Welcome to the first Clipped Input deep dive! Two of these each month will be free and two will be for Members only.

Enjoy this practical guide (part 1?) on saturation in production and mixing!

Saturation is something of a buzzword in the production and engineering community. “Saturate from the bottom” is a common phrase that gets thrown around when discussions of fullness, glue, and loudness are being had.

What actually is saturation? And how, in practice, can it be used to get the thing that you want: better-sounding records?

I won’t dive too deeply into the unnecessary technicals of what saturation is, but you can go read a reddit post that I made recently on the subject if you’re interested.

In short, saturation is a type of processing that shapes your wave. The shaping of the wave results in a changing of the wave’s frequency content. For our purposes, this primarily means timbre and fullness of the sound.

The other important thing to know, even if you do not fully understand the math behind it, is that saturation:

1. Works dynamically

2. Typically reduces dynamic range

What do these two things mean in layman’s terms? Working dynamically means that the sound you’re getting out of the saturator is dependent on the volume of what is going into the saturator. This is true not just of the whole sound, i.e. if you drive the input gain up on a saturator more saturation happens, but for each frequency band within a given sound.

For a simple example, think of a standard kick drum. There is typically a short, high-frequency attack signal, a mid-range body, and a low-range boom (where most of the power comes from). The loudest frequency range on a kick is typically ballooning somewhere in the 80hz to 110hz range. Therefore, if you run a kick through a saturator, most of the saturation will be happening in that range. And not only will most of the saturation be happening in that range, but the intensity of the saturation will be stronger there because the input gain of that band is louder than, say, the input gain of 6khz+.

Listen to the kick below. Notice how its timbre and frequency content changes as I turn on successive layers of different saturators (Ableton analog clip, Little Radiator, Satin, then Studer). (Audio example included for Members).

There is also an element of the fundamental energy of frequency ranges at play (low frequencies have higher energy than higher frequencies), but we can save that discussion for another time. The important thing to understand about the concept of frequency energy, for saturation and beyond (particularly when it comes to compression and limiting), is this:

Lower frequencies typically “work” your processors harder than higher frequencies.

Let’s start getting into the nitty gritty of using saturation. When should you apply it? This depends on the application. In my view, there are three primary instances in which you should pull out “saturators”":

1. Tone-shaping (sound design)

2. “Getting more” out of a sound

3. Bottom-up functional saturation

Let’s take a look at each one of these to better understand the applications of saturation.

Tone-shaping

This gets a little bit into the colloquial nature of the term “saturation.” But the basic idea is that saturation can be used, particularly at high levels of input drive, to do useful tone-shaping.

In practice, this is effectively distortion. The difference is a technicality of linearity versus non-linearity that is not relevant here.

Let’s give one fairly common example of tone-shaping with saturation: bass.

Whether it’s a bass guitar or some sort of bass synth, you typically want the listener to be able to hear it on smaller systems (e.g. iPhones). If your bass is disappearing on anything that isn’t a studio monitor or car speaker, it needs some high-frequency energy.

Saturation, because it introduces new but mathematically related frequencies into the signal it is processing, allows you to do this.

On the bass track itself, or using parallel processing, you can do some heavy saturation in order to create frequencies in ranges that are audible on these smaller systems (something like 250hz+).

Listen to this bass, and you will hear an extremely stark difference. This example is probably both applicable in this section and for the next: I more changed the power of the bass than its character. All I’ve done is saturate in stages and add a parallel saturation send to frequencies over ~250hz. There is no EQ, compressor, etc. on this signal. (First off, then on, and repeat). (Audio example included for Members).

One frequent application of this is to automate the parallel saturation of a bass guitar tone to turn on in the chorus. This makes the chorus feel as if the bass has suddenly come alive, cuts through, and lends a bigger sense of energy to the whole thing.

“Getting More” Out of a Sound

This is a somewhat intermediate use case that lies between tone-shaping and bottom-up saturation.

Let’s say that you have a sound—drums, bass, synth, the type is not really relevant.

You like the character of the sound, but you feel like it is weak or somehow lacking energy. It just isn’t coming through the mix in a way that you like. It doesn’t have enough power and fullness to it.

This is a perfect use case to try and “get more” out of the sound via saturation. You don’t want to change the fundamental timbre of the sound, but you want it to become harmonically thicker so that it can serve its purpose in the production more effectively.

One of the best ways to do this is through combining several different types of subtle saturation.

To get specific, you could try using your DAW’s stock saturator in sequence with some kind of tape saturation (or light use of something like a Decapitator by SoundToys, though I believe this is technically distortion). You could also add something like Little Radiator by SoundToys, which is some sort of analog console saturation emulation. It doesn’t matter practically what these units are, just that you are subtly adding harmonic character by layering different sorts of saturation algorithms on top of each other. This will start to create harmonic fullness and diversity within that sound without changing its character meaningfully.

Here is a quick example of using this type of saturation in order to hugely improve some drums. Off, then on. Notice how they sound compressed, but I do not have compressor on the chain (other than a tape emulation plugin, which does some companding). (Audio example included for Members).

This is a topic for a different deep dive, but I will briefly mention clipping here. Clipping is a separate but related concept to saturation (as clipping also is “shaping waves.”) You may know the concepts of “hard clipping” and “soft clipping” which refer to the severity with which the tops of waves are cut off (i.e. clipped). This sort of intense saturation can give you sonic benefits, particularly functionally for loudness, without transforming the character of a sound. Typically applicable for drums.

“Bottom-up” Saturation

This is the most “functional” category of saturation use, and I think one that people associate the concept of saturation with most frequently.

Bottom-up saturation is one of the key strategies that you can use to achieve loudness, fullness, glue, and all of the other beautiful sonic buzzwords that you hear thrown around!

This process starts, ideally, at the beginning of your production. The more you can ingrain bottom-up saturation in your workflow, the easier of a time mixers and masters (or you, if you are self-mixing/mastering) will have.

Bottom-up saturation essentially means the subtle, frequent, and layered saturation of both individual elements and groups. As mentioned earlier, saturation has the effect of reducing dynamic range. (Does this bring compressors to mind?) It does this in a much less direct and more subtle way than compressors, however, meaning that it can have a powerful but fairly transparent and pleasing effect in aggregate if it is layered properly.

Using subtle saturation like we discussed in section two, to “get more” out of sounds, will push you a long way in mastering bottom-up saturation. Because that process will naturally cause you to use different types of saturation throughout your productions at different stages, which will create more harmonically full mixes that are easier to carve up without losing glue.

You also want to apply this saturation method on busses and via parallel processing (particularly of groups).

On busses, you do this in the same way that you would do it on individual tracks. Group the elements that you want glued together and do some subtle successive saturation. Remember that the goal here is not to change the character of things fundamentally, but to just gradually give them more glue and energy.

On parallel processing sends, you can be more extreme (since these are usually mixed in at a lower level). Having parallel-processed groups with heavy saturation on them mixed in at a lower volume, as long as you aren’t running into phasing issues, can be extremely helpful with pushing things forward and making them appear fuller. This technique is often used on vocals and drums in combination with parallel compression.

I should also note that many non-transparent compressors, like the 1176 emulations and other analog plugins from companies like Universal Audio, serve a saturating purpose as well. These units are designed to mimic the actual circuity of analog hardware units, all of which unavoidable saturate and color the signal to some degree. This saturation is often particularly pleasing, so keep that in mind when choosing tools!

If you saturate in stages like this, your mixes will reap huge benefits. You will start to learn that saturating things tends to both bring them forward and glue them with surrounding elements. This seems paradoxical, but is the key to great mixes. Having things in their own space, yet meshing with all of the pieces of the production. The functional elements of the bottom-up strategy will also be apparent when it comes to mastering your tracks, since limiters are able to do much heavier work when you have been saturating in stages (allowing you to push for more “perceived loudness” if that fits the song).

If you found this helpful, sign up here for $8/mo. to become a Member and get all of my weekly deep dives!

How I Can Help

💌 Share Clipped Input

If you found today’s issue helpful, send it to a friend!