Saturation, for lack of a better definition is typically very mild Distortion, also referred to as “coloration”, “vibe” “flavour” and many other esoteric mysterious terms. When we talk about tape Saturation, in reality it is the result of the level being so high that the oxide particles can’t any longer accurately represent the amplitude of the wave being recorded onto it which results in compression and distortion. The fatness, the smoothing the transient, half of what we perceive as “good” about vintage gear is in fact, on paper - undesirable behaviour which our human ears happen to like! The same goes for tubes, which also introduce gentle saturation and harmonics when driven, as does more or less anything in the analog signal path with varying degrees of friendliness. Solid state gear tends to produce more odd ordered harmonics, tubes, even ordered. Guess which your ears like more?

Sure, they were used as a creative effect now and then (The Beatles “Revolution” is an ancient example) but saturating everything by default? Nah. Usually it was an accident. Today, that’s a production decision, which is fine, totally valid and today if you *do* want to heavily saturate something, there are probably 100 tools designed to do it rather than abusing your preamp plugin with it’s minimal controls that wasn’t designed to do that it the first place. It may work, sure...but don’t whine about it if it doesn’t what you think in your mind it should.

Here’s the fact: Some analog gear sounds like total crap if you drive it too hard and when used normally is pretty damn subtle! If you want saturation, why not use a tool designed for it?

And so here’s a list of some excellent tools to try, from mild to wild. Happy saturating!

First some freebies to get you going:

Softube ,,Saturation Knob

Klanghelm ,IVGI. ( also check out the compressors)

FreeAmp

Super good and not expensive preamp/transformer emulations:

Kush ,OMEGA (three kinds to check out) - and these are super close for me…

Rolls Royce level shiz:

SoundToys ,Decapitator ( Soundtoys also make some other killers )

PA Black Box Analog Design ,HG-2

FabFilter Saturn

Tape Simulators:

Slate ,VTM

Acustica ,Taupe

Massey TapeHead