Saturation

[El°HYM]

Or start on the opposite end and use a super smooth pedal, such as a Zendrive.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Overdrive is mandatory for rock stuff,but i am recording pop-house guitar tracks and need some gentle touch on incoming sound,so to be able to add some virtual fx after that.
If saturate the input and record this way,can't de-saturate later in the mix
As i mention it,guitar recording and mixing isn't such pleasure as playing
Cheers

[Uncle E]

Right, Ox Stomp and Zendrive wouldn't be good for that. Still, I think you might be overestimating what some of those big $$$ boxes provide. IME, the benefits are buried once plugins get involved.

Are you using amp plugins? If so, which ones?

[stoopicus]

It's also common to use a hybrid workflow where you put a DI early in your pedal chain (like, right after the tuner, before anything else) and run a clean out from it to your mixer/audio interface/etc; then you record two guitar tracks at the same time, one clean and one effected. This lets you work in your hardware pedals while still having a clean channel to allow for fixing things ITB.

[SILICON_SPECTRE]

Similar to bringing a vocal up in the mix, I use saturation to make bass audible on small speakers. My first attempts at writing synth tracks had the bass completely disappear when played on iPhone speakers, but saturation has solved that without altering the sound on my monitors or in my car in a negative way.

[Igro]

Where to put saturation in the chain is very debatable. I depends on the source. If the source is very dynamic, then to get a stable saturation, you put compressor before the saturation. Or, if you want a variable saturation (in totality), then saturation before the compressor (if needed at all).

Same with EQ and saturation. Now here it depends on a sound type. More recently i do only EQ > Saturation. Because that way you are having full control over the tonality of the saturation. I did other way around before, but it didn't work much.

For instance, to get a very rounded 909 kick (not snappy, flat and thin), like those in earlier techno tracks, you put saturation after the EQ. The snap can be achieved later, if needed, with compression in the end of the chain.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Similar to bringing a vocal up in the mix, I use saturation to make bass audible on small speakers. My first attempts at writing synth tracks had the bass completely disappear when played on iPhone speakers, but saturation has solved that without altering the sound on my monitors or in my car in a negative way.

From my experience,bass section always need some saturation so to stand out,especially if there is tons of other harmonics over it from other instruments.
Any kind of distortion is useful on mix bus,could be tube distortion,enhancers,tape saturation,whatever lift the presence of the bass in the mix.
To me bass is most easy part,big problem is vocal and 10-20khz area,so called air.
If distort trebles wrong way, entire mix is gone...
Lately i am using lite touch of kush omega 458a to refine highs,read and watch tons of stuff about transformers and still not sure where in the fx chain is best place or how properly to be used among other fx.
It seems that everybody create it's own order of fx - preamps,eq,compression,saturation,transformers so on could be placed everywhere...
Some plugins like console emu's have specific order of build in modules following compressor-eq-saturator logic,which seems is the old school choice of pro's for mix bus or directly on instrumental track.
Cheers

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Where to put saturation in the chain is very debatable. I depends on the source. If the source is very dynamic, then to get a stable saturation, you put compressor before the saturation. Or, if you want a variable saturation (in totality), then saturation before the compressor (if needed at all).

Same with EQ and saturation. Now here it depends on a sound type. More recently i do only EQ > Saturation. Because that way you are having full control over the tonality of the saturation. I did other way around before, but it didn't work much.

For instance, to get a very rounded 909 kick (not snappy, flat and thin), like those in earlier techno tracks, you put saturation after the EQ. The snap can be achieved later, if needed, with compression in the end of the chain.

i like color compressors as end of the fx chain to shape the dynamized sound...

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Here is the review of Oomph i wrote for rekkerd.
It's focused and written mostly for newbies and intermediate.
Advanced users will find it as very friendly tool.
https://rekkerd.org/review-oomph-multib ... ulz-audio/

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Added few nice saturators and other fx to my collection since last week,haven't even test them all in a mix yet...
It seems that saturators are new cult these days...combined with good compressors,eq,reverb,so on i would say ordinary listener won't be able to hear the difference between a mix made in a studio,equipped with hardware for 30 000 eu/us and another made in a virtual studio with plugins,which cost less than 1000...
Take a look at these,if your budget is tight,but need dope plugins.
Audiodeluxe offer also as a free gift a Gforce AXXESS synth:

https://audiodeluxe.com/products/ik-mul ... I27wAtFvEg
https://store.eventideaudio.com/product ... rate-crush
https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/prod ... scade.html

[stoopicus]

Similar to bringing a vocal up in the mix, I use saturation to make bass audible on small speakers. My first attempts at writing synth tracks had the bass completely disappear when played on iPhone speakers, but saturation has solved that without altering the sound on my monitors or in my car in a negative way.

From my experience,bass section always need some saturation so to stand out,especially if there is tons of other harmonics over it from other instruments.

Gotta be careful with that though or it's gonna get super muddy. For bass I usually add a second-order HPF that starts to roll off at about 40-50Hz to tame the less musical muddy bits, and then boost in the low mids (above the kick frequency, which you sometimes need to duck) to add some tonal oomf. Saturation could work well then, depending on the bass.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

I don't see controversy,if the kick is 40-90hz,then the bass occupy 100-200hz as focus,then you have 250-1000hz for percussion ,the synth sound or whatever ...
All edm genres,even pop and hip hop are ok with such frames.
I think that, the ducking is 'a must' if there is cancellation between percussion/key/piano sound and vocal in 200-300hz area.
The vocal is something i still can't place right (i guess 200-400hz is the right area
If the kick hit hard and the bass is soft,that isn't ok,i personally prefer strong kick and saturated bass,but it's matter of taste.
Only rock music is confusing,because the bass and the guitar are in the same area as the kick: 50-150hz
Multiband enhancers,saturators and compressors,even eq could fix this without ducking,if the harmonic material is proper,if not, ducking is needed...i don't like ducking,especially if become audible.
More natural is to shape the instrument right way,so to find the right place in the mix.
But may start using it more in combination with multiband tools,so to differentiate more.
Sometimes few instruments glue perfectly together,other time have issues,so it all depends what kind of material is mixed...

[stoopicus]

I don't see controversy,if the kick is 40-90hz,then the bass occupy 100-200hz as focus,then you have 250-1000hz for percussion ,the synth sound or whatever ...

It depends a whole lot on if the bass is a synth or a bass guitar, in terms of oversaturation and muddiness. Synths are much easier to mix in my experience.

Only rock music is confusing,because the bass and the guitar are in the same area as the kick: 50-150hz

Well, more accurately, any genre where the bass is a bass guitar.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Lately i am experimenting a lot with console saturation and even wondering to start a new topic called console saturation,but don't want to saturate kvr :):)
Few day ago bought bx console N,which was 10 euro,just to add it to 9000j,amek and focusrite i already have,didn't expected to impress me much,but ...
Just put it over a piano inside a pop song and what a fresh sound from the N console...
Usually i use at least three saturators in a chain with slow amount of each till harmonic distortion start to sing to my ears
Any console saturation lovers around?

[Uncle E]

I use the UA API Vision console on everything. I actually prefer the way UA's Helios saturates but Vision loads automatically in Luna, so I just end up using that. Other things that load automatically are Studer A800 on every channel, API summing on every channel, API 2500 on the main buss, and Ampex on the main buss, all of which have varying degrees of saturation. Then I add Verve manually to every channel, bringing me to a total 6 different stages of saturation just at the mix stage.