Help me understand saturation and its uses please

[_leras]

Saturation have become the buzzword because how music nowadays is also different than music of the old days.

Everything is distorted and loud now. And you need to use saturation to get that kind of sound.

Drums distorted, basses distorted, synths, and most of all Vocals are all distorted now. It is what it is. What was once considered noise, is now the norm.

Nah.... Saturation isn't distortion. Though distortion can be saturated, it's still distortion.

The misinformation flying about on this thread is amazing.

Of course technically they both 'distort' a signal.

I see it more as a range from a soft saturation at one end (tape, subtle saturation), to a full on white noise like distortion at the other. I think it's fairly easy to say one is saturation, and the other is distortion. The mid point is probably a fuzz pedal type distortion which has a bit of both.

Descriptively though I think it's fine to see them as different. Certainly the different ends of the spectrum have different uses to me.

Call that misinformation if you like.

[zerocrossing]

Here it is in a nutshell: Clipping is a type of distortion created by a circuit that’s got a hard limit. Usually transistors. It ultimately adds harmonics, which if set right only happens during loud transients, making hits sound more pronounced. Saturation is the same thing, but on tape, where the limit is more gentle. Tubes also saturate in a way that’s more similar to tape. All of it is basically pushing a system beyond its stated dynamic range. How do you use it? You add it and experiment to see if you get a good result. It’s not really more complicated than that.

[zerocrossing]

Saturation have become the buzzword because how music nowadays is also different than music of the old days.

Everything is distorted and loud now. And you need to use saturation to get that kind of sound.

Drums distorted, basses distorted, synths, and most of all Vocals are all distorted now. It is what it is. What was once considered noise, is now the norm.

Nah.... Saturation isn't distortion. Though distortion can be saturated, it's still distortion.

The misinformation flying about on this thread is amazing.

Of course technically they both 'distort' a signal.

I see it more as a range from a soft saturation at one end (tape, subtle saturation), to a full on white noise like distortion at the other. I think it's fairly easy to say one is saturation, and the other is distortion. The mid point is probably a fuzz pedal type distortion which has a bit of both.

Descriptively though I think it's fine to see them as different. Certainly the different ends of the spectrum have different uses to me.

Call that misinformation if you like.

The point you’re missing is that you’re doing something like describing a phenomenon like “rain” and saying, “drizzling isn’t rain.” It’s going to be confusing to someone who’s trying to learn about it. The best thing anyone can do is to try a bunch of different types and try them on different types of signals and listen to the results.

[BONES]

Saturation should be mostly subtle and layered. It you’re laying it on thick enough to change the sound in a noticeable way, you’re using too much. It shouldn’t be used as an “effect.” You shouldn’t notice it at all, unless you take it away. Then you’ll notice the recording loses energy and excitement, and becomes a little flat and boring by comparison.

I bet 99% of the time you could achieve the same result by simply turning it up as bit.

The following track is a good example of dynamic saturation on a vocal that conveys loudness at certain points even after heavy compression. There’s also a general harmonic excitement across the mix and some tape splatter on the snare.

The track is not being destroyed by distortion, but subtly (and at times not so subtly) enhanced by it. If you took it away, it would lose all its excitement and live feel. It was recorded in 1980, so of course it’s all real.

I don't think it sounds very good at all. It's not terrible but neither is it good. It's kinda typical indie production of the time.

So I’m getting saturation as a side effect of preamps, tape machines, compressors, etc. Simply the sound of running the signal through transformers and electronics, transferring to oxide, etc. It’s the sound of a recording studio.

Yes, all those things everybody else has been desperately trying to eliminate for the last 40-50-60 years.

So what are clipper plugins for?
Because they're being used all over the place in exactly the way I described.

Here's what you need to understand - most people are clueless f**king idiots. If soft clippers are all the rage it will because one person used it to good effect on a record everybody likes, so they think that by adding to their own music, it will suddenly become popular. Clipping is something I would recommend you stay away from.

Pure itb sounds can sometimes be a bit sterile.

If you're lazy, anything can easily end up sounding sterile, ITB or not.

[jamcat]

The track is not being destroyed by distortion, but subtly (and at times not so subtly) enhanced by it. If you took it away, it would lose all its excitement and live feel. It was recorded in 1980, so of course it’s all real.

I don't think it sounds very good at all. It's not terrible but neither is it good. It's kinda typical indie production of the time.

I very rarely hear saturation used correctly in digital audio productions. It seems when people use saturation, they turn it up to 11 and drown the mix in it, and few even seem to understand what I'm talking about in these discussions, because, once again, they're only able to think of saturation as something you turn up to 11 and drown the mix in.

So the idea here was to illustrate how I think saturation should be used effectively, and why, because that was the question at hand. If you want "a typical indie production" sound, then use it. If not, then don't. But either way, at least people now know how and why to use saturation, which is a question that thus far had never been sufficiently answered for some.

[jamcat]

Nah.... Saturation isn't distortion. Though distortion can be saturated, it's still distortion.

The misinformation flying about on this thread is amazing.

Here's your chance to set things straight. Be the hero of digital audio you know you can be.

That youtube video and stuff I've looked up all line up with everything I've been saying about using clippers when mixing as well as during mixdown or even mastering. So I don't know where I'm so far off, as you put it. All the uses for clippers I mentioned seem totally normal.

Once again, I don't know how you can listen to a sound that has been effectively transformed into a squarewave and say it is "transparent." The Waves video I posted does not in any way validate what you've been saying about using clippers, as best as I can tell.

However, to be fair, I suppose it would be possible to use a clipper to chop off a few errant loud transients that are getting in the way of a good normalisation level, and get transparent results. This would be a rare situation where somehow some anomalous spikes slipped into a mix, where you could set the threshold level for the clipper just above your loudest normal peaks, just to chop down the anomalies before normalising. (Of course you could also just use a pencil tool and draw them out in an audio editor.)

Once you start encroaching into your normal program material, you'd do much better to use a limiter, to achieve the most transparency.

[bmanic]

Keep in mind that very few processes aren't "saturation". You use a compressor? You have a saturation plugin right there.

It really is that simple. Only non-moving things don't cause saturation. So a static EQ, a static level change. As soon as you in any way modify the dynamics/level of a signal over time, you have a saturation plugin. Yes, even if you automate your levels in the daw, during that level automation you can have some very low level harmonic distortion (or even high levels of it if the automation is allowed to changed fast enough in the DAW).

So why use saturation? Because it is a natural physical phenomenon and thus desirable in almost all context, to a certain degree. Virtually every single acoustic instrument, heck even your voice, can be considered being "distorted". The harmonics produced via varying methods is what makes up part of the tonality and character of a sound. The other part of course being the attack portion, the transient, of a sound which sort of contains one of the important "identifiers" of what sound is in question.

It's no coincidence that people like to use distortion/saturation on things. At subtle levels it can greatly enhance the intelligibility of a signal and help things sit in a mix. Especially if you have to EQ something a lot, you can use saturation to your advantage and sort of get a finger print of the original signal before EQ. The brain will hear the strengthened harmonic series and "connect the dots". This is why distorted basses can give the illusion of you hearing the fundamental pitch on crappy speakers that can't physically produce that fundamental tone. Same goes within a crowded mix.. if you need to heavily EQ something so that it can sit within the mix, you can make it sound "more natural" by boosting the original signals harmonic content a lot. This is probably why it feels so much easier to mix and EQ things that have gone through some relatively hot outboard gear, producing a lot of harmonic distortion.

Just try it yourself. Start a mix where your first plugin is a low-aliasing saturation plugin. Set all channels to be just below obvious distortion but enough that you get some really clear harmonic addition to the signal. Now print/offline render those files and start the mixing process. Now compare to the non-saturated versions. You should quite quickly notice how EQ reacts very differently to the saturated signal in comparison to the non saturated one. Same with all other processing. You are working with much stronger harmonically enhanced signals so there is more "information" to sculpt.

This can of course also lead to issues. Not all instruments need to be calling attention to themselves. A great way of separating background elements and important elements is the amount of added harmonic distortion. By not saturating elements that you want to stay back in the mix, you can add some separation.

In the end though, it's all subjective. There's no right or wrong but if something sounds lifeless and sterile, it can usually be helped along with a healthy dose of harmonic distortion. Just try to avoid excessive aliasing and intermodulation distortion. Those are much closer to "noise" and aren't harmonically related to the original signal, thus our ears/brains usually dislike them quite a bit if they are present in excessive amounts. Also keep in mind that once you add saturation of any kind, it can't be removed. You can't EQ away problems that have been heavily saturated as that finger print, the harmonic series of the original problem, will be there to stay. So fix the problems first, then saturate, then enjoy.

[jules99]

When should I use saturation, and for what reason? What kind of situation calls for it? What problems does it solve in mixing? How much should be used, is it a light, subtle effect or an obvious, powerful change?

I use saturation, a mostly thought-of as subtle kind of distortion, for two things: warming overly digital, sterile sounds, and mixing.

If you mainly work with samples, loops, and soft synths, these can sound sterile and too clean, which, to our ears can sound bad.

With a saturator, you can subtly add distortion in a way that does not change the fundamental character of a sound but makes it sound more pleasing - a bit like some of these dreaded Instagram filters that make any selfie look like a Polaroid.

For mixing purposes, I use saturation to underline the sonic character of sound so it is more audible in the mix. Saturation can be either an addition or even a replacement to EQ and compression on individual sounds, depending on the source.

The most important thing for your creative and mixing endeavor is for you to ask yourself if you feel like your productions and mixes are missing something essential when compared to whatever they sound close to. If they do, and it isn't a question of arrangement or production technique, then taking a closer look at saturation or even hard-clipping might be worth it. Otherwise, it's as useless as Instagram filters are.

[martiu]

be a net zero hero, eat the bugs

[_leras]

The point you’re missing is that you’re doing something like describing a phenomenon like “rain” and saying, “drizzling isn’t rain.” It’s going to be confusing to someone who’s trying to learn about it. The best thing anyone can do is to try a bunch of different types and try them on different types of signals and listen to the results.

Yes, there are many words for different types of rain. A light drizzle is not the same as rain, even if it's all rain.

Saturation is not the same as distortion, even if it's all distortion.

And just as there are many descriptions for rain, there are many descriptions for distortion and saturation.

[carrieres]

People can write book about distortion :
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/di ... oul-sonics
There is a lot to say

[jamcat]

Saturation is not the same as distortion, even if it's all distortion.

Saturation is the phenomenon, and distortion is its result.

Saturation means that a signal has exceeded the maximum capacity of a system to accurately contain it. The end result of that is distortion, where the image of that signal becomes misshapen—and thus distorted.

What we get at lower levels is not actually saturation at all (because there is still headroom available) but rather another type of distortion. Harmonic distortion, specifically.

What I try to go for is a small constant underlying level of harmonic distortion (THD) that would be induced simply by passing the signal through the electronic components, plus the occasional all-out saturation as the level of some extra loud part pushes up against the gear’s headroom—just to send a signal to the listener that says, “hey, this is really loud!”

[legendCNCD]

One man's "warmth" is another man's muddy and smeared.

Is it that you think saturation by default does this always or you did not eq it properly? Just asking

[Teksonik]

One man's "warmth" is another man's muddy and smeared.

Is it that you think saturation by default does this always or you did not eq it properly? Just asking

No it's because "warmth" is not something worth chasing after in my opinion formed by actually using analog gear.

You seek warmth. I seek clarity. To each his own. I simply don't want people who are just getting in into the music scene now to think that going back to the 70's or 80's is something they should be automatically striving to accomplish.

I'm just trying to dispel the myth that "warmth" is something worth achieving. If you think it's something you want then by all means smear away, as long as you're not trying to convince others it a goal worth attaining.

Albums sounded great back then not because of analog but in spite of it....

[bmanic]

One man's "warmth" is another man's muddy and smeared.

Is it that you think saturation by default does this always or you did not eq it properly? Just asking

You seek warmth. I seek clarity. To each his own. I simply don't want people who are just getting in into the music scene now to think that going back to the 70's or 80's is something they should be automatically striving to accomplish.

I'm just trying to dispel the myth that "warmth" is something worth achieving. If you think it's something you want then by all means smear away, as long as you're not trying to convince others it a goal worth attaining.

Albums sounded great back then not because of analog but in spite of it....

Clarity is indeed what usually happens with high-end analogue hardware that has low noise, fast impulse response and a healthy dose of harmonic distortion. I guess some people call this "warmth" but in the past few years it seems a younger generation who only have access to plugins don't exactly know what it really means.

For instance with vinyl, there is a complete disconnect of what it actually sounds like when talking with younger people who happen to own badly done records. I've struggled with educating them that Vinyl doesn't equal "muddy and lo-fi" and that this isn't equal to "warm". Well done vinyl pressing (and the carving of the mother and subsequently the stamper) will actually sound extremely hi-fi and clear.. yet some people don't understand this and keep sending their stuff to sub-par vendors who have broken cutters (ehm.. I'm looking at you Estonian Vinyl Plant). I guess the terminology causes further confusion indeed.

Luckily we live in a time where a lot of plugin coders seem to understand this and are actively striving for very high quality so you can already find quite a few exceptionally well done emulations of high-end "mojo" machines. For instance LTL Silver Bullet is really well done and shows how "warmth" doesn't need to be muddy. It can be clarity, width and making signals feel more lively.