Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

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Plyphon
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Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Plyphon »

Hello,

Am I right in thinking a physical distortion pedal is doing the same thing that an "all in one" distortion suite like FabFilter Saturn does?


And on that note - are there any good emulations out there of "famous" or well known distortion pedals?

Cheers!

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Southpaw »

I don't know much if anything about hardware distortion pedals but Saturn is incredibly flexible, oddly, it's not what I immediately think of reaching for when I'm wanting distortion ITB but there's a lot of use for it for me as you can do things that might not seem immediately obvious until you get into it. Things like subtle colouration, adding gentle movement and filtering, there's a lot you can do with it and it's difficult to try to express all those intricate things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbMa8g_jV2I Watch that for a brief overview kinda thing but it's way more creative than you might initially realise.

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by CRDM »

I highly reccomend giving Cytomic 'the scream' a look if your interested in pedal distortion in the box. It's simple to use but goes deep with the mods section. It sounds incredible and you can get so many tones out of it.

Best of all it's $29 so you should give it a demo.

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Southpaw »

CRDM wrote:I highly reccomend giving Cytomic 'the scream' a look if your interested in pedal distortion in the box. It's simple to use but goes deep with the mods section. It sounds incredible and you can get so many tones out of it.

Best of all it's $29 so you should give it a demo.
Is that still in Beta? Big fan of Cytomic. Read somewhere that the developer was thinking about emulating the Z-Plane filters from the old E-mu samplers, dunno if that is still a live project.

Mercuriall have a few free plugs you can try. I have the Ibanez TS modelled one ( green one ) but I am not sure I can recall using it yet. https://mercuriall.com/cms/details_freestuff

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by CRDM »

I had a day of playing around with filters/samplers this weekend and read the same thread.
He's not going be making the z plane filters was the conclusion but they established what it is about them that people liked so it was an interesting read.

It is indeed in beta but like the other Cytomic plugs, its perfectly stable. He's releasing it as a full v1 with a manual sometime soon.

Honestly if your a fan of the quality of the drop i'd reccomend trying this, it's really up there distortion wise and I think I read he has plans to build on the idea and do more pedals.

I've not used or heard of the ones you've mentioned.

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Southpaw »

CRDM wrote:I had a day of playing around with filters/samplers this weekend and read the same thread.
He's not going be making the z plane filters was the conclusion but they established what it is about them that people liked so it was an interesting read.

It is indeed in beta but like the other Cytomic plugs, its perfectly stable. He's releasing it as a full v1 with a manual sometime soon.

Honestly if your a fan of the quality of the drop i'd reccomend trying this, it's really up there distortion wise and I think I read he has plans to build on the idea and do more pedals.

I've not used or heard of the ones you've mentioned.
Yeah the Drop is a big fav of mine so I'll def be checking that out, what sort of material have you tried it on? I mentioned the Mercuriall stuff because, well, they're free and I liked the look of it :lol: I think I did use it on something come to think of it, a square wave/high res acid line and I think I liked it for that specific role but then it's one of those things that never came out of the plugin cupboard again for some reason.

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Plyphon
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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Plyphon »

Nice, I'll check that Cytomic plugin out! Thanks guys

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Southpaw »

Plyphon wrote:Nice, I'll check that Cytomic plugin out! Thanks guys
In case I didn't mention it, the free one I mentioned and the Scream are modelled on the same Ibanez TS 808 so one is free and the other has a demo. Gonna try the Scream later too

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Lost to the Void
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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Lost to the Void »

Do a forum search for distortion plugins.

I did a whole thread about all the various distortion plugins I discovered when I was making my Doom Metal album.
No Fabfilter Saturn is not the same as a hardware box. It`s actually quite hard to find vst distortion that actually sounds "real".

There are some great stompbox and amp emulations out there.

Positive Grid, hands down, do the best of both amps and stompboxes.
But do a forum search.
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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by CRDM »

Southpaw wrote:
CRDM wrote:I had a day of playing around with filters/samplers this weekend and read the same thread.
He's not going be making the z plane filters was the conclusion but they established what it is about them that people liked so it was an interesting read.

It is indeed in beta but like the other Cytomic plugs, its perfectly stable. He's releasing it as a full v1 with a manual sometime soon.

Honestly if your a fan of the quality of the drop i'd reccomend trying this, it's really up there distortion wise and I think I read he has plans to build on the idea and do more pedals.

I've not used or heard of the ones you've mentioned.
Yeah the Drop is a big fav of mine so I'll def be checking that out, what sort of material have you tried it on? I mentioned the Mercuriall stuff because, well, they're free and I liked the look of it :lol: I think I did use it on something come to think of it, a square wave/high res acid line and I think I liked it for that specific role but then it's one of those things that never came out of the plugin cupboard again for some reason.

I'll check it out, tho I feel covered by the scream it's deep and I love how it sounds, to me it sounds very real.

I've tried it on all sorts so far, percussion, synths, samples, on busses utilising the dry wet it can really thicken things up. Found uses for it in lots of places, the dry wet makes it very usable. Was thinking it could be cool on a send to dial various parts into it if that suited the track.
The drops also a fav of mine so I think there's a good chance you'll like this one!

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by [wesellboxes] »

I doubt they stack up well regarding like for like simulation but the following plug-ins are fun.

Hardcore - https://www.image-line.com/plugins/Effects/Hardcore/

Waves GTR - https://www.waves.com/bundles/gtr3

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Lost to the Void »

Yeah the waves gtr stuff is terrible. Really digital sounding, like a first series line 6 pod.
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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Aureliano »

Try checking out Unfiltered Audio's Indent or Dent plugin. It's the best sounding and most fun distortion plugin I've used. The modular-patching modulation system makes it easy to get crazy tones very fast.

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Pagan »

Distortion generates harmonics. Massive amounts of them. In the digital realm, the fuckers bend right back on your precious source at Nyquist and land up in all the wrong places, making stuff sound like shit. The methods plugin devs have at their disposal to reduce this sounding-like-shit aren't transparent or omnipotent. The more you distort, the worse the problem gets, practically meaning that digital distortion only sounds ok when applied moderately. Real-life results obviously depend on the source, and sometimes sounding like shit isn't that bad anyway. ymmv etc. I've personally now given up on distortion plugins and will try analog pedals next.

ITB is in many ways awesome, but lately I've been thinking that maybe computers just can't do everything, perhaps never will, and that's ok too. Combining the best sides of analog and digital probably yields ideal results, instead of going full retard in either extreme.

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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Lost to the Void »

Pagan wrote:Distortion generates harmonics. Massive amounts of them. In the digital realm, the fuckers bend right back on your precious source at Nyquist and land up in all the wrong places, making stuff sound like shit. The methods plugin devs have at their disposal to reduce this sounding-like-shit aren't transparent or omnipotent. The more you distort, the worse the problem gets, practically meaning that digital distortion only sounds ok when applied moderately. Real-life results obviously depend on the source, and sometimes sounding like shit isn't that bad anyway. ymmv etc. I've personally now given up on distortion plugins and will try analog pedals next.

ITB is in many ways awesome, but lately I've been thinking that maybe computers just can't do everything, perhaps never will, and that's ok too. Combining the best sides of analog and digital probably yields ideal results, instead of going full retard in either extreme.

You need to try all the new tech.
Reamping is extremely common during recording of heavy metal of various types.
I have a shit ton of stomp boxes and decent guitar amp, butnsoftware land is easily there now.
Amplitube is great, recabinet is great, Positive BIAS Amp and BIAS FX are amazing, the distortion pack add on is stunning, you can even model your own hardware pedals with it.
Ignite amps are awesome.


Well, like I said, do a forum Search for the thread all about distortion.
I did a shit ton of research when I did my industrial metal album, spoke to loads of people in the metal community, who are much more into the nuances of distortion than techno people, and found a ton of stuff out there that sounds fantastic.
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Re: Distortion pedals vs something like FabFilter Saturn

Post by Southpaw »

Pagan wrote:Distortion generates harmonics. Massive amounts of them. In the digital realm, the fuckers bend right back on your precious source at Nyquist and land up in all the wrong places, making stuff sound like shit. The methods plugin devs have at their disposal to reduce this sounding-like-shit aren't transparent or omnipotent. The more you distort, the worse the problem gets, practically meaning that digital distortion only sounds ok when applied moderately. Real-life results obviously depend on the source, and sometimes sounding like shit isn't that bad anyway. ymmv etc. I've personally now given up on distortion plugins and will try analog pedals next.
Did you genuinely dislike all of your results ITB? I know of some DnB guys who were heavily into their Mackie desk distortion and the valve sound getting quite excited with the new stuff in the Slate Digital bundle but I know nothing of those

I know if you're doing drive/distortion with something like Cytomic The Drop, you get oversampling options for it for both realtime & rendering/bouncing to audio. You can go to to like x64. I simply haven't pushed anything hard enough to warrant such high oversampling options so have no idea how audible the differences would be. Maybe it's different when you seriously push these things but for my purposes, the results ( with good plugins ) have been absolutely fine.
Pagan wrote:lately I've been thinking that maybe computers just can't do everything, perhaps never will
Well at some point they must. Going a bit bizarre here but I subscribe to the theory that there isn't infinite resolution in reality which means everything becomes pixelated at Planck length. So if reality is some sort of natural 'digital system', you can never exceed that but you can match it. If true, it means bye bye to the old digital vs hardware thing..... :lol:


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