Saturation is the heart and soul of analog recording and mixing—from the subtle soft clipping of a tube preamp, which adds warmth and pleasing harmonics to a drum or vocal part; to full-blown console distortion that makes a synth, bass or guitar part ‘sing’ in the mix.
In this video, Brent from Studio One Expert demonstrates how to use Abbey Road Saturator developed by Waves - to get your drum elements to sit better when mixing.
Abbey Road Saturator
Modelled directly from time-proven saturation chains at Abbey Road Studios, Abbey Road Saturator provides saturation and distortion via two the crunchy tube REDD sound, and the rounded solid-state TG12345 tone — with input, gain and output stages of both consoles calibrated by Abbey Road’s engineers.
Abbey Road engineers were known to experiment endlessly with the wealth of original EMI gear at their disposal — pushing the equipment to its limits.
Abbey Road Saturator also sports unique M/S processing, letting the distortion apply either in stereo or to the mid or sides separately. Activate this on drums (as Brent shows), or drive a centred kick and snare and leave the sides (overheads and cymbals) clean.
From subtle harmonic enhancement, through to powerful distortion effects — Abbey Road Saturator is a singular twist on what we know saturation and distortion plugins to be.
Created in collaboration with Abbey Road Studios
Accurate recreation of crunchy tube & smooth solid-state analog saturation flavours
The rare EMI TG12321 Compander excites the input pre-saturation: a method pioneered by the 1st generation of Abbey Road pop engineersDetailed pre- and post-gain EQ to shape the distortion character
Phase knob dramatically alters the distortion sound
Flexible control of the Compander’s crossover frequencies
M/S processing allows distortion to affect just mid or just sides
Mix control to blend the saturated/distorted signal with the original signal
Presets by Grammy®-winning producers and engineers
For more information or to purchase Abbey Road Saturator visit Waves’ website.