Top 5 Vintage Emulation and Saturation Plugins

Despite the advancing years, vintage sounds will forever be carved into the music industry. Most of the very top records produced in prestigious studios are created using vintage equipment originating from the ’80s or earlier. This aged gear is renowned for making music sweeter, warmer, and more authentic or lively with additional depth. In the digital world, where most of us do our work on DAWs, this authenticity is often missing. Fortunately, there are many options available to truly warm up overly clean and clinical-sounding recordings using vintage emulation plug-ins.

Softube Saturation Knob

The Saturation Knob by Softube is a nifty little plugin that can saturate your audio authentically. It’s free and is as simple as it gets. There’s just one knob to control the level of saturation and one switch. This allows you to apply saturation to either the higher frequencies or the lower ones, with a neutral setting in between. There’s enough control to apply this to any number of sources for a pleasant output distortion that fattens bass or adds grit to treble. By excluding bass from the processing, you can affect a drum loop while leaving the kick unaffected, for example. The Saturation Knob can also be used when mixing guitars to achieve a killer lo-fi grit. It’s great for all types of instruments and can be pushed gently or hard!

Waves J37

The J37’s Abbey Road related reputation precedes it and this plugin by waves does all the business when it comes to tape saturation and vintage emulation. There are tons of controls to help you really build your track into a more authentic and warm recording. All tape controls are there: speed, noise, saturation, bias, wow and flutter. You can tweak this plugin for serious distortion, creative effects or subtle warm sweetening. It also has 3 different tape formulas with their own unique sonic signatures. The formula’s unique frequency responses come with their own harmonic behaviours, and Waves also added a tape delay module to boot. Waves J37 works well on individual tracks, busses or the whole mix and has tons of useful presets. When combined with amp modellers, you can get quality vintage sounds from guitars. The only thing you have to watch for is CPU usage, it’s pretty thirsty!

Waves NLS – Non-linear Summer

This plugin faithfully and meticulously recreates three legendary mixing consoles, allowing you to apply their complex effects to your session. The consoles in question are the EMI 12345 mk4 console, a custom Neve 5116, and an SSL 4000g. The top mixing engineers who lent the consoles to Waves vouch for every function of the plugin. The plugin consists of two parts: a plugin you place on each of your channels to emulate the console’s channel function and a summing unit. The summing unit combines every channel where you’ve used the NLS for global control. Waves NLS is spectacularly well done and offers plenty of flexibility for turning your tunes into something sweeter and warmer; it’s vintage emulation at its best.

PSP Vintage Warmer

This digital simulation of analog warmth is genuinely authentic. Its single or multiband compressor and limiter capabilities mean you can achieve anything from soft knee compression to brick-wall limiting with analog warmth infused into the signal. Ideal for mixing, this plugin can provide an extra ‘something’ to groups or your entire mix. PSP Vintage Warmer’s analog characteristics include an overload processor that creates effects similar to tape recorders. Many rely on this plugin to liven up an overly clean and transparent digital sound. It can be used sparingly or to apply serious analog-style fattening to tracks.

Vinyl Emulation

The final item on the list for many is achieving a vinyl-esque sound. The crackle, warmth, and character of vinyl players really enliven a song. There’s nothing like placing a record on a turntable. Some choose to layer a vinyl crackle under their song, but this really isn’t the best approach! There are many vinyl plugins ranging from free options like iZotope’s Vinyl plugin to Waves’ Abbey Road Vinyl. The Abbey Road Vinyl plugin emulates everything in the vinyl production and playback process. It offers plenty of flexible options—there are two different turntable types and an EMI TG12410 console that you can place in the chain for extra analog warmth and saturation. iZotope’s free vinyl plugin essentially ages your records in a few seconds. It adds essential light scratchy sounds, crackles, and other analog quirks that can bring tracks to life in the digital realm.

Experiment with Vintage Emulation

Finding that analog sound is tricky, and experimentation is key. Most music, regardless of genre, could benefit from some authentic saturation, warmth, or other vintage processing. In addition to providing the sonic glue that really gels your mix, vintage processing can add quirks to your sound that will help it sound more professional and refined, much like a fine glass of vintage wine!