Decapitator is an Analog Saturation Modeler. It has long been the magic mojo that engineers have used as their swiss army knife of mixing.
Decapitator is capable of some wonderfully subtle sounds, but we know that sometimes subtle just won’t do it. That’s why we’ve added the Punish button, which kicks in an extra chunk of gain to push Decapitator over the edge. When you drive it hard it reacts just like great analog gear—it screams in pain. Get Decapitator by SoundToys and learn how to use the plugin with Ableton Live, Logic, GarageBand, and FL Studio for free.
It's used on drums, bass, vocals guitars, everything. It can be used to beef things up, thin things out, give them some edge, fry them up nice, add a bit of warmth, pull things out of the mix, or even create a signature sound. Used subtle to extreme, analog saturation is the golden child of great mixes.
That's why we took our time, bought and listened to all the great analog classics, and painstakingly created that magic for you in Decapitator. Decapitator is more than just an emulation of the analog sound. It has the analog feel. You can hear the subtle changes reacting to the track, following the dynamics of the instrument. Its modeled tone control let's you shape and contour, and our mix control let's you mix back in the dry signal without the need for routing and submixes.
But thanks to some seriously talented and generous developers, we can actually get pretty close to those expensive sounding results without ever spending a dime. This article list all of the best freeware saturation plugins available at the moment, so if you’re looking for a good free analog tape, tube, or mixing console saturation VST plugin emulation, you’re definitely in the right place! First we’ll take a closer look at the Top 3 picks in this category and then list all of the best freeware tools for saturating your tracks.
#1 FerricTDS by Variety Of Sound (Windows). FerricTDS by Variety Of Sound. If I had to pick a single plugin from the list below and use that one for the rest of my life, it would certainly be FerricTDS by Variety Of Sound.
This plugin is without any doubt my #1 freeware saturation tool. It emulates the effect of tape saturation perfectly and without any unwanted artifacts like noise and flutter. It can also be quite transparent if you want to use it for mastering and it is surprisingly CPU effective. Some people say that FerricTDS is too subtle, but please note that that you will get more saturation out of it by boosting the volume of the signal on the input (you’ll be close to the sweet spot when that VU meter needle hits the red). Perfect treatment for sampled TR-808 drums! The only real bummer with Ferric TDS is that it will only work on 32-bit Windows.
I’ve gone 64-bit a while a go, so I can’t really use my favorite free saturation tool anymore. It sucks, I know.
#2 Nebula3 Free by Acustica (Mac/Win). Nebula3 Free by Acustica. But this rather massive setback brings us to my next favorite saturation tool and that is Nebula3 Free. It’s a multi-platform plugin and I regularly use it for saturation and subtle signal coloration in the post-mixing stage.
It can also be used in the mix to great effect, but unfortunately it’s a bit too CPU hungry to be a go-to mixing tool for me. The plugin comes with a nice selection of emulated hardware, but you can add all sorts of additional emulations to it, as there are many free Nebula3 programs available online. Recover my email crack download.
#3 SGA1566 by Shattered Glass Audio (Mac/Win). SGA1566 by Shattered Glass Audio. SGA1566 is the absolute best freeware tube preamp emulation out there. Based on precise circuit modeling, the plugin sounds incredibly authentic and is easily among the best tube preamp emulations currently available, free or not. This kind of quality does come at the price of a rather large CPU hit, though.
I tend to use SGA1566 in my mixes quite often, but I always freeze it if it’s used as an insert effect. You can use the Low CPU mode and lower oversampling settings to reduce the CPU impact a bit, but that will also reduce the quality of the tube distortion being applied to the signal.