u/Poopypantsplanet

I've noticed in this sub that quite a few people have been pretty dismissive of saturation, saying it's overrated, overused, not actually that important, snake oil, etc. The sentiment often come up in conversations about tape emulation plugins or when people are looking for a more analog sound (which means different things to different people).

I find this really puzzling:

For the vast majority of recorded music history, saturation has been a part of the process. It wasn't intentional, but it was inseparable from the process because the only way to process the sound was to to send it through hardware that would impart all kinds of harmonic distortion.

From the first recorded music in 1860 until the late 1990's, multiple types of hardware saturation were present in the signal chain of virtually every recorded audio (tubes, transformers, transistors, coils, tape, etc.). And again, more often than not, it was a combination of a few of them in sequence.

I believe that our collective ears are subconsciously used to the "warmth" of saturation because for the most part, it has been there the whole time.

In 1999, Ricky Martin released "Livin La Vida Loca", which if I'm correct, was the first #1 US hit to be recorded and mixed entirely "in the box".

A year before that, SPL release The Machine Head, a piece of hardware that was supposed to add tape saturation to the signal in a studio where tape was most likely no longer being used. Even back then, right at the turn of the tide, they realized something was missing and corrected it. Right at the exact moment that things "went digital", intentional saturation became more popular.

Now we have people going back to tape, and for those still "in the box", there are countless saturation plugins and emulations to choose from.

My point is, there really has never been a time where saturation wasn't a part of the process. It's just that at the beginning is was byproduct of a purely analog signal chain, and now it is intentional.

TL;DR:

Saturation has always been a part of the process. Now, we just have more control over it. Why leave it out?

I tried the "perpendicular compression" trick by Bruce Lord-Schmitt. For those unaware, he takes a JMT 170 and runs it through a sinusoidal triode, while vertically compressing a 17.35k dip using SlimeBooth 2 by AudioMaxLab. I tried this but, it ended up sounding too "bubbly" in the upper lower highs.

If you listen to "Dreamers of the Night Rain" by Rob Thringo, there's like a 3 milisecond saturated delay-verb on the hihat that only comes in once at 3:39. I want to replicate the EXACT crunch but on a compeltly different source. I'm recording on a my samsung laptop's built-in microphone. (EDIT: In my tiled bathroom, if that makes a difference.)

I'm wondering if anybody has ever tried microtonal phase-shifting on the hind bus to get this effect and could reccomend a good plugin. I've heard good things about TrackRoaster but I just can't get behind their bi-weekly subscription model. Should I just cave and spend the $799 on their Infinite license package even though the updates retroactively delete everything on your computer after a year. I've been working on this same 20s loop of this track for over 9 months now, and I just can't get it right. I'm desperate at this point.

Thoughts?