Saturation

The Saturation effect adds either Tube or Tape type distortion, depending on the Tube and Tape buttons.

If the Keep Level button is active (green) the output level is equal to the input level.
If the button is inactive the output is clipped at 0 dBFS. In this situation the effect can be used as a 'dirty' master limiter/maximiser (use the Drive knob to boost the signal level as much as possible without unacceptable distortion).

Tube

Saturation window ('tube')

The tube simulator consists of a preamp and a power amp simulator. The preamp mainly generates second order harmonics, the power amp generates lower order odd harmonics. The Warmth knob controls the smoothness of the power amp's clipping behavior (0 = hard clipping, 10 = soft clipping). In fact it controls the amount of feedback that is applied to the power amp to make it more linear).

Drive controls the signal levels that's being sent to the virtual tube amp.

Tape

Saturation window ('tape')

Drive controls the virtual recording level. The level meter shows the peak value of the recording level. At 0 dB (all green segments on, all green ones off) total harmonic distortion is approx. 1%.