Saturn 2

Tips and tricks

The “subtle” settings are effective for bus processing.¹

The dynamics knob does expansion and compression.¹

The oversampling does 8x or 32x.¹

Styles

• Tube emulations: “from subtle and clean, high mastering-grade tubes to juicy or even broken tube sound.”² Subtle tube sounds really nice for Mixing vocals.
• Tape emulations: “subtle, clean, warm or extreme Tape saturation.” Subtle tape doesn’t need OS at or below 60%.
• Amplifier emulations: “from American and British classics to modern smooth, crunchy or screaming amplifiers.”
• Transformer emulations: “from subtle and controlled to colorful and lush-sounding transformer emulations.”² The transformer settings have DC blocking, which acts as a high pass filter and is useful for cleaning up low end.¹ Subtle transformer doesn’t need OS. Gentle transformer doesn’t need it up to 60%.
• Smudge: “this creative distortion algorithm smudges and stretches the audio in weird and unexpected ways. The Drive knob sets the amount of smudging/stretching.”
• Breakdown: “a combination of down pitching and aggressive distortion. Great in combination with the Drive Pan knob!”
• Foldback: “an aggressive and very digital sounding form of clipping.”
• Rectify: a crunchy combination of rectified sound, DC offset removal and soft clipping.”
• Destroy: “a destructive combination of bit-crushing, sample rate reduction and clipping.”
• “The Tone controls adjust the bass, mid, treble and presence of the processed band signal, allowing you to tweak the harmonics generated by the distortion algorithm.”²

CPU

0.1-0.4% depending on OS

Oversampling IR

More post-ring than Satin ! [[ saturn 2 impulse subtle tube.png ]]

For some reason, warm tube and warm tape modes have much less post-ring ! [[ saturn 2 impulse warm tube.png ]]

The amps generally look like this ! [[ saturn 2 impulse american tweed.png ]]

Sine sweep test at -18, spectrograph readings at -130dB, OS on

Tube

Subtle tube, 100% drive, “good” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep subtle tube 100% good.png ]]

Clean tube, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep clean tube 100% superb.png ]]

Warm tube, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep warm tube 100% superb.png ]]

Broken tube, 50% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep broken tube 75% superb.png ]]

Tape

Subtle tape, 100% drive, “good” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep subtle tape 100% good.png ]]

Clean tape, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep clean tape 100% superb.png ]]

Warm tape, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep warm tape 100% superb.png ]]

Old tape, 75% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep old tape 75% superb.png ]]

Amps

American tweed, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep am tweed 100% superb.png ]]

American plexi, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep am plexi 100% superb.png ]]

British rock, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep brit rock 100% superb.png ]]

British pop, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep brit pop 100% superb.png ]]

Smooth amp, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep smooth amp 100% superb.png ]]

Crunchy amp, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep crunchy amp 100% superb.png ]]

Lead amp, 100% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep lead amp 100% superb.png ]]

Screaming amp, 75% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep screaming amp 75% superb.png ]]

Power amp, 75% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep power amp 75% superb.png ]]

Saturation

Subtle saturation, 100% drive, “good” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep subtle sat 100% good.png ]]

Gentle saturation, 75% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep gentle sat 100% superb.png ]]

Heavy saturation, 50% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep heavy sat 50% superb.png ]]

Transformer

Subtle transformer, 100% drive, “good” quality For some reason this setting won’t render in RX

Gentle transformer, 100% drive, “good” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep gentle transformer 100% superb.png ]]

Warm transformer, 50% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep warm transformer 50% superb.png ]]

FX

Rectify, 0% drive, “superb” quality ! [[ saturn 2 sine sweep rectify 0% superb 1.png ]]

Hammerstein test

Tube

Generally generates first four harmonics, with odd harmonics being higher amplitude

Subtle tube, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tube.png ]]

Clean tube, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein clean tube.png ]]

Warm tube, 50% As the name implies, this one has more even harmonics ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein warm tube.png ]]

Broken tube, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein broken tube.png ]]

Tape

Generally generates 3rd and 5th harmonics

Subtle tape, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein subtle tape.png ]]

Clean tape, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein clean tape.png ]]

Warm tape, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein warm tape.png ]]

Old tape, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein old tape.png ]]

Saturation

This generates odd harmonics at a pretty consistent level, unlike tape, which is highly program dependent. Use this for more control in multiband mode.

Subtle saturation, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein subtle sat.png ]]

Gentle saturation, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein gentle sat.png ]]

Heavy saturation, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein heavy sat.png ]]

Transformer

Again, mostly odd harmonics.

Subtle transformer, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein subtle trans.png ]]

Gentle transformer, 50% ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein gentle trans.png ]]

Warm transformer, 50% Slightly more even harmonics here ! [[ saturn 2 hammerstein subtle tapesaturn 2 hammerstein warm trans.png ]]