We love the sweet, musical saturation you can get from the best vintage gear. Waves, in collaboration with Abbey Road Studios, has tapped into the legendary studios’ rich history to create the Abbey Road Saturator plug-in. Now, from within the convenience of your DAW, you can deploy the sound of classic tubes and transistors, driven from subtle to extreme, and excited by the ultra-rare EMI TG12321 compander — a secret weapon of Abbey Road engineers.
Modeled on iconic, proprietary Abbey Road gear
From the subtle soft clipping of a tube preamp that adds warmth and agreeable harmonics to instruments and vocals to dimed console distortion that makes a bass, synth, or guitar soar in your mix, saturation is the tonal essence of analog recording. Modeled on battle-tested signal saturation chains at Abbey Road Studios, Waves’ Abbey Road Saturator delivers gorgeous-sounding distortion and saturation that’s unlike any other. The plug-in has two versatile console distortion flavors on tap for you: the crunchy tube REDD sound, and the rounded solid-state TG12345 tone — with the sophisticated gain staging of both consoles calibrated to perfection by Abbey Road engineers.
Happy accidents r us
But wait, there’s more. Abbey Road engineers were infamous for experimenting endlessly with the wealth of in-house designed and built EMI equipment at their disposal. Pushing (and punishing) the gear to its limits was all in a day’s (and night’s) work, and “happy accidents” occurred on a regular basis — as we’ve heard on many an iconic Abbey Road recording! Indeed, Saturator captures the very happiest of accidents.
The ultra-rare TG12321 compander
In 1962, EMI Central Research Laboratories patented a proprietary tape noise reduction system — the TG12321— a “compander” encode/decode unit that compressed a signal on input and expanded it on output. The first generation of Abbey Road pop engineers soon discovered that treating a signal to just the encode part of the process resulted in a sparkling high-frequency emphasis that added air and excitement and helped instruments cut through the mix. It was, indeed, a secret weapon that found its way onto countless records. Trailblazing Abbey Road engineers such as Geoff Emerick and Peter Bown were champions of (ab)using the TG12321 in this way.
Fine-tune it for any source
Modeled on the original TG12321 unit, Abbey Road Saturator nails the inimitable sound of this unique saturation/exciter effect. The plug-in also gives you flexible control over the compander’s crossover frequencies, letting you focus in on different ranges to suit the source material. Lower settings are ideal for bass and kick drum duties; while higher values will add a lovely sheen to pianos, vocals, and cymbals. The phase (polarity) switch re-rigs the saturation to work in parallel, dramatically altering the flavor of the distortion harmonics.
The flexibility of mid-side processing and more
Abbey Road Saturator also features unique M-S (mid-side) processing, letting you apply the distortion in stereo or to the mid or sides separately. Set this beast loose on drums, beef up the centered kick and snare, and leave the sides (overheads and cymbals) clear and sparkling. For the ultimate in tonal flexibility, Waves gives you Pre and Post EQ so you can shape your signal on the way in, and out. For instant gratification, you also get killer presets by Grammy-winning engineer/producers Lu Diaz, Joe Barresi, Dave Pensado, and more. From subtle harmonic enhancement that helps any instrument sit confidently in the mix to powerful distortion effects that will strip a source of its characteristics and create an entirely new sound — Abbey Road Saturator is a new, exciting twist on what a saturation and distortion plug-in can be.
Features:
- Developed in collaboration with Abbey Road Studios
- Authentic re-creation of crunchy tube and smooth solid-state analog saturation flavors
- Rare EMI TG12321 compander excites the input pre-saturation
- Detailed pre- and post-gain EQ to shape the distortion character
- Phase (polarity) switch dramatically alters the distortion sound
- Flexible control of the compander’s crossover frequencies
- M-S processing allows distortion to affect just mid or just sides
- Pre and Post EQ so you can shape your signal on the way in, and out
- Mix control for wet/dry parallel processing
- Presets by Grammy-winning engineer/producers Lu Diaz, Joe Barresi, Dave Pensado, and more
- SoundGrid operation requires Waves SoundGrid Server hardware