What's your 'go to' distortion/saturation plugins?

[Morty-C-137]

Any Logic users have thoughts on the new-ish stock plugin Chromaglow?

It sounds really good imo. But very taxing on the cpu.

[Alexander_D]

Saturn and Soundtoys for sure! Amazing musical quality...
Sometimes I am also using stock Cubase saturation plugins

[Monsieur_FyP]

Any Logic users have thoughts on the new-ish stock plugin Chromaglow?

Simple but highly convincing.
Five tonal options are available: Retro Tube, Modern Tube (more aggressive than the previous one), Magnetic (= tape), Squeeze (= compressor saturation) & Analog Preamp. Each of which can be applied in two styles: light (“Clean” / “Soft Press”) or intense (“Colorful” / “Hard Press”), and bypassed below a chosen frequency. From there, we set the drive and the mix.
There are also High Cut and Low Cut filters, which can be applied in Pre/Post mode, with resonant shaper & slope setting.
Numerous presets, of course.
And that's about it. But the result is almost always musical.

[robindrieghe]

any waveshaper, multiband is possible.

[Erik_Lucas]

These days it's apShaper. https://apulsoft.ch/apshaper/

[sokoleski]

These days it's apShaper. https://apulsoft.ch/apshaper/

YEP , second that.... apShaper is just Phenomenal

[nilhartman]

ApShaper, Powershaper, Kelvin, Michelangelo and Roar.

[El°HYM]

ApShaper, Powershaper, Kelvin, Michelangelo and Roar.

Good choices here.

[LaserLobes]

Goos

[Funky40]

whatever you use, try Airwindows Stonefire *behind* it.

might not suit on all material. can´t tell.
i use it on Synths and EP,...and even alone on Piano.
But usually behind another saturator....the saturator more on the tame or very tame side.
...try it on Piano ! It´s strange.

This plugin sounds digital, but in such a good way. It´s the new cool, haha.
On 303 anyway !...i mean, with 303, stone fire or go home

this one is pure gold !

[bmanic]

Any Logic users have thoughts on the new-ish stock plugin Chromaglow?

It is extremely good. It's the plugin that shows deep learning AI is indeed the future for these kinds of things.

For people who don't have Logic, I highly recommend checking out TBT Tech's Deep Vintage deep learning AI models. They've recently updated the technology to version 2.0 and these now sound way better than before.

For instance, try one of the Pultec plugins. Doesn't matter which one you test as they all seem to have identical response (I suspect they just learned a single one for the tube amp stage and then just chucked a normal vanilla coded EQ on top). Anyhow, try one and drive it hard. The saturation and amount of compression happening is very complex.

Same goes for the 1073 model. That thing can eat transient peaks extremely transparently and sounds beefy and almost laid back. If you want more poky sound, try the 1084 instead.

This is definitely the future. If you are strapped on cash, wait 12 months because nothing's going to be the same again. Once people start figuring out this deep learning stuff it'll be extremely difficult to justify the old "hand coded" stuff that tries to emulate vintage equipment.


On a side note:

I can very carefully but with a massive CAUTION!! also recommend trying out some of the Tone Empire new AI plugins. They have massive potential and sound really unique but are super buggy and the company is shady as f**k and not at all reliable. Still, that dude is on to something in terms of AI deep learning. Such a shame the company is so shady and that the dude doesn't care about bugs or oddities at all. For instance, they all sound vastly different depending on sample rate used. There are also very weird random bugs like the frequency response drastically changing depending on the EQ being pre or post, even if you have no EQ turned on at all. Things like these point to a company that doesn't care at all about quality or nuance. So take all those negatives into consideration if you plan on testing or purchasing from them.

[swilow11]

Coldfire has been my go to for a while. I don't tend to use the modulation but the general algorithm sound great. Love the bitcrusher in particular. It's too CPU heavy to throw around too liberally though...

[kiksogue]

I'm a big fan of all the AI stuff. It's definitely the future. I'm looking forward to Analogxai's Genesis plugin. Great analysis of the plugins. I've had a pretty good experience with the Tone Empire plugins, thankfully. The 96k plugins sound really good.

Any Logic users have thoughts on the new-ish stock plugin Chromaglow?

It is extremely good. It's the plugin that shows deep learning AI is indeed the future for these kinds of things.

For people who don't have Logic, I highly recommend checking out TBT Tech's Deep Vintage deep learning AI models. They've recently updated the technology to version 2.0 and these now sound way better than before.

For instance, try one of the Pultec plugins. Doesn't matter which one you test as they all seem to have identical response (I suspect they just learned a single one for the tube amp stage and then just chucked a normal vanilla coded EQ on top). Anyhow, try one and drive it hard. The saturation and amount of compression happening is very complex.

Same goes for the 1073 model. That thing can eat transient peaks extremely transparently and sounds beefy and almost laid back. If you want more poky sound, try the 1084 instead.

This is definitely the future. If you are strapped on cash, wait 12 months because nothing's going to be the same again. Once people start figuring out this deep learning stuff it'll be extremely difficult to justify the old "hand coded" stuff that tries to emulate vintage equipment.


On a side note:

I can very carefully but with a massive CAUTION!! also recommend trying out some of the Tone Empire new AI plugins. They have massive potential and sound really unique but are super buggy and the company is shady as f**k and not at all reliable. Still, that dude is on to something in terms of AI deep learning. Such a shame the company is so shady and that the dude doesn't care about bugs or oddities at all. For instance, they all sound vastly different depending on sample rate used. There are also very weird random bugs like the frequency response drastically changing depending on the EQ being pre or post, even if you have no EQ turned on at all. Things like these point to a company that doesn't care at all about quality or nuance. So take all those negatives into consideration if you plan on testing or purchasing from them.

[bmanic]

I'm a big fan of all the AI stuff. It's definitely the future. I'm looking forward to Analogxai's Genesis plugin. Great analysis of the plugins. I've had a pretty good experience with the Tone Empire plugins, thankfully. The 96k plugins sound really good.

I wouldn't trust Analogxai at all.

In fact, I wouldn't really trust anybody who rushes to be first. So far TBT Tech has the most "reliable" versions out there but even they had some massive issues with the v1.0 plugins. This latest version is a lot better though.

Tone Empire and Analogxai feel like companies that just rush head first into trying to be first (Analogxai just exploiting the free Neural Amp Modeler code basically and not knowing at all what they are doing). They know their days are numbered once actually talented and dependable developers jump on board. Until that day comes they have their 15 minutes of fame and enough suckers who pay for bad quality AI tech releases. Luckily they know this and thus the pricing is according to it. I would definitely not pay more than a single quality meal for any of these first drafts and I definitely consider them all mediocre at best in terms of reliability.

[audiouser720]

Any Logic users have thoughts on the new-ish stock plugin Chromaglow?

It is extremely good. It's the plugin that shows deep learning AI is indeed the future for these kinds of things.

I’m not too sure about Chromaglow. I note a fair bit of aliasing (guess it’s not internally oversampled just like the rest of the Logic plugins) which is quiet poor for things like tube emulation in 2024. I have plugins developed with old fashioned coding which sound way more pleasant to me with little to no aliasing (UAD), but I don’t have your golden ears so I could be wrong.