Live saturator/overdrive/tube vs third party

[login]

What do you think of the quality of Live stock saturation effects vs third party stuff?

I am looking at Satin and Saturn to complement the, but maybe the stock ones are good enough?

[musikmachine]

Satin is amazing, i actually did try Live's stock fx on a track recently for the low end and ended up reverting to Satin, it's got a unique character to it and very versatile, can't use too many instances cause of CPU.

One saturation effect worth having in your arsenal is Klanghelms SDRR imo http://klanghelm.com/SDRR.php

But i like the stock plugins, they're good enough but if i want something a bit special i reach for those two.

[mons79]

Also check out Voxengos Tube amp!
Simple, but smooth and nice sounding plug, and its free!

[TomViolenz]

While Saturator is pretty good and I have ignored it for way too long, there is just no possible comparison to Saturn.

Saturator is a Vespa, Saturn a Ferrari!

It's quite low in CPU use for a saturator (Lives one is too, while Satin isn't), has a shit ton of great algos, is multi band, has a useful dynamics knob (works like the attack knob of a transient shaper), has an eq for each band, all the insane modulation options of the Fabfilter plugs all packed in a great interactive GUI with a spectrum graph.

If you can afford it, get it and never look back

[re:dream]

What Tom says. Saturn rocks.

But Live's Dynamic Tube is a lovely little device too. Low on resources, very versatile, very nicely designed. It's not a Ferrari, but not a Vespa either. A solid little pickup truck with .... Um no, I'm going to abandon the motorized vehicle metaphors right there

[TomViolenz]

And I want to be on record with saying that a Vespa is a very versatile little vehicle that will eventually get you where you need to go

[yur2die4]

Live's Saturator has a hi quality mode, right?

Not that this would give it much of an improvement, I'm just throwing that out there as a reminder... Unless it is no longer there haha. In which case you can ignore this. And chips and salsa

[login]

So which one, saturn or satin, would complement more than overlap with Live stock devices?

[stringtapper]

And chips and salsa

[ImNotDedYet]

Saturn is killer, and I mean absolutely killer. I haven't played with Satin, but have heard really good things about it. I think it's more of a tape emulation, whereas Saturn attempts to emulate tape, tubes, all kinds of things, and the multi-band thing is great as well. Another saturation option would be Kramer Tape by Waves. It's also a tape emulation, is usually on sale for $70 and I find it to be quite useful for all things tape.

Don't rule out Live's Amp plug though. It can provide some nice saturation as well.

[musikmachine]

Try the demos? Satin is an analog tape emu and also has a flanger and delay unit, can even emulate reverb but i've never demoed Saturn so can't comment on that.

[Stromkraft]

What do you think of the quality of Live stock saturation effects vs third party stuff?

I am looking at Satin and Saturn to complement the, but maybe the stock ones are good enough?

The Live audio effects are underrated. They can do great sound especially when combined.
I got the Melda MMultibandSaturator and I'm very happy with that (forget the presets though). Satin is on my purchase list even though someone tipped me off of a lower priced tape saturator plug-in that I forgot the name of just now, but that was supposed to be surprisingly great.

[tedlogan]

I tried to stick to Saturator for a long time and still use it, but I just gelled a lot more with Satin, which can produce a creamy smooth fuzz to a harsher hardclipped distortion. Playing around with a combination of Speed ips, Pre-Emph, Compander, Encoder, Input and Headroom produce a wide variety of saturated tones, especially the latter four.

Satin also throws in a lovely chorus/delay and a flanger unit.

I've not tried any other VST distortions yet.

[musikmachine]

Saturn is killer, and I mean absolutely killer. I haven't played with Satin, but have heard really good things about it. I think it's more of a tape emulation, whereas Saturn attempts to emulate tape, tubes, all kinds of things, and the multi-band thing is great as well. Another saturation option would be Kramer Tape by Waves. It's also a tape emulation, is usually on sale for $70 and I find it to be quite useful for all things tape.

Don't rule out Live's Amp plug though. It can provide some nice saturation as well.

Read good things about Kramer. I've just started using Amp as a send effect, a tip i picked up was to set it to clean and use it on drums and percussion to add clarity but also been trying the other models on kicks and bass, pretty tasty.

[Stromkraft]

Read good things about Kramer. I've just started using Amp as a send effect, a tip i picked up was to set it to clean and use it on drums and percussion to add clarity but also been trying the other models on kicks and bass, pretty tasty.

I wasn't extremely impressed with Kramer Tape when I tried it, especially compared to Satin. Both are subtle but Satin was more persuasive to me.

Amp modeling is important and I'm happy that I have a bass amp in Komplete, that I can make use of.