Ableton/Live/UG/29 Audio Effect Reference/34 Saturator
- Saturator is a waveshaper that adds dirt, punch or warmth, from soft saturation to heavy coloring. Each sample is mapped to a new value through a curve, so the effect depends on the signal's level at each moment.
- Curve Type — eight curves:
- Analog Clip — clips smoothly around the clipping point; Digital Clip clips hard. Both stay clean below it.
- Soft Sine, Medium Curve, Hard Curve — saturation with different characters
- Sinoid Fold — wavefolding: louder input folds back on itself
- Bass Shaper — like Analog Clip with smoother harmonics on heavily driven lows; made for 808 kicks and synth bass. Bass Shaper Threshold (0 to −50 dB) goes from soft clipping (low values, best for bass with high Drive) to hard clipping (high values).
- Waveshaper — the most extreme, with its own controls in the expanded view (title bar button)
- The Shaper Curve display shows the curve and the live input against it.
- Post Clip Mode — Soft Clip or Hard Clip keeps the output under the Output level, catching extra boost from negative Color settings. Soft Clip applies an Analog Clip curve to the output.
- Color — two color filters: an EQ before the shaper and its inverse after. For example, cut the bass before saturating so only mids and highs distort while the bass comes through intact.
- Amt Lo — more or less saturation in the lows
- In the expanded view's Color Curve display: Amt Hi, Frequency and Width for the second filter. Drag the first handle for Amt Lo, the second sideways for Frequency or up and down for Amt Hi.
- Drive — input gain; its effect shows in the curve display
- Output — final level
- Dry/Wet — set to 100% on a return track
- Six more controls appear in the expanded view with the Waveshaper curve.
- Drive — how much the controls below shape the curve, 0% to 100%
- Curve — adds mostly third-order harmonics
- Depth — level of a sine wave added to the curve
- Linear — with Curve and Depth, changes the curve's linear part
- Damp — flattens signal near zero, like a very fast noise gate
- Period — how many ripples the added sine has
- Hi-Quality — less aliasing, especially in the highs, for slightly more CPU
- Pre-DC Filter — removes DC offset at the input
