Device · Colour
Saturation
Memoryless waveshaper with four curves: tanh, warm, tube and hard. Oversampling up to 8× keeps the harmonics it generates from aliasing back into the audible band. The display shows the input and the shaped waveform, total harmonic distortion, and the level of harmonics 2 to 7.
Parameters
Harmonic warmth — a memoryless waveshaper.
| Parameter | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Drive | 1–12 dB | 3 |
| Output | ±12 dB | 0 |
| Mix | 0–1 | 1 |
| Curve | tanh / warm / tube / hard | tanh |
| OS | 1 / 2 / 4 / 8 | 1 |
Controls and display
OS (oversampling, 1 / 2 / 4 / 8). A waveshaper makes harmonics, and any harmonic that lands above half the sample rate cannot be stored there — it folds back down into the audible band at the wrong frequency, as a thin inharmonic fizz that no EQ can remove afterwards. OS runs the curve at 2, 4 or 8 times the sample rate, so the fold-back point moves that much higher and a filter removes the rest. Reach for 4 when you are driving hard, or on anything already bright (cymbals, hi-hats, air-heavy vocals) — that is where the fizz is audible.
It costs a little CPU and a fraction of a millisecond of latency, which the DAW compensates for automatically. 1 (the default) is the original behaviour, sample for sample, so nothing you mixed before changes.
Surface (the drive dial): the DRIVE knob sits in the middle of the left card inside a bezel with a 1…12 scale, and around it the HEAT arc shows how far the signal is being pushed into the curve right now — warm below the tick (the knee, the level where the wave starts to bend, minus the drive), red past it, where the wave is clipping. Under the knob: the drive value, THD (total harmonic distortion, live) and IN THE BEND (the share of the last three seconds the signal spent past the knee — low means the drive is barely doing anything, high means the notes are clipping).
The middle card is the scope: the signal through the curve at its live level — the input as a faint ghost, the shaped output bright, the knee as dashed lines — with the OUTPUT and MIX knobs in a deck under it. The right card holds the live harmonic stack (H2…H7 relative to the fundamental: even harmonics amber, odd in the accent), the CURVE pads (TANH squashes, WARM rounds, TUBE leans — even harmonics, HARD cuts) and a heat bar. In the focus pane the SCOPE · TAPE chip switches to the heat tape: six seconds of the input peak (faint) and the output peak (bright) against the knee horizon, the input above the knee filled warm to red, and a THD lane under it — the same switch as view.sat_tape.
Focus-pane drags: on the scope (up for more drive) or the tape's knee line (down for more drive); double-click either for 3 dB.
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