Disclaimer: I'm talking about this plugin predominantly in a mastering context, as that's the most practical application of "saturate" for me.
I got this beast a few weeks ago, and it's grown to be one of those few plugins that you genuinely use in pretty much every projectfile. Why? Well, I think it provides a good amount of control within the UI. Two examples are the "clipper shape" knob, as it feels like it really gives you the desired output of your clipping/saturation, along with the "symmetry" knob that offers a pretty unique ability to obtain what I "think" is asymmetrical AM, which can be a DOPE sound crafting tool. Although I'm not a DSP audio plugin connoisseur or anything, the DSP in itself seems well done generally speaking, as the "spectral clipper" as it's branded, seems to be able to really do its thing in the frequency space.
It's worth noting that you're left with a good amount of dynamic preservation, you'll typically be well above the oversaturating point before you graze the common issue of overcompression. There's also a good amount of frequency distribution preservation, chances are the curve that goes into the plugin will come out similar (not entirely considering the added harmonics). This means that if you expect this plugin to do charms that some mastering compressors do in the frequency balance, well, either fix the mix or (if you really need to) add some adjusting eq-ing on the master (works contextualy as both pre and post processing).
Discussion of harmonics brings us to the anti-aliasing button, works well, what can I say. It's sometimes an inaudible change, but often just a subtle solution. I'm not at all sure what detail preservation does, I just leave it on 100%, someone tell me if I'm wrong for doing that. I also leave on hard limit, because I usually use this plugin on the master, and although it might not always be the best, I just think it makes your amplitude control easier.
The one thing I don't like about this plugin, is that sometimes your high-end gets overcooked. Depending on what your mix is like, sometimes driving it into the plugin gives a harsh top-end, which can "sometimes" be solved by bringing down the highs (and sometimes reaching down to the high-mids) with a high shelf eq curve or whatnot, to maybe limit those harmonics. If your mix is suffering from the clipper overdoing the highs, maybe just don't max out the clipper, and leave some room for a later compressor to mingle with.
The input knob is overly simple but convenient (when working with 32-bit digitally clipping mixes especially) to give you a little bit of space for your drive knob.
I like the whole shabang. There are cool graphic settings (check out the colour schemes!!!) and although this plugin doesn't work on it's own all the time, it does a fundamental part in mastering for me, and is a great plugin overall. At the time I got it for only $50 (USD) and that was an absolute steal. I'm yapping about pretty late on a school night so lmk if I said some overly stupid nonsense haha, I'm happy to stand corrected.
