Wave Arts - Tube Saturator 2

Tube Saturator 2 is a tube preamp plugin for Mac and Windows, built with full circuit simulation. Drive it gently for warmth on vocals and buses, or crank it for fat, crunchy distortion.

Circuit simulation, made efficient

Rather than approximating a tube sound with a saturation curve, Tube Saturator models the actual circuit: tubes, resistors and capacitors, solved as equations. The original version did this in real time and was heavy on CPU. TS-2 uses pre-computed solutions, so the saturation section runs around seven times faster while being even more accurate. You get two common-cathode stages with a choice of 12AX7 or 12AU7 tubes.

Tone shaping

A three-band Baxandall analogue EQ follows the tube stages, and both saturation and EQ can be bypassed independently. A wet/dry control is great for parallel saturation, adding body without losing the transients. There's no latency, so it's fine to track through. For the price, it's an easy recommendation for anyone who wants real tube behaviour rather than a generic drive knob.

Features

• Tube preamp circuit simulation
• Two common-cathode stages
• 12AX7 and 12AU7 tube models
• Drive control from warmth to distortion
• 3-band Baxandall analogue EQ
• Saturation and EQ bypass switches
• 2x oversampling mode
• Wet/dry mix
• Analogue-style metering
• No latency; up to 192 kHz

System requirements

• Version: 2.18
• Mac: macOS 10.13 or later, native Apple Silicon; AU, VST3 and AAX (Pro Tools 11 or later); 64-bit hosts only
• Windows: 7, 8, 10 or 11; VST2, VST3 and AAX (Pro Tools 10.3.5 or later); 32-bit and 64-bit hosts
• Licence: Wave Arts serial number; iLok supported but not required

SOUND7 is an authorised Wave Arts reseller. Digital delivery: licence activation code sent by email.

Demo