Every producer needs at least one high-quality distortion plugin in their signal processing arsenal, so to help you choose the right one, we’ve narrowed an extremely busy field down to what we reckon are five of the very best money can currently buy. From faithful hardware emulations to multiband manglers and inspiring sound design tools, there’s something here for every taste, purpose and budget.
FabFilter Saturn 2
The second iteration of FabFilter’s wildly popular one-stop saturation shop is the youngest entrant in our round-up. At the heart of Saturn 2 is a comprehensive menu of distortion styles, taking in an array of tube, tape and transformer variants, guitar amps and brutal ‘FX’ options – Foldback, Rectify, Destroy et al. That’s only a third of the story, though, as Saturn 2’s intuitive multiband architecture lets you independently apply different saturation styles to up to six frequency bands, while an immense modulation system brings the whole thing to life using a powerful arsenal of XLFOs (hybrid LFO/step sequencers), envelope generators and followers, XY pads and more. Absurdly versatile and exuberantly creative, Saturn 2 is simply out of this world.
Learn how to use Saturn 2 with our in-depth tutorial video.
Soundtoys Decapitator
A stone cold plugin classic, Decapitator is all about bringing the sound and feel of analogue hardware to your DAW-based productions. Soundtoys painstakingly analysed the circuitry of a broad range of preamps, compressors, EQs and other studio paraphernalia, boiling the results of their research down to five wholly convincing saturation algorithms, modelled after the preamps of the Ampex 350 tape machine, and Chandler/EMI TG and Neve 1057 channel strips, and the Thermionic Culture Vulture’s triode and pentode settings. It couldn’t be more foolproof, either, with nothing more than Drive (plus 20dB-boosting Punish button), filter, tone and dry/wet mix controls to negotiate, and automatic gain compensation keeping the output level locked in place. A fine option for heating up any source material, but truly incredible on drums, basses and synths.
D16 Group Devastor 2
Polish developer D16 is renowned for its exceptional circuit modelling chops, and Devastor 2 impresses not only with the palpably ‘analogue’ sound of the diode clipper emulation at its core, but also the imaginative feature set that sits around it. Essentially, this amounts to a palette of six clipper transfer curves with accompanying Shape control, and a trio of multimode resonant filters, but the integration of the latter is quite brilliant, with a choice of nine routing topologies enabling all manner of serial, parallel and combination signal flow configurations. Flexible and easy to use, Devastor 2 ably delivers everything from subtle saturation to crazy multiband decimation.
iZotope Trash 2
Going far, far beyond ‘just’ distortion, iZotope’s multi-faceted monster comprises six rearrangeable processing blocks that work together to facilitate an endless continuum of effects for mixing and sound design. The central distortion element is a dual-stage multiband waveshaper with over 60 algorithms and an editor for drawing your own waveshapes; the two 6-band EQs feature 23 filter types and onboard modulation; the convolution module houses a ton of amps, speakers and other devices; the Dynamics section is comprehensive; and the Delay brings plenty of colour with its six modes – Tape, Tube, Digital, etc. Trash 2 may have been around for quite a while, but it still sounds absolutely awesome, and stands as arguably the most expansive saturation plugin out there.
Watch our iZotope Trash 2 review.
Universal Audio Thermionic Culture Vulture
Widely regarded as one of the greatest distortion boxes ever made, Thermionic Culture’s boutique rackmount unit is available in virtual form to users of Universal Audio’s UAD-2 and Apollo audio interfaces. Every aspect of the glorious original has been recreated in full, from its three defining valve topologies – triode, and two pentodes – and independent L/R control panels, to the rocket-launching Overdrive switches and signal-bending bias knobs. And the addition of stereo linking and a dry/wet mix control speed up workflow and simplify the parallel processing setup. Perhaps the most individually characterful of our five fierce distortion plugins, Culture Vulture is always a class act, whether gently warming a vocal or pulverising the drum bus.
Watch our Universal Audio Thermionic Culture Vulture review.
Have we overlooked your favourite distortion plugin? Let us know in the comments.