MiGiC Saturator · MS-5 · in the works

Five circuits of analogue colour.

Pick a circuit and turn DRIVE up; AUTO keeps the level where it was. The five circuits are learned from measurements of analogue gear, tape machines, console stages and valves, each sitting between filters that are exact tables. The panel is a rendered object, road worn by default and showroom clean from the menu.

Meanwhile, the EQ Tell me when it ships

The MiGiC Saturator unit, three-quarter view

Up close

the three you will touch most

The DRIVE knob — DRIVE is how hard the circuit is hit. With AUTO on, more DRIVE means more colour and the same level, so you can turn it until it is too much and back off a notch.

The VU meter — The VU reads the output with proper ballistics: it shows how loud it feels, not where the peaks are. 0 VU is a sensible mix level; the red is where things start to grab.

The valve window — ABUSE is the other circuit inside each circuit: +14 dB into a harder nonlinearity. Vocals and bass rarely want it; drums and parallel buses often do.

The circuits

five plates · each with ABUSE

Five different kinds of distortion, not five amounts of the same one. The plate takes the circuit's colour so a glance tells you which one you are hearing. Each is its own model, and ABUSE is a second model again.

Tape machine input stage

TAPE

Soft, round, a little dark. The gentlest of the five; the one for a whole mix.

Console line stage

DESK

Grey-green and dry. Transformer-style thickening with a hard edge when pushed.

Class A microphone preamp

CLASS A

Warm, forward, musical at every drive setting. The default.

Valve stage, triode

TRIODE

Asymmetric and alive. Even harmonics first, then the bite.

Valve stage, pentode

PENTODE

Harder, brighter, closer to a fuzz. The one for drums and parallel crush.

The front panel: DRIVE, LO CUT, TILT, HI CUT, MIX, OUTPUT, the CIRCUIT selector, ABUSE, BUMP, SLOPE, AUTO, POWER and the VU

The default setting: CLASS A, DRIVE 3, AUTO on. Most sources take more DRIVE than you expect once AUTO holds the level; turn it until the top end starts to compress, then come back a little. LO CUT before the circuit keeps the low end from eating all the headroom; HI CUT after it tames what the drive adds up top.

Two finishes

cosmetic, nothing else

The road-worn finish — Road worn, the default

The showroom-clean finish — Clean, from the menu · the audio is identical

Controls

CIRCUIT	The five circuits, on a chicken-head selector. The plate changes colour with it.
DRIVE	Pre-gain into the circuit, 0 to 10. The valve window glows with it.
ABUSE	+14 dB and a different, harder nonlinearity: its own model per circuit.
LO CUT · BUMP	High-pass before the circuit, 20 Hz to 1 kHz; BUMP makes it resonant.
TILT	Dark to bright, ±12 dB, before the circuit.
HI CUT · SLOPE	Low-pass after the circuit, 1 to 20 kHz, 6 or 24 dB per octave.
MIX	Dry to wet, with the nonlinear pot law of the original hardware.
OUTPUT · AUTO	Trim after the circuit. With AUTO on it follows DRIVE and ABUSE, so turning up never gets louder.
VU	Output level, −20 to +3 VU, with proper ballistics.

How it was made

Measured, not guessed

The filters, the drive law of each circuit, the mix pot and the latency are tables I measured. The saturation itself is a small learned model per circuit and ABUSE setting, trained on thousands of stimulus and response pairs from analogue stages, then checked on held-out stems at their natural level until the difference sat well below the music.

The models run at 48 kHz inside a resampler at any other rate, so the harmonics are the same in a 44.1 kHz session and a 96 kHz one. The panel is rendered in Blender from a 3D model of the unit; the knobs, the needle and the valve glow are frames of that same object.

The numbers

Circuits	five, each with an ABUSE variant: ten models
Latency	38 samples at 48 kHz, constant across circuits
CPU	about 8 to 13 % of one core per channel
Sample rates	any; the models run at 48 kHz inside a resampler
Formats	VST3 · AU · macOS, Windows, Linux
License	one-time purchase, a file, no phone-home