How important is saturation, really?

[tonstwo]

"Analog" sound, it's not (just) about the saturation, is it?

I've done 2 mixes so far in Mixbus and like so many have experienced, I think my mixes sound better when done in Mixbus. Clearer and more "3D". I find that the built-in saturation is enough, and mostly I don't touch the saturation knob on any of the buses. On the times that I've tried adding more saturation through 3rd party plugins, it tends to have a dulling effect. So I thought, it must not be just saturation then. Maybe it's the summing or the dithering; or the workflow and limitations = better mixing decisions? Or is it that plugins these days have way more saturation than you'd get on analog gear?

[bjohnh]

It's hard to say: I rarely touch the saturation knobs on the mixbuses or master bus, barely use any EQ, and almost never use compression (our music is very simple, sometimes one acapella voice or voice and at most three instruments), and yet in multiple blind A/B tests my singer chooses the Mixbus mix over mixes of the same songs in Reaper or Logic. So clearly there's something going on under the hood beyond console knob emulation and workflow.

When I apply various saturations in Reaper using FabFilter's latest Saturn plugin, even just a very light touch of tube or tape saturation, I'm rarely as happy with the result as just running it through Mixbus.

[madmaxmiller]

It's hard to say: I rarely touch the saturation knobs on the mixbuses or master bus, barely use any EQ, and almost never use compression (our music is very simple, sometimes one acapella voice or voice and at most three instruments), and yet in multiple blind A/B tests my singer chooses the Mixbus mix over mixes of the same songs in Reaper or Logic. So clearly there's something going on under the hood beyond console knob emulation and workflow.

When I apply various saturations in Reaper using FabFilter's latest Saturn plugin, even just a very light touch of tube or tape saturation, I'm rarely as happy with the result as just running it through Mixbus.

Not so much the saturation but the summing algorithm being modelled 'analogue". Try an analogue summing device with your stems - that will come closest to Mixbus (or vice versa) - and that's the secret (imo).
MMM