrog True Iron or if you have a powerful computer, on each track. Stand back at the end in awe of how much thicker it all adds up to. The preamp and preamp emulations for me make a huge difference in the sound we hear on a track.

That and a good tape plugin, for me will do it.

This really. True Iron is probably the best sounding broadband saturator on the market.

Never like the Black Box plugin. Too gritty and doesn't really sound like the hardware. Same opinion on the LTL Silver Bullet plugin .

Silver Bullet owners saying it sounds very much like the hardware ...
True Iron I personally would not let near any track

I owned the SB hardware for years. Sold it a few months before the SW came out. So admittedly never got to do any clinical side by side tests, but from my recollection of spending years with the HW, it was way more subtle than the software. You could push it pretty hard before it got gritty, then grainy, then collapsed. I'm sure on low enough settings you probably wouldn't notice much difference, but TBH you could say that about any saturation. It's when you push it that it starts to break up and sound less natural (to my ears). Same thing with the BB HG-2.

IMO that's the allure of True Iron and Kelvin. They don't really fall apart unless you push them to extremes, which is what I'd expect from hardware-emulated digital saturation. They are saturators, not distorters, and the sweet spots are wide. Kelvin is so subtle it barely distorts at all unless you jack it. That's exactly what I would expect from analog emulator saturation plugin.

If I want creative distortion, I'm not going to waste time with a hardware emulator, I'll go straight to Minimal Audio Rift where the real audio mangling takes place. This is a matter of personal choice and plugin design philosophy, and I generally like plugins that do one thing exceptionally vs. several things mediocre. To each their own though, we're all spoiled with choices these days.

[andivax]

Run all your busses into Kazrog True Iron or if you have a powerful computer, on each track. Stand back at the end in awe of how much thicker it all adds up to. The preamp and preamp emulations for me make a huge difference in the sound we hear on a track.

That and a good tape plugin, for me will do it.

This really. True Iron is probably the best sounding broadband saturator on the market.

Never like the Black Box plugin. Too gritty and doesn't really sound like the hardware. Same opinion on the LTL Silver Bullet plugin .

Silver Bullet owners saying it sounds very much like the hardware ...
True Iron I personally would not let near any track

I owned the SB hardware for years. Sold it a few months before the SW came out. So admittedly never got to do any clinical side by side tests, but from my recollection of spending years with the HW, it was way more subtle than the software. You could push it pretty hard before it got gritty, then grainy, then collapsed. I'm sure on low enough settings you probably wouldn't notice much difference, but TBH you could say that about any saturation. It's when you push it that it starts to break up and sound less natural (to my ears). Same thing with the BB HG-2.

IMO that's the allure of True Iron and Kelvin. They don't really fall apart unless you push them to extremes, which is what I'd expect from hardware-emulated digital saturation. They are saturators, not distorters, and the sweet spots are wide. Kelvin is so subtle it barely distorts at all unless you jack it. That's exactly what I would expect from analog emulator saturation plugin.

If I want creative distortion, I'm not going to waste time with a hardware emulator, I'll go straight to Minimal Audio Rift where the real audio mangling takes place. This is a matter of personal choice and plugin design philosophy, and I generally like plugins that do one thing exceptionally vs. several things mediocre. To each their own though, we're all spoiled with choices these days.

Exactly my thought on HG-2! Software is very close in character to the real deal but much more aggressive. Hardware HG-2 sound smoother, especially on highs.
May be I should try it on 96000 Hz and it will change that gritty character...