# FORGE — Saturation Heatbox

FORGE is a multi-circuit saturation plugin that brings the warmth, grit, and character of analog hardware to your mix. Choose from four distinct saturation models, each with its own sonic fingerprint, and push your tracks from subtle warmth to full-blown destruction.

## Circuits

- **Tape** — Warm, soft-knee saturation with natural compression and gentle high-frequency roll-off. Think vintage reel-to-reel.
- **Tube** — Rich even harmonics with smooth asymmetric clipping. Adds body and presence without harshness.
- **Diode** — Aggressive odd harmonics with a sharp germanium edge. Great for adding bite to drums and guitars.
- **Digital** — Hard clipping with aliased digital crunch. From lo-fi character to total decimation.

## Controls

| Control | Description |
|---------|-------------|
| **Drive** | How hard the signal hits the circuit — from gentle warming to heavy saturation |
| **Flux** | Analog instability — introduces organic drift in the saturation character, like the subtle imperfections of real hardware |
| **Input** | Input gain (-60 to +24 dB) |
| **Output** | Output gain (-24 to +12 dB) |
| **Mix** | Dry/wet blend for parallel saturation |
| **Crush** | Enables an additional layer of hard-clipping distortion |

### Expert Controls (tap the panel flip buttons)

| Control | Description |
|---------|-------------|
| **Pre HP** | High-pass filter before saturation — removes low-end rumble before it hits the circuit |
| **Pre LP** | Low-pass filter before saturation — tames highs before distortion |
| **Oversampling** | 1×, 2×, 4×, or 8× — higher values reduce aliasing for cleaner distortion at the cost of CPU |
| **Auto Gain** | Compensates output level as you increase drive |

### Utility

| Control | Description |
|---------|-------------|
| **Bypass** | Master bypass |
| **Delta** | Solo the difference between dry and wet — hear exactly what the saturation is adding |

## Tips

- Start with **Tape** for mix-bus warming, then try **Tube** on vocals for presence.
- Use **Flux** at low values (10–20%) for subtle analog movement — it modulates the circuit's character over time, so no two moments sound exactly the same.
- **Delta** mode is invaluable for dialling in subtle saturation — if you can barely hear the difference signal, you're in the sweet spot for transparent warming.
- Stack **Pre HP** at 80–120 Hz to keep your low end clean while saturating everything above.
