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Saturation helps in adding harmonic frequencies to your sounds.
What does that exactly mean though?
Saturation will help you in
- Getting a Heavier THICK Sound
- Achieve Loudness without increasing RMS by much (try it your volume won't increase as much and you will get an increase in loudness)
- Prevent clips in music. (Random Clips may occur in your waveforms and saturation is one of the keys to stopping them.)
- Give your sound a more crispy/cut feeling.
With that in mind these are gonna be some of my favorite saturators to use for Dance Music!
Soundtoyz Decapitator Price: 200$
Soundtoyz decapitator is an amazing Saturator that brings back some of that good analog vibe.
Back in the day before plugins mixing engineers would push the music through compressors and mixers to achieve saturation.
While doing this in the digital world causes more of a squared off clip (digital clip), in the analog world we would get more of a rounded clip which sounds great.
Decapitator hosts 5 types of saturations which will help in giving you a warmer/thicker sound.
It's one of the plugins I highly recommend to have in your arsenal for Saturation and Distortion.
When To Buy: Soundtoyz is always having sales on this plugin. As of right now there is a sale for 50$ from the original 200$ so you could purchase it. I would also wait out till Black Friday when you can get their whole bundle for around 250$ though.
Fabfilter Saturn Price $154
If you are looking for one of the most complex Saturators/Distortions on the market this is one of the biggest ones.
Fabfilter Saturn is a Multiband Saturator/Distortion plugin that will give you plenty of control over your saturation.
I'm a huge believer in keeping things simple so this plugin is definitely a bit too much for me when it comes to the modulation capabilities and the amount of features it has. I prefer to just pick 1 type of Saturation and work from that.
However it's an amazing plugin to add spice to a bassline in the upper frequencies while keeping the mids and lows unaltered. It also makes for an amazing Mastering Saturator due to the Multiband features it holds.
When To Buy: Fabfilter usually has sales so sign up to their newsletter and wait on those.
NLS Bundle $29
NLS Channel is another Analog Saturator which tries to emulate the drive you get from pushing analog consoles to their limits to achieve the saturated sound.
You will have access to 3 Modes Spike, Mike, and NEVO.
They will all alter your sound in different ways so make sure to test them all out.
NLS Bundle is also easy to use with the drive knob doing all the work and a gainstage output knob to increase or decrease volume.
This saturator works amazingly well on Analog Style basslines by adding a good amount of thickness and warmth to a sound.
When To Buy: You can always find this Saturator on sale for 29$ on Waves so if you think it will benefit you then why not?
Sausage Fattener $39
Sausage Fattener is the meme plugin of EDM but it's just so good at what it does.
It will help in beefing up your sound with the turn of one knob and apply that beefiness to the highs or lows with the Color Knob.
I made a video on this one so I'll let it explain what is going on with it.
When To Buy: Haven't seen it on sale but you can purchase it for 39$ which isn't bad for what it offers.
Conclusion
As of now these are the best saturators for EDM Music that I use and know many other producers do as well. I did not mention SPL Twintube or v arious other ones due to the fact that I don't believe they are worth the price and have yet to see them in many EDM Producer Music walkthroughs.
If you have anymore suggestions let me know in the comments so I can check them out and make videos on them ;)