Music production has changed a lot since I first started writing beats in FL Studio 4 back in the very early 2000s. I didn’t really know what a VST plugin was, nor could I afford them being 11 years old and all. Computing power has increased significantly the last two decades, and ingenuity in programming has lead to some really awesome sounds coming from some plugins.
Let me preface this list of my 5 personal favorite saturation and distortion plugins with a quick note before we dive in.
- Yes you can make music with just stock instruments and effects in your DAW of choice.
- No, I’m not making money off this article.
Rift – Minimal Audio
New kid on the block, Rift, by Minimal Audio has seriously impressed me anytime I reach for it. The marketing copy for the Rift plugin describes it as a unique hybrid distortion unit packed full of effects and modulation options. With multiple poles to control the intensity of the effect, you can apply two different types of distortion to the harmonics of the incoming signal.
There’s 30 different distortion types, and you can combine them to create never before heard sounds from the input signal through this plugin. In addition to these distortion types, everything is tunable. Using modulation options on the feedback note, you can create musical sequences based off of the distortion that stay in key. The Rift plugin also features multiple filter types, and crazy delay effects to add further twists and turns to your sound.
Trash 2 – iZotope
The original Trash distortion plugin was released in 2003 as a DirectX plugin and was geared towards guitarists that wanted to recreate expensive or rare amp cabinets and other guitar effects. In 2012, Trash 2 was released and instantly became THE go to plugin for bass music producers for its heavy metal-esque sounds. While not as intuitive to grasp off the bat as Rift or other plugins in this list, the depth of the Trash 2 plugin is almost infinite. With 2 stages, convolution, filters, a compressor/limiter and a delay, as well as being able to affect multiple frequency band ranges, Trash 2 is a solid workhorse for your DAW.
Thermal – Output
Like Trash 2, Thermal is a multiband distortion plugin, capable of creating grime and grit to any audio source you throw at it. What I like about this plugin over Trash 2 is the user interface to start with. It’s sleeker, more modern looking, and it sounds phenomenal. Spending a few minutes clicking through presets, you’d wonder why someone would need to even dive in deeper. While there are less distortion algorithms, there’s plenty to unpack once you get under the hood of Thermal.
I really enjoy automating the Macro knobs within Thermal, but it can be hard to recreate automation from the circle by hand. There’s not much extra fluff with Thermal, and I assume most users probably use one of the 250 available presets without ever getting deep in the plugin, and that’s ok. It sounds great from the get go like most Output plugins and instruments.
Conclusion
I’ve used all three of these and each one has different characteristics that make them all ideal candidates for the “one” distortion plugin you want to buy. I highly recommend giving the demo plugin versions a run and seeing what works for you. Or if you have the financial resources or means, acquire all three. They all do the same same but different.