This thread just made me say MOIST out loud.

 

I think the saturation usage in the box is a totally underlooked concept, with a lot of important nuances but with a lot of 'easy' answers by all musicians/producers/mixers, BC almost everybody knows in theoria what saturation does. It add harmonics. And? I rarely seem people even question theirselves why they are saturating, adding 5 tonal/character plugins in a row that don't have any synergy, and of course it can get cluttered material, while others are very conservative. Amog the conservatives are two kinds of people: the ones that record on high end gear and don't really need to saturate to get good results and the ones that probably get harsh digital mixes because they are conservative on the use of saturation.

This is not true on analog. Imagine how many tubes, tapes, transistors, transformers, capacitors and other kinds of circuitry the sound passes until it's mastered? Guess what, all those mentioned components saturate, linearity is not true. Of course, on a good studio, all of those mentioned components are choosen by fingertip by qualified professionals that work years and years on the crafting of that "saturation" that boomers call "tone". In general, home studio producers are not giving a sh*t about how to build beautiful amplification in the box, the are just throwing things randomly bc they worked once. It's not a problem for them puting a SSL, Neve, old tape, saturn and a blackbox at the same chain. The result is tragically obvious:

My sugestion is to understand the sound of saturation that you are using, the harmonic series of each saturation plugin you like/have and try to build from the vibe of the song and individual channels. Every of them likes saturation, but you gotta have a good taste/knowledge of the tools you're using to archieve nice results. Don't be afraid to overdo, pay attention and listen. Turning things off is always an valid and necessary option. And no easy answers for which amout you should use, try to care about the sound and the "whys" are you picking tonal and saturation tools.

PS: i HATE tape saturation on all my channels and busses

 

This Hip-Hop producer pretended to use tape saturation plugins but actually used "Sausage Fattener". He was caught. Now's a con.

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2023

Plus to this thread: i'd love some saturation plugin that allows you to build an electronic circuitry with different types of tubes, transformers and capacitors at different and multiple stages, running in series or parallel instead of emulating a vintage gear with all the electronics and signal flow set up. The closest to this is the Tube Preamp from DDMF and Kelvin. A mix of those both mentioned plugins would be killer

 

So popular he was believed to be Jesus by his disciples .

 

But it doesn't do the same thing as a compressor, does it? I mean, if I see that it reduces the dynamics, and increases the volume. But it's kind of subtle. For example, I don't feel it "pumping" like when you squeeze it out of a compressor. In fact I use the compressor sometimes to "punch" the drums. But in this case what I observe and hear, is that it does it in a subtle way, that is to say, I see with my eyes that there is like a compression and limiting but I don't hear so much loss of dynamics. Well, maybe I'm not that familiar with saturators.

I love these chords,In fact it is my favorite chord

You know, something weird happened to me the other day. After I had finished mixing a song and put a lot of saturation on it to give it color. Then I started watching videos on youtube, and I felt the sound "dark" without brightness, as if it lacked treble, and then I wondered, if it was not that my ear had become accustomed to the sound of the song.

(I hope I got that right)[/QUOTE]

Yes I understood it, in fact I saw some videos the other day that used an osiloscope. But, it is possible that it generates other "very unstable" tones. For example if I have a G1 and I apply saturation it will generate G# 1?

Ah well I understand. So for things that have a lot of details. As you say something for example "an acoustic song". There you would have to be careful to convert all those nuances. I think that's what you mean.

I am using Saturn 2 They have several types of saturators.

Ah well. For example, my ears are getting used to being mixed and may have an excess and then lowering it could compensate for that excess. That's a good idea. I'm going to implement it.

This is something I always wondered about, I don't want to go offtopic. But when you always talk about hardware vs vst. I've always wondered about that. All those components that are in the hardware, don't they affect the sound? A vst doesn't have them. But well, I'm just thinking out loud, it would be a question for another thread, just as I read you say it, that thought came to my mind.

This is something I always wondered about, I don't want to go offtopic. But when you always talk about hardware vs vst. I've always wondered about that. All those components that are in the hardware, don't they affect the sound? A vst doesn't have them. But well, I'm just thinking out loud, it would be a question for another thread, just as I read you say it, that thought came to my mind.

Thanks for the recommendation, I will try them, I already took a look. DDMF is free

After you mentioned this, I've been watching some videos. And from what I understood, oversampling prevents an audio from aliasing? is this so? I mean, using oversampling would prevent it?

 

Thank you all for your answers and advice. It has helped me understand more. But I'm not going to lie to you. I still find it hard to understand some things like masking, oversampling, aliasing, and other things. I mean, I understand 50% haha. But where I get more confused, is in the technical stuff, when I start to see in an osilloscope and the waveform of how it changes and blah blah blah. Anyway. I will continue to investigate the "technical" part but I will continue to be guided by my ears. I hope not to make any serious mistakes. I've already ruined several songs once by overdoing compression, limiting, and eq. I hope it won't happen again. That's why I also asked you. Although I knew "something" about saturation, I am not an expert on the subject. I only used it as an "additive" to the audio. In this last time it has given me for saying. Well, let's see what does what and why it does it. Because I was always used to drag a plugin and listen if it was nice or not to the sound. But the first impression is that it sounds nice, or because it sounds louder, or because it has more brightness. But then after a while you realize that you screwed up.
Now I've gotten used to leveling the audio. That is to say, to have the same input volume as output when I play a vst. Because even if it's 3db more, it makes you believe that the audio sounds better.