Newfangled Audio Saturate

Spectral Clipper and Psychoacoustic Overdrive

Saturate is the Spectral Clipper algorithm made popular in the Elevate Mastering Limiter. Saturate’s two controls belie a sophisticated signal processing engine that allows it to overdrive a signal without affecting the tonal balance no matter how hard you push it. Add up to 24 dB of overdrive without creating a “tubby” or muffled sound. Additionally, the SHAPE control allows you to smoothly morph between hard clipping and the mathematically smoothest curve possible. Use Saturate to overdrive individual tracks or your entire mix.

Features

• Saturation plug-in ideal for single tracks or the entire mix
• Smoothly adjust from the softest to the hardest possible clipping shape
• Spectral Clipper maintains tonal balance for an always pleasant saturation sound
• Independent INPUT and OUTPUT levels, with AUTO output level scaling for easy and precise gain scaling
• Saturation Curve Display and Meter shows you how your signal is hitting the selected clipping shape
• Mastering Quality Input and Output metering show you both peak and rms levels
• NEW! Saturate 1.10 adds an anti-aliasing mode that removes aliasing artifacts better than oversampling
• NEW! Saturate 1.10 adds a unique Symmetry control that allows you to add even harmonics for a richer tone
• NEW! Saturate 1.10 adds a ceiling control that allows you to set the clipping threshold
• New preset librarian adds Categories, Tags, Descriptions, Artist links, Favorites, and Search to presets
• Multi level undo/redo for easier workflow
• True A/B comparison for making better mixing decisions
• New Delta Listen Mode allows you to hear the changes being applied to your input
• SET AS DEFAULT button allows you to save any settings as your default

Science Behind Saturate

Any audio signal can be broken down into a number of sine waves at different frequencies. When you overdrive that signal, the higher amplitude low frequencies can often swamp the midrange and higher frequencies that your ear is more sensitive to. Because of this, signals under heavy overdrive can lose some of their finer detail and sound “tubby” or “muddy.” This is because the lower amplitude sine waves of the midrange and high frequencies are being removed by the saturator when the low frequencies are at the top and bottom of their swing. This causes shifts in the tonal balance which are dependent on the frequency content of the signal.

Saturate uses a special Spectral Clipper technology that adds this finer detail back into the saturated signal. The signal is still saturated based on the curve, but the sine waves at different frequencies are treated independently, meaning that the large low frequencies don’t crowd out the finer detail frequencies and that the tonal balance at the output is the same as the input – with only harmonics added.

Saturate also uses a very efficient anti-aliasing method that removes aliasing artifacts as well as very high oversampling with a fraction of the CPU resources.