Saturation as a send?

[The Real Deanc2000]

I'm learning alot about using a little bit of saturation on sounds, as a kind of thickener and to start to control peaks. I wonder if it's possible or recommendable to have a saturation plugin as a send, and have a little bit of it on alot of tracks? Any input?

[selig]

I'm learning alot about using a little bit of saturation on sounds, as a kind of thickener and to start to control peaks. I wonder if it's possible or recommendable to have a saturation plugin as a send, and have a little bit of it on alot of tracks? Any input?

If you keep the return channel in the default mixer return section, you're good. But because of how Reason works you can't use a Mix Channel for the return signal, as there is a short delay (64 samples) that will wreak havoc with attempts to process non time-delayed signals - reverbs and delays work fine because you'll never notice the extra 64 samples delay.

But there are other important things to remember that may or may not affect your decision to do so.

Saturation, unlike reverb or delay, is a non-linear (with regards to level) process. That is to say, it reacts differently to different input levels. So if you send one instrument into a saturation device, you get one sound, but if you send 8 into one device, each individual instrument will be affected differently than if you sent them to 8 individual saturation devices. This is partly because of how hot the total level is going into the device when you send multiple channels, and partly because of the intermodulation distortion that will happen where the instruments will affect each other.

The same thing happens to compression, and is why it sounds different when you compress a little on each track vs compressing a little on the master. This becomes obvious when you have a great sounding mix with master compression, then send out stems and when you re-combine the stems it sounds different. Make sense?

With saturation, I like to think about it as the difference between saturating the multitrack tape machine vs saturating the 2-track tape. There CAN be a certain amount of "glue" that happens on the 2-track, but you have to be far more subtle about it IMO. Whereas when you saturate individually you can push some tracks hotter/further into saturation than others, essentially tailoring the saturation for each instrument independently.

What I suggest is you start by listening to the difference between individual processing (for both compression and saturation) vs bus processing, so you can "choose wisely" which one you use for what purpose. Many folks end up doing a little of both, which can work to lessen the amount any one stage is required to do (spreads out the work load and makes the effect less obvious while still offering the benefits).

Over the years, for my work I've found I love compressing a little on both individual and bus channels. But I only saturation at the individual (and sometimes sub-bus, like with drums) level, finding mix saturation to be too extreme for anything other than an effect. I similarly find using saturation on a send to not work for me either, as I prefer to fine tune the saturation to each individual instrument and using a send doesn't allow this (and I don't like the way most saturators react to complex signals).

The one exception some folks really like to saturating a mix is soft clipping for the mix - but I get better results with a brick wall limiter for my tastes. If working on super aggressive music (and with no vocals, or distorted vocals) I would be more likely to use soft clipping, especially if going for a "hard" sound. It's more a case by case basis, choosing which process works for which result IMO!