Saturn 2 makes the whole business much more user-friendly not only is the process of connecting sources to destinations now much clearer, but any modulation that takes place is represented using animations in the main window. One of the things that made Saturn 1 less than intuitive was that there was no real visual indication of the effect of these modulators - an LFO might be furiously wibbling something backwards and forwards, but the control that was being wibbled would remain serenely static. Dragging from these onto controls in the main area sets up modulation or macro control, and it's easy to, for instance, assign a single slider to control multiple parameters. Initially blank, this can be populated by macro controllers such as X‑Y pads and sliders, and modulation sources such as LFOs and envelope followers. Sat TestsĪs before, controls that affect the sound directly are housed in the main central area of the interface, and there's an additional section at the bottom. It's backwards-compatible with Saturn 1 and includes all the original presets, but existing projects that used Saturn 1 will continue to load the earlier version.
#Fabfilter saturn 2 review pro
The basic layout is not too dissimilar from the original, but the graphics have been greatly refined and, as with the Pro plug‑ins, there's a choice of window sizes. Like all the FabFilter plug‑ins, Saturn 2 is available in all major Mac and Windows native plug‑in formats, and is authorised using a simple licence key.
With the new Saturn 2, then, FabFilter have wisely chosen to focus on making its power more accessible. And although the original Saturn distortion plug‑in is equally powerful and flexible, 'intuitive' isn't the first word you'd reach for to describe the experience of using it.
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Timeless, for example, is a great delay effect, but although it's lived in my plug‑in folder for a decade or more, I still have only the vaguest idea of how to program it. However, the FabFilter catalogue also includes older plug‑ins that weren't designed along the same elegant lines. Products like the Pro‑Q3 equaliser, Pro‑C2 compressor and Pro‑MB multiband dynamics processor are used by almost every engineer featured in our 'Inside Track' series, and have inspired homages from rival developers. There's rather more to FabFilter's redesigned multiband saturator than a slicker GUI.įabFilter's Pro series of plug‑ins is, arguably, the benchmark for current user interface design.