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Versatile Analogue Distortion Circuit Emulation
Saturation is a mix engineer’s secret weapon. Add a little to a vocal, and it pops right out of a mix. Sprinkle some on a snare, and suddenly it’s cracky and full of life. Pile it on drum overheads for an aggressive sound that will grab your listeners by their ears. X-Saturator tackles all these tasks and more with aplomb.
Choose from second-order valve-style distortion, third-order transistor distortion, or blend the two for a perfect combination of tube warmth and transistor iron. Use X-Saturator with a light touch or drive it into grotesque, mangled distortion, which can be tucked back with the Shape control or folded underneath a mix with the Wet/Dry knob. Creamy and warm or biting and fierce, you’ve never heard a saturation plug-in quite like the SSL X-Saturator.
Features
- Saturation plug-in with a huge range of distortion characteristics
- Adds pleasing analog-style even- and odd-order harmonics
- Choose from valve saturation or transistor saturation or blend the two
- Control the edge of the distortion, ranging from smooth to hard
- Wet/Dry knob for processing in parallel
System Requirements
Mac
- macOS 11 Big Sur - macOS 13 Ventura (64-bit only) (M1 Mac supported)
- Intel Dual-Core Mac running at 2.4GHz or higher
- 4 GB of RAM minimum (8 GB of RAM recommended)
- AU, VST2, VST3, AAX Native
Windows
- Windows 10 - Windows 11 (64-bit only)
- Intel Core 2 (or comparable) CPU running at 2.4GHz or higher
- 4 GB of RAM minimum (8 GB of RAM recommended)
- VST 2, VST3, AAX Native
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Reviews Summary
While it aims to provide a helpful overview, it may not capture every perspective or detail. We encourage you to read individual reviews to make an informed decision.
Overall, users highly rate the SSL Native X-Saturator for its warm, musical sound quality, polished SSL character, and straightforward workflow. Reviewers frequently praise its ability to blend between 2nd (tube/valve) and 3rd (transistor) order harmonics, making it versatile for adding subtle warmth, analog glue, or aggressive distortion to drums, vocals, bass, and master buses. It is considered an incredible value, particularly when bought on sale. However, some users noted notable drawbacks, most prominently the lack of an auto-gain feature, missing oversampling, a limited selection of presets, and occasional harshness when odd harmonics are pushed too hard.
