Live saturator/overdrive/tube vs third party

[dna598]

Live saturator is my go to saturator! teamed up with operator is dirty bassline heaven. The bomb.

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Testing saturn, its super versatile but I am still very unsure which one sounds the best to me between it and satin.

Satin seems more warm but cant go into experimental territory, Saturn isnt as warm but so much options for sound design.

I dont wanna get both

[TomViolenz]

Saturn isnt as warm but so much options for sound design.

don't forget that each band has an eq and a dynamics knob. So you can fine tune which aspect of an algo you want in that band.

I manage to get it to sound plenty warm.

[tedlogan]

Tom is right. And think of it; Satin is primarily a Tape Emulation. Saturn can do; Tape, Tube, Amp and Crazy smearing and feedback effects.

Saturn would have more options and manglings. I went for Satin though as the only distortion I want 99% of the time is a warm fuzzy one (except when using electric guitars), which sounds especially great on VST synths. While it is primarily a tape emulation unit, there's a bit more going on under the hood, including heavy distortions with the right combination of dials.

You can get very rich, satisfying and fucked up smearing and feedback effects with its Delay mode. Mapping Feedback to the modwheel with Satin applied to a synth is far out.

"Far out" not said in a surfer dude tone.

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I think i am getting both, Saturn is super dope and can do so much, but Satin sound so good for subtle stuff.

By the way how do you use saturations effects normally: as sends, inserts on individuals channels or in group busses?

[ImNotDedYet]

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.

Yeah, I don't use it as an amp sim, so much as just another saturation option. I use Guitar Rig or Amplitube for sims at this point.

[TomViolenz]

By the way how do you use saturations effects normally: as sends, inserts on individuals channels or in group busses?

All of the above

And if you want to use Saturn in live situations, assigning the on/off to the chain selector in a rack lets you use tons of different Saturns. There is not the slightest click or pop when you turn them on.
Fabfilter plugs are among the cleanest around in this regard.

I even use only the dynamics knobs in a 4 band set up without any saturation on my main bus as a multi band transient shaper.

I also use the modulation options to just control the output volume with nothing else for making simple volume envelopes/LFOs.

This thing is soooo versatile even beyond saturation.

[ImNotDedYet]

I think i am getting both, Saturn is super dope and can do so much, but Satin sound so good for subtle stuff.

By the way how do you use saturations effects normally: as sends, inserts on individuals channels or in group busses?

You have a dry/wet knob on Saturn to apply just a little bit of it to make it more subtle. Effects like this are often just used as inserts.

Since it has a wet/dry knob, I've only used it as an insert. But using it as a send for multiple tracks wouldn't be a bad idea - I just couldn't see needing/wanting the same saturation levels with everything Saturn provides for multiple tracks.

Another option I've been turning to lately is Softube's free saturation knob. Usually used to add just a touch of saturation, but sounds pretty good and can provide saturation for the highs, all frequencies, or the lows.

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You have a dry/wet knob on Saturn to apply just a little bit of it to make it more subtle. Effects like this are often just used as inserts.

yeah that was what I was doing before but yesterday I read the subject on two books I use as reference (Mixing secrets for the small studio and Mixing audio) and they also point out the benefits of using them as sends to blend the original sources and the saturated ones at a lower level. Have to try this still.

[Quez]

I really love Ableton' saturation effect.
And I actually didn't like it until I started to boost the drive up a lot (+12 to +24db), and lower the output by the same amount. Especially nice on the high frequency range.

[stevemac]

Honestly, I actually find I'm often opting for the punch Ableton's Saturator over a lot of expensive plugs like Saturn and Decapitator.

Don't get me wrong, I use Saturn and Decapitator at lot - mainly to produce very pronounced sound shaping for a few key sounds in a track and for bus processing, but the CPU vs results of Saturator means I use it on every single channel at the beginning of my standard channel strip chain, to act like a pre-amp might do if you were using a hardware / desk.

Every channel gets a small but important little bit of ommph as standard, and it makes mixing much easier (acting a lot like Slate VCC would I suppose).

'Digital' sounding distortions aren't the most popular right, but don't write it off because it's not 'in' right now

[mmorgan]

Loves me Saturn. One of my most useful tools.

[Stromkraft]

Anyone tried Waves Cobalt Saphira yet? Bad intro videos, but you seem to be able to exercise a great deal of control over the harmonics produced. I'd try it, but I'm currently looking into EQs.

[granted]

I just threw Kramer Tape Stereo over a drum buss to see what kind of saturation I could get. The answer not as much as I'd like. Oh I could crank all the settings and drive it pretty hard but that's about it. I was able to easily dial in some tape goodness and it sounded nice. But I wouldn't put Kramer Tape in the same league as Saturn, Maul, Ohmicide, D16's stuff or Vertigo VSM-3. I'm not knocking Kramer it's just that when I think saturator/overdrive/tube I just don't think Kramer Tape. Of course this post may be moot because when I think of saturator/overdrive/tube I think DISTORTION. And when I think of distortion I think LOUD. So it's just IMHO.

[granted]

Anyone tried Waves Cobalt Saphira yet? Bad intro videos, but you seem to be able to exercise a great deal of control over the harmonics produced. I'd try it, but I'm currently looking into EQs.

I have tried Cobalt Saphira. I've done some preset surfing and I've read the manual but no deep dive yet.
It's difficult to describe what it sounds like. It's like an exciter/tape saturator/harmonic EQ.
It has an interesting Tape Depth setting which I'd like to explore.