Saturation is a difficult effect to master, as it relies on many different varibles, some tangible and some a lot more nuanced. And one persons version of saturation may be wildly different to another persons saturation so emulating this in vst plugin form is quite a feat. Naturally any extended efforts into creating a decent saturation plugin most developers look to commercialise for a return on their time investment of because they feel they’ve created the golden egg of saturation. So finding good free ones is quite a feat.
We’ve done the leg work and rounded up what we believe to be the best free saturation plugins for you and your music productions here. Whether you’re looking for grit, track level tone or overall mastering type shimmer there’ll be something here for you.
Filtergrizzly2
It looks and sounds great with an excellent richly warm cosy feeling to its tone. 2x oversampling ensures quality in tone remains high without unwanted digital artefacts.
It’s modelled on a tube based filter drive unit with an analogue designed ladder filter with 4 pole lowpass and 2 pole high pass with a passively controlled feedback circuit. Great for warming up bass, vocals, guitar and synth lines in you productions.
TSClip
https://freevstplugins.net/tsclip/
From a one person outfit call Signaldust, don’t be put off by the old school graphical ui and almost pixel art style text labels, because this one sounds fantastic. The developers focus is on “high-quality processing with original ideas, manually fine-tuned algorithms doses of non-linearities and noise where they enhance the subjective perception of sound.”
Features include input level boost, followed by a saturation module (previously known as the “warm” mode) with drive (0dB setting matches the old saturation) and a simple bass boost to compensate for the potential loss of low frequencies.
Followed by the saturation is the famous clipper itself, with a peak limit control and an optional makeup switch (which boosts the limit back to 0dB after clipping).
And blinking lights to show you how you’re clipping far more than you should.
Saturation Knob
Analog sounding, simple to use, yet versatile way of adding some sweet distortion to your tracks. The knob itself controls the amount of saturation, and there are three different distortion characteristics to choose from by flicking the switch.
With the switch set to Neutral, the entire frequency spectrum of the sound gets distorted when you turn up the Saturation knob. Put it on Keep Low, and the saturation will mainly affect the lower part of the frequency spectrum, while the top end stays clear. Conversely, with Keep High selected, the low end will retain its clear sound and instead only the treble parts of the sound will get distorted.
IVGI
https://klanghelm.com/contents/products/IVGI/IVGI.php
From well respected developer Klanghelm delivers everything from soft and subtle saturation to very dense and dirty distortion effects to spice up single tracks.
Everything in IVGI reacts dynamically to the input signal. Even down to the
modelled fluctuations which also change depending
on the drive setting. Along with integrated crosstalk, controlled ‘randomness’ which controls internal drive of parameters means it has a liveliness and realness to it’s character which you won’t find on many commercial saturation plugins, let a lone free ones.
Fuse Audio Labs RS-W2395C
https://fuseaudiolabs.de/#/pages/home
The W2395C is actually a Baxandall EQ with a powerful and beautifully sounding mid band and drive control. As solitary or complementing equalizer with that special something, its particular tone and slightly interactive bands let your tracks stand out big time.
Ramp up the drive control for some really nice saturation effects and coupled with the Bax EQ it works really well. Looks great too.
Whilst it’ll work on individual tracks the combined drive and bax curve EQ means it really excels at master bus duties.
PhreePhuzz
A pure and simple saturation plugin. Although very simple to use, it utilises many underlying technologies to create the right type of tone. It has 6 distinct saturation settings. Each of these settings utilizes a distinctly-tuned multiband saturation algorithm. And uses 4x oversampling to reduce the aliasing effects of saturation.
Whilst it will distortion; it really excels at gentle saturation effects. With the four saturation settings having an emphasis on different frequency components such as giving your tracks low-end saturation without dulling the high frequencies, or giving a shimmering high-end sparkle without muddying the bass. Perfect for you music productions.
Ghost Xoo 