Tape saturation character

[krans]

I've been listening to this 5+ years old podcast with Ben Loftis: https://recordingstudiorockstars.com/rsr...s-plugins/
At around 38:05 he starts explaining about the tape saturation in Mixbus (and MB32C).
As far as I understand, he's saying that the mixbus saturations have a different character than the saturation on the masterbus.

According to Ben (whose knowledge I think we should trust) the mixbuses' saturation does a soft clip, while the masterbus' saturation has a different character, to "recreate the final to-mix" (that's how I understand what he's saying).

This old podcast is the only source I've found for this.
I can't find it in the manual (the manual actually has the exact same wording for the two saturation types), and the saturation boxes look identical on the mixbuses and the masterbus.
So do I misunderstand what he's saying, or are there really two different saturations here?
Is this something you other people here know of?

I was just surprised to hear it, I didn't know and couldn't tell.

[Ben@Harrison]

Hi krans,

The sound of the mixbus and master-bus tape saturation is the same. They do have slightly different 'threshold' values for clipping, since the master bus is likely to have a louder signal than an individual mix bus. You can adjust that with the 'drive' knob though.

I believe my comment was intended to convey something like:

"there were 2 stages of tape recording in an idealized analog tape studio: the multitrack recorder and the mixdown stereo recorder. So we apply one stage of soft clipping on the sub-mixes (we decided to assign this task to the 12 stereo mixbuses, rather than every track of a DAW which seemed excessive), and then another stage on the 2-mix (master bus).

... it's a comment about the workflow, not the voicing of the saturation itself.

I hope this answers your question!

-Ben

[krans]

Hi krans,

The sound of the mixbus and master-bus tape saturation is the same.  They do have slightly different 'threshold' values for clipping, since the master bus is likely to have a louder signal than an individual mix bus.  You can adjust that with the 'drive' knob though.

I believe my comment was intended to convey something like:

"there were 2 stages of tape recording in an idealized analog tape studio:  the multitrack recorder and the mixdown stereo recorder.  So we apply one stage of soft clipping on the sub-mixes (we decided to assign this task to the 12 stereo mixbuses, rather than every track of a DAW which seemed excessive), and then another stage on the 2-mix (master bus).

... it's a comment about the workflow, not the voicing of the saturation itself.

I hope this answers your question!

-Ben

Ah, I see!
Thank you so much for clearing this up.
I find stuff like this really fascinating, and I enjoy hearing you talk about how Mixbus is made and the thoughts behind it (like in this interview).
Your answer does indeed answer my question. Thanks for taking the time.