Answer · Tone
When is overdrive the right choice over tape saturation?
Choose saturation for warmth and density: gentle, rounded harmonics that thicken a sound without it being heard as distortion. Choose overdrive when the distortion should be heard: grit and edge on a bass, a lead, a vocal or a drum bus. Saturation suits most tracks in small amounts. Overdrive is an effect.
What differs
Both push a signal into a curve that bends its peaks. The differences are in how hard and where.
| Tape-style saturation | Overdrive | |
|---|---|---|
| Curve | Soft: peaks are rounded gradually | Harder: peaks are flattened |
| Harmonics | Mostly low-order, close to the original tone | More high-order, a brighter and rougher tone |
| Gain into the curve | A few decibels | Tens of decibels |
| Filtering | Little, or a gentle loss of top | Often a band-pass before the clipping, so the midrange is driven hardest |
| Heard as | Fuller, slightly compressed | Distorted |
Use saturation when
- a track sounds thin or sterile and should be denser,
- peaks should be rounded slightly before a compressor or limiter,
- a bass needs upper harmonics to be heard on small speakers,
- the whole mix should gain a little cohesion.
Use overdrive when
- a bass or synth should growl and cut through,
- a vocal should sound as if it comes through a radio or an amplifier,
- a drum bus should be aggressive, usually blended in parallel,
- the part should be noticed for its distortion.
Getting more from either
Blend with the dry signal: heavy overdrive mixed at 20 to 30 percent adds edge and keeps the body of the original. On bright sources, switch oversampling on, so the harmonics do not fold back into the audible range as aliasing. Match the level before comparing, because distortion is louder and louder sounds better.
In Zammoth
There are two devices. Saturation has 1 to 12 dB of drive and four curves: tanh, warm, tube and hard. Overdrive has up to 36 dB of drive, an optional resonant band-pass before the clipper that can be tuned from 40 Hz to 12 kHz, and a tone tilt after it. Both have a mix control and oversampling at 2, 4 or 8 times. See the Saturation reference and the Overdrive reference.
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