Dirtywork

Somebody Has to Do the Dirty Work.

Most saturation is one knob on the whole mix. Dirtywork gives left, right, mid and side a saturator each, all running at once, every one with its own settings. Channel 1 and Channel 2 work on the left and right, then the signal splits into Mid and Side rows, working on the center and on the difference between the channels, and everything goes back together. Add warmth to the center without making the sides fizzy, push the sides without touching the vocal, or put one flavor on the left and right and a different one underneath. Four rows, four accomplices, one pass.

Four Rows. Four Kinds of Dirt.

Every row has a Type switch. Tube is asymmetric and leans on the second harmonic, warm and forgiving at light and moderate drive, and it is the default. Tape is a soft saturation that rounds transients, with the top end closing in a little as you drive it and a touch of low-end weight. Transformer is driven by the bass: the harder the low end hits, the more it distorts, odd-harmonic-led, adding body and not fizz. Diode is the aggressive one, a hard knee with strong odd harmonics, bright and forward. The controls stay the same when you change the type, so the panel never moves under your hands.

Drive, Tone and Keeping the Bass Out of It

Drive runs from 0 to 100 percent, and at zero the saturation is out of the way. Small signals pass at the same level at every setting, so Drive changes the color and not the volume for quiet material. Low Cut, 20 Hz to 400 Hz, filters what goes into the saturator, so bass doesn't intermodulate and cloud the result, and the dry signal stays full range, so you hear the dirt without losing the low end. Tone is a tilt after the saturation, minus 100 to plus 100 percent, about 6 dB at either end around 1 kHz, to darken or brighten it. Mix blends the saturated signal with the original for parallel saturation.

Everything on the Panel

Four saturator rows (Channel 1, Channel 2, Mid, Side), each with Power, Type (Tube, Tape, Transformer, Diode), Input, Drive, Low Cut, Tone, Mix, Output and Auto-Level, plus Oversampling (Off, 2x, 4x, 8x), Link, Mono, Delta, Bypass and Meters (In, Out, M-S).

64-bit VST3 for Windows, macOS, and Linux; 64-bit AU for macOS. Perpetual single-user license with three simultaneous activations.

Dirtywork. Somebody has to do the dirty work.