Waves Abbey Road Saturator

I use this plugin on my master chain and I love how it sounds!

My studio is a hybrid setup with analogue preamps and plugins combined. I manipulate the analogue sound sources in the box (computer) with plugins.

I have tons of UAD plugins etc. such as compressors, eq’s, preamp emulations but nothing that really does the same job as a summing mixer.

Now I don’t know if the Waves Abbey Road Saturator was intended as a summing mixer but man what a fantastic job it does! It tightens everything up and it still got features I discover more than year later since my purchase.

The absolute only irritating thing with the plugin is that you need to pay annually for the updates so it will run smoothly through the Waves Portal.

With that said, I will continue to update and use this plugin until I got an physical summing mixer that can replace the marvelous function of this plugin.

I usually don't use any 'flashy' plugins named after famous studio/producers etc, but THIS one is absolutely fantastic! Game changer for me - it's (mostly) easy to use, sounds great, adds very pleasant colour to your music. Can be use on master bus as well as on most of the individual tracks. Especially works great with vocals and drums.
It can 'magicly' turn a dull sounding mix into really modern (yeah, i remember that it emulates really old analog gear :)), colorfull, dynamic and brigth sounding track. Can't imagine working without it now :) Highly recommend it!
My only main complaint is that there is no good explanation how compander works. It sounds good, and it's easy to use, but "crossover points" work counterintuitively - applying more low-pass filter somewhow makes it sound brighter (don't understand the controls on this module)!?! Short description in the manual doesn't really say anything, so it could be usefull to know what it accually does, and not guess what to do :/ This plugin also requires 'Waves cenral' software and online activation. While using it in your DAW, there is a 'Waves' process running in the background all the time :/