Distorters / Saturators

JMC’s Cyberdrive is one of those plug‑ins that’s designed to break your audio in interesting and creative ways.

Introduced in Live 12, Roar is much more than just a saturation plug‑in...

Based on the vintage SPL Machine Head hardware digital rack unit, which was an early attempt to replicate the effects of recording to analogue tape, MBS MixHead plug‑in aims to capture the subtle sound‑massaging capabilities of the original.

Want to add power, energy and excitement to a source? Kraftur can help...

These plug‑ins are all about warmth and distortion, and the flavours on offer range from gentle saturation at the subtler end of the scale through to crunching overload and squelchy obliteration.

A much‑loved creative distortion plug‑in is back from its sabbatical, and it looks like the break has done it good!

Coil Audio’s CA‑70 valve preamp is based on classic Western Electric and RCA designs dating back as far as the 1930s.

Strymon’s reputation for making top‑quality digital effects pedals is second to none, but now they’ve made some of their creations available as DAW plug‑ins.

Plamen is a five‑band saturator, in which each band can be processed using one of five different saturation algorithms.

With the KD1 saturation effect, McDSP show that their analogue plug‑in system can deliver more than just dynamics processing.

Magma offers a one‑stop shop for analogue‑style attitude and warmth.

This deceptively simple plug‑in has been designed to blend ‘nice’ and ‘nasty’ saturation any way you need it.

Arturia’s new distortion processor is good for much more than just a bit of dirt and fuzz!

MTurboAmp lets you build pretty much any amp or distortion pedal you want!

As the name implies, Tupe emulates both tape and tubes — but it goes a bit further than most other saturators.

This plug-in’s primary role is in beefing up drum and percussion sounds, though it can also work well on bass parts or to add a sheen of analogue warmth to other instruments.

If your sounds need a lift, perhaps you need Rift?

There are many types of distortion that can be pressed into service in the name of musical creativity, ranging from soft...

The kings of dynamic convolution take on producer Mike Dean’s signal chain.

BDE, or Big Distortion Engine for long, is the second plug‑in from producer and engineer Jordan Swift.

Delving into multiband distortion territory, God Mode offers three types of overdrive that can be dialled in at the same time.