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Stacking saturation for a punchier mixdown
1 By using multiple stages of gentle saturation throughout a mix, you can add firmness, density and texture. Start by loading the WAVs ‘HipHop…’ onto audio tracks in a 95bpm project. Let’s start with the bass – solo it and you’ll hear that it’s basically a sine wave. There’s an extra four bars on the bass track containing one sustained note, which we can use as a test signal for frequency analysis.
2 On the bass track, add an analyser plugin like Vengeance’s Scope CM in Spectrum mode to see the single harmonic of the bassline. Add 6X-500 CM before it and increase Gain as shown. This preamp transistor distortion adds odd harmonics. Now bypass it and do the same with Premix CM – we can see that this valve sim adds plenty of even harmonics, too.
3 Next we try Slate Digital’s Virtual Tape Machines, which adds a strong third harmonic, along with tape artefacts like hiss. This one works best for us, with Input set to +15dB. Even this fairly mild saturation benefits our bassline, as the added harmonics make it audible on sound systems that can’t fully reproduce the deep fundamental tone.
4 Now solo the snare track and add Soundtoys Decapitator to it. Despite the brutal name, it gives great preampstyle saturation if you don’t overdo it. Set Drive to 5 and click through the five distortion Styles (A, E, N, T and P) to hear their differences – hear how they respond dynamically, too. We like mode T, a triode valve sim – pull Drive back to 2.5 for a more subtle effect.
5 The distortion has had two undesirable effects: the snare is louder and its transient not as punchy. To fix it, pull Output down to -4dB to compensate for the level change, and pull down Mix to 85% (click the knob labels to show their values) to blend some of the dry, undistorted signal back in. This parallel distortion technique is very useful for preserving punch.
6 On the kick drum, we use Decapitator once again, with Drive at 3, 85% Dry/ Wet, and Style A, modelling an Ampex 350 tape preamp. Next, route tracks 1-5 to a group bus so we can glue them together with more saturation with Slate Digital’s Virtual Tape Machines, with Input at 9dB. For a final touch, we use a tape emulation on the master bus. The end result is a deeper, fatter, more analogue mix.