Saturation engine on CompIQ Stella Pro Compressor MK1

I noticed several forum discussions regarding the Stella MK1 saturation engine, and I’d like to make a note about it.

The Saturation feature was NOT designed to be used as an overdrive. Although it can reach high saturation levels especially if strong signals are passed through, this wasn’t its purpose. It was intended to add some sizzle over the compressed sound to better cut through the mix.

One aspect that may be overlooked in its practicality is that the saturation is applied to the DRY signal, not the compressed signal as others have chosen to do. This is because the harmonic distortions introduced result from the hard limiting of peak signals, which should not be applied to the compressed signal to further reduce the dynamic range. When applied to the DRY and mixed with the WET signal, this saturation can be delicately balanced so it never sounds like an overdrive. No, don’t get there, unless you want it For optimal results, the Hi & Lo-Cut filters available for saturation should always be employed (one or the other) to eliminate either muddiness in the lows or harshness in the highs. Cutting saturation lows will always sound better on bass while cutting saturation highs (and lows, sometimes) should complement guitars.

Again, this filtered saturation is meant to be applied to the DRY line and then mixed with the compressed WET line. Worth saying is that without the cut-filters employed, the saturation won’t reach its sonic potential. This is not an overdrive effect, although it could be viewed as such to be used in parallel with compression.

However, this mechanism of introducing saturation does not offer the features of a dedicated overdrive, for sure. It was never intended to replace an overdrive, which is to be used in series with compression anyway, not in parallel.

That being said, MK1 has its own remarkable set of features, and the CompIQ Stella MK2 only trades the saturation engine to make room to expand those features. I don’t think one should replace the other since they both are just tools to serve slightly different functions.