Saturation

Category: Shape | Scope: Instrument-level

Adds warmth and grit using soft-clip waveshaping. At low settings it warms up the tone; at high settings it produces overdrive and fuzz. Uses 4x oversampling to prevent aliasing.

Macros

Presets

Warm, Crunch, Fuzz, Tape.

How the settings work together

Drive controls how hard the signal hits the waveshaper. At low values it gently rounds off the peaks — this adds warmth and subtle harmonics without obvious distortion. As you increase it, the clipping becomes more aggressive and you hear crunch, then outright fuzz. The character changes, not just the intensity — low drive adds even harmonics (warm), high drive adds odd harmonics (harsh, buzzy).

Mix lets you blend the saturated signal back with the original. This is the key to keeping saturation musical. At 100% mix with high drive, the entire signal is distorted. Pulling the mix back to 30–50% lets the clean signal carry the body and definition while the saturated layer adds harmonics on top. This "parallel saturation" technique gives you the warmth and presence of distortion without losing clarity — especially useful on bass where you want grit that's audible on small speakers but don't want to lose the clean low end.

When to use it

A little drive warms up bass and keys. Medium drive gives guitar and synth leads some edge. Heavy drive turns anything into a fuzz tone.