ferraus saturate

Saturation (tape, tube, soft, hard)

Synopsis

ferraus saturate <input> [options] [-o <output>]

Drives the signal into a waveshaper with 2x oversampling. Small signals pass at unity gain; --drive pushes louder parts into the curve. tape is gentle with a slight top-end roll-off, tube is asymmetric (even harmonics), soft is tanh, hard clips. --tone tilts the result darker (negative) or brighter (positive), up to ±6 dB.

This command is also an fx stage and a pipeline op: ferraus fx in.wav -o out.wav --fx "saturate:key=value".

Examples

Gentle tape warmth

ferraus saturate bass.wav -o bass_warm.wav

Parallel tube grit

ferraus saturate drums.wav --type tube --drive 12dB --mix 50% -o drums_dirty.wav

Light soft saturation and a little brightness on a vocal

ferraus saturate vox.wav --type soft --drive 3dB --tone 20 -o vox_sat.wav

Aggressive hard clipping, darkened afterwards

ferraus saturate synth.wav --type hard --drive 18dB --tone -40 -o synth_fuzz.wav

Options

Flag	Type	Default	Meaning
`--drive`	gain	`6dB`	Gain into the saturator (removed afterwards)
`--type`	tape \| tube \| soft \| hard	`tape`	Saturation curve
`--tone`	number	`0`	Post tilt: -100 darkest .. +100 brightest Range: -100..100.
`--mix`	percent	`100%`	Dry/wet balance: 0% returns the input unchanged, 100% is fully processed

Global options

Every command also accepts the global options (-o, --json, --dry-run, --overwrite, --progress, ...). See Global options.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
1	Processing failed
2	Usage or parameter error
3	Input missing or unreadable
4	Unsupported format or codec
8	Cancelled
70	Internal error (bug)

Common mistakes

Forgetting that outputs are never overwritten: pass --overwrite or a new -o path when re-running.
Gains need a unit when not in dB: 0.5x is a factor, -6 and -6dB are decibels.

For models

MCP tool: ferraus_saturate
Schema: ferraus schema saturate
Pipeline: { op: saturate, args: { ... } } (flag names with _ instead of -)
fx stage: yes

{"command": "saturate", "defaults": {"drive": "6dB", "type": "tape", "tone": "0", "mix": "100%"}}