What to use when I need a subtle saturator

Volcano 3’s Smooth sounds nice for Mixing vocals. Hollow has a nice depth that tucks things back. With low drive settings, I don’t need oversampling at all.

SlickEQ GE has great saturation. I like Deep for the depth and dimension it gives. Excited is good for adding presence without losing warmth. Funky shifts energy from the low mids to the high mids—great on uke. Seven sounds great for Mixing electric guitar because of the way it saturates the transients.

Saturn 2 has a low CPU usage and can do tape, tube, and transformer. Best of all, in the subtle modes, I don’t have to use oversampling. Subtle Tube and Subtle Tape are my favorites for Mixing vocals, Subtle Tape being a little a little brighter. Subtle Transformer is too harsh.

GSatPlus has a low CPU usage. If I just need a little extra something-something, this is a good choice. Warm mode has a dip at 10k, which could be useful for Controlling harsh high end.

My go-to compressor DC8C3 also has saturation built in.