A good timbre result of a musical production has its foundations in the adequate use of distortion and saturation; a tape recorder unmistakably characterizes the harmonic content of a mix, just as a preamplifier or a tube compressor can enhance the body of a guitar, the presence of its strings, or the attack and fullness of a drum. By emphasizing the right frequencies the sound result is warmer and more pleasant.
In the digital domain, with tape saturator and tube saturator, as with other distortion emulators, it is possible to manage the manipulation of harmonics in a completely personalized way, creating very special and sometimes creative effects.
Description
Saturn is a saturator e multiband distortion, with effects section equipped with:
delay, with time and feedback, e compressor, both adjustable with one dry/law.
Un four-band graphic equalizer, pan, drive level and signal level. All parameters can be customized differently for each of the six frequency bands for which its sound spectrum can be divided.
Like all Fabfilters, Saturn is easy and intuitive to use, thanks to a simple interface and interactive help guides that explain everything on which the mouse pointer suffers, has more than 150 presets divided into categories, sixteen different types of distortions, and it is possible to set the processing in Mid/side.
Also, in the modulation section you will find the XY controllers, XLFO, envelope follower, envelope generator e midi source, which are a series of controllers to be added and connected quickly, by dragging and dropping to the desired parameter, as you might do with the cables of a modular synth.
Thanks to the controllers of the modulation section, modulations that are variable over time and synchronized to the sequencer are created, increasing the various combinations of presets.
Usage
The Saturn in its default preset is a "warm tape"Saturator" raising the central knob "drive" increases the distortion which in this case emphasizes the odd harmonics, having the possibility to divide the audio signal into six frequency bands, only some bands can be characterized or completely distorted, leaving the others are intact, which, together with feedback, delay and compression, can give a truly surprising result, whether to give just a little character to a sound, to create effects with sequential movement or even transforming it into something completely different.
In use as a multi-effect it is as performing as in that of saturator, personally as a saturator I often use it in send on some parts of the drums such as snare and hi hat, taking out attack and a bit of body, even on synth leads, guitars and vocals by dosing and by directing the distortion to the right frequencies, a good result is obtained.
As a multi-effect it certainly gives more than a series of presets from which to start, in addition, as I will briefly illustrate below, it unleashes the maximum creativity in creating personal patches according to your tastes and needs.
Practical examples
Having said that I will try to briefly illustrate how unexpected creative results can be created from simple drum, percussion or stringed instrument sounds even using the controllers of the modulation section.
I have prepared three specific examples to understand their use in a direct and practical way, the first is explained step by step below.
Let's try to bring movement to a drum pattern consisting of saucer and snare drum:
Starting from the default saturn preset, first of all we will notice a better sound presence given by the harmonics emphasized by the warm tape algorithm, which we will bring to "gentle saturation" from the drop-down menu to the left of the "drive", then pressing the "+" key which will appear by moving the arrow to the top of the "Saturn" sound spectrum and selecting the cut-off frequency on the 650hz, we divide the sound process into two (or if necessary even more) frequency bands, in order to involve only the desired frequencies with the effects (in this case the mid and high frequencies), under the "drive" we will find the key "+" with which we add three xlfos, click in the section above 650Hz and connect them each to:
1 : feedback - (which will have a starting setting of just over a quarter: 6.509%) with a double click on the parameter you can quickly write the exact value.
2: Freq - (which will have minimum adjustment: 10.000 Hz)
3: Dynamics (which will be a little more than half: 0.207).
At this point we set the parameters of the xlfo:
1: first, by clicking on the "preset button" (in the shape of a floppy disc) we choose a "8 step sequences"
2: we put synch setting on 4 (drop-down menu above the glide)
3: let's take the guilds to the max
4: we bring the values of the steps to regulation
the 2 which will go to 0.726
the 4th to zero
on 6 at 0.682
the 8 at most 1000
After that with the preset button we save the settings and recall them for the xlfo2
For the xlfo3 we choose the "16 step sequences" to which we will modify only step 15 bringing it to 0.667
synch setting to 8.
Above each xlfo we find the "modulation level slider" with the name of the modulated parameter with these we can dose the modulations of the parameters, for example in this way:
Feedback: 0.512
Frequency (also named feedback): 0.038
Dynamics: in default that is 0.160
We can adjust the 4 equalization bands that we find to the right of the “drive” to give a greater presence or reduction to the frequencies we need, bearing in mind that increasing them will increase the distortion.
Now going into play the xlfo will give a “grain delay” effect gradually increasing towards the end of the 16 bar pattern.
At the end of the article you will find three short videos where I quickly illustrate how to perform this and other simple settings.
Conclusion and comparisons
This example represents only one of the many possibilities that "saturn" offers, now we have given "movement", "character" and even equalized our pattern with a single plugin, but we can also do mastering for drum sums and why not whole tracks, as well as "pulping" the sound in a "circuit bending" style.
After several tests and comparisons with other tape saturators I believe that Saturn has only two rivals in its price range: U-he Satin e Ohmforce Ohmicide, the first is an excellent tape recorder emulator with delay and flanger, the second is probably more similar being multiband and also working on dynamics, but in the creativity and set of combinations formulated by a single plugin Saturn remains unsurpassed for me.
Good listening and good vision to all.
Stephen Bottalla
