Saturator shoot-out

[xerix]

Whats the best saturation plugin out of the gear shoot-out below?
Main criteria is on the master bus that makes it crispier, sizzle but clean.

PSP Saturator
Black Box HG-2
Kelvin toneshaper
Klanghelm SSDR

[oobesan]

LTL Silver Bullet Mk2

[xx JPRacer xx]

Honestly I'm not a saturator connoisseur but I think the new Relab Color Drive is fantastic! LTL Silver Bullet Mk2 is really good too and one of my favorite but less subtle. OP you listed really good ones.

[Alexander_D]

Saturn 2 is a really nice + the saturatir of Kazrog MGB Green is also great! And of course Magnito in Cubase is awesome

[xerix]

LTL Silver Bullet Mk2

Interesting, the hardware seems to be a nice unit. Interesting to see how it compares to black box, SSL, & Rupert neve & Vertigo VSM.

I have NFuse which is kiive audio representation of SSL/Rupert Neve. Pretty dam close to the actual thing

Out of the 4 in my original list though, which would you choose?

[xx JPRacer xx]

Out of the 4 in my original list though, which would you choose?

I know the question was not sent to me but I'll give you my answer
Kelvin Tone Shaper. Most versatile and great sounding. The other ones are good too but I like the sound and "shaping" (pun intended) capabilities of it. My second one would be Black Box, great sound but more limited.

[xerix]

Out of the 4 in my original list though, which would you choose?

I know the question was not sent to me but I'll give you my answer
Kelvin Tone Shaper. Most versatile and great sounding. The other ones are good too but I like the sound and "shaping" (pun intended) capabilities of it. My second one would be Black Box, great sound but more limited.

Ok thanks. Do you find it alot better than the likes of Saturn 2 & decapitator & UAD Oxide?

[Gam456]

Whats the best saturation plugin out of the gear shoot-out below?
Main criteria is on the master bus that makes it crispier, sizzle but clean.

PSP Saturator
Black Box HG-2
Kelvin toneshaper
Klanghelm SSDR

You can't go wrong with PSP Saturator and Kelvin. Both are great.
I'm demoing Relab Color Drive it sound promising

[xerix]

Whats the best saturation plugin out of the gear shoot-out below?
Main criteria is on the master bus that makes it crispier, sizzle but clean.

PSP Saturator
Black Box HG-2
Kelvin toneshaper
Klanghelm SSDR

You can't go wrong with PSP Saturator and Kelvin. Both are great.
I'm demoing Relab Color Drive it sound promising

Out of those 2 whoch would you say is better?

[Gam456]

Whats the best saturation plugin out of the gear shoot-out below?
Main criteria is on the master bus that makes it crispier, sizzle but clean.

PSP Saturator
Black Box HG-2
Kelvin toneshaper
Klanghelm SSDR

You can't go wrong with PSP Saturator and Kelvin. Both are great.
I'm demoing Relab Color Drive it sound promising

Out of those 2 whoch would you say is better?

Kelvin can be more subtel and more musical. Also it's way more easier to control the shape.

[Nug Wrangler]

Klanghelm SSDR, Variety of sounds TesslaPRO mkIII

[Erik_Lucas]

Vertigo VSM-4 is a good contender.

[CinningBao]

Might as well add the Relab Colour Drive, derived from the 176. Not sure it's been released yet though. It will be soon!

Casseopeia, Blackbox HG-2 and Spectra are my regulars.

[billinder33]

Out of the 4 listed, I own Kelvin and have tested the BB. Of those two I would go for Kelvin because it's the most flexible and IMO best sounding. I didn't love the BB because to my ears it's a more 'crunchy' / 'gritty' sound than 'fuzzy', and for 2-busses I greatly prefer 'fuzzy' saturation. I don't exactly love Kelvin either because I find it hard to set up and because it's so subtle at low settings it can be nearly inaudible, which increases the difficulty during setup. But I do think Kelvin's saturation modeling sounds fantastic.

That said, I don't generally use saturation on the mix buss because I generally feel it works best at the track level. However in mastering, I like to use a parallel stereo splitter running dual mono instances of True Iron with slightly different settings on the left and right, filtered at ~100hz to preserve mono on the low end. Does magic to the stereo field. I'm sure Kelvin would be also be great in that context, but configuring one instance is hard enough, let alone two.

[djanthonyw]

Not crazy about the ones listed. You should check out TB Tech Deep Vintage. They flew under the radar for a lot of people but are among the best you're going to find in the box that are actually hardware quality.

For the master bus what you probably want is Transformer X and Green AD.

https://www.threebodytech.com/en/products/deepvintage

Using just the bus pre on Acustica's Sand is also amazing.