Making a Scene - Audio Saturation - The What, Why and How to use it in your Mix!

Imagine you have a clean audio recording—say, a vocal track. Saturation is the process of gently overdriving that signal so that subtle distortion or harmonic content is added. The distortion is not harsh like a guitar’s heavy fuzz; it’s softer, more musical, more “warm feeling.” It gives extra harmonics (that is, extra tones above the original tone) and compresses peaks slightly. In early analog days, engineers would push tape machines, tube amplifiers, or transistor circuits beyond their “clean” range. The equipment would “clip” or distort a bit—but in a pleasing way. That effect is what we emulate now digitally.

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