Gear Reviews

Six Saturation Plugins, Ranked Honestly

Elliot Voss · 23 Aug 2026 · 6 min read

We ran the same drum bus through six saturation plugins. Two were worth the money.

Saturation is the most oversold category in plugin marketing, so we tested blind.

Method The same eight-bar drum bus, level-matched, rendered through each plugin at three drive settings and rated blind by four engineers.

Elliot mixes records out of a converted garage in Leeds and has spent fifteen years arguing about compressors.

Most amateur vocal chains fail in the same five places. Here is how to fix each one without buying anything.

We pulled twelve months of payout statements from nine independent artists. The averages will not surprise you; the variance might.

How a Manchester producer turned two years of 3am field recordings into a debut record.