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Soundtheory Kraftur - The King of SATURATION

Soundtheory Kraftur - The King of SATURATION

I'm absolutely sure that you heard or used that famous Gullfoss plugin, right? Well, the creators from Soundtheory just released a brand new plugin, a highly awaited one named "Kraftur" which represents an outstanding combo of saturation and clipping within one unit.

The team behind Kraftur plugin had one vision in mind - making the plugin that moves the boundaries. And no, it's not run by AI. This plugin combines clipping and saturation into single solution designed to amplify the way your creations sound. This plugin will also add that thing that you're missing - the perfect amount of saturation and drive.

Kraftur is where saturation world changes, so let's explore how it works.

The topics we're going to cover:

1. What is Kraftur?
2. How to use it?
3. Key Features
4. Kraftur Pricing
5. Pros and Cons

1. What is Kraftur

Soundtheory Kraftur represents the perfect combo between saturation and clipping, but with some interesting twists to the processing - which is what Kraftur is highly unique for.

Kraftur is designed to enhance loudness and color while preserving the dynamics and tonal balance of your mixes and masters. There are many plugins on the market that offer saturation, but Kraftur does the job on a completely different way, therefore it sounds super unique. As mentioned, this plugin comes from the team that made the legendary Gullfoss plugin, so you already know that Kraftur is a very serious project.

Looking into the core itself, Kraftur is a saturator, clipper and wave shaper that features adjustments in multiband and single band. Let's break down each feature for the purpose of easier understanding.


2. How to use Kraftur

The way of using it is straight-forward. Insert Kraftur on signals that you want to saturate, clip or run through and that's it, you're ready to start using it. No need for extra routing etc.

You can use it in mastering as well, since this plugin represent that tool that can bring the exact amount of wanted saturation and overall drive, so it's perfectly safe to use in mastering.


3. Key Features

Triangle Cursor

This features allows you seamless blending between multiband and single band processing. However, setting this to 100% dry IS NOT the same as bypassing the plugin! People make mistakes, so this is a quick reminder to you.

The Drive

The amount of gain you're able to get from this unit is exceptional. It can be very, very subtle and absolutely aggressive, which means that Kraftur is absolutely suitable for any genre. You can use it on chill tracks and some harder ones such as dubstep, techno etc.

Clipping + Saturation

Clip button is located at the bottom right and this specific section helps manage peaks and basically adds another layer of saturation to your signals. Keeping this on really enables Kraftur to do its magic. It's also a great idea to use it as a clipper, but I would highly recommend NOT keeping it as your final effect in the mastering chain. This doesn't mean that the unit isn't good, it means that I would suggest using it more like a saturation plugin, than a strict clipper.

Advanced Knee Adjustment

Offset - adjusts the overall & lower part of the curve
Knee - adjusts the top part of the curve which in combination with offset gives an amazing results.

Highly Unique Visuals

The Kraftur's GUI provides visual feedback with color-coded bars representing the input and output levels, including RMS and Peak levels. However, it's also important to understand this metering.

This type of metering helps to understand how your audio is being processed. Each frequency band is color coded which allows you to see how much saturation and distortion is occuring across the spectrum. This helps to avoid any distortion or artifacts.

The best way to adapt yourself to using this metering is to constantly practice using Kraftur in your workflow. Once you understand how metering works, you'll experience a completely new way of saturating your signal - therefore it'll be impossible to distort any of the ranges within your mix or master.

Shift Controls (Custom Threshold)

Shift controls allow you to adjust the threshold levels for low, mid and high band, tailoring the saturation effect for each frequency range. The amount of flexibility you have with Kraftur is basically endless, which is very rare for saturation plugins.

4. Kraftur Pricing

Soundtheory Kraftur is available with the following option:
  • Free Demo - You can try out Kraftur and if you like it, you can buy it
  • Forever - 95€

For those that'll address their pricing point as "expensive", keep in mind this plugin does not have an alternative. No other plugin can give this much flexibility in terms of saturation and unique processing. If you ever used their Gullfoss plugin, you know what's the sauce they offer with their plugins, so price shouldn't be a problem at all when it comes to this type of processors.



5. Pros AND Cons

Pros

  • The sound: This saturator sounds like no other... the way they made it possible to combine both single and multiband processing is insane. Also, the way it introduces dirty or absolutely pleasing saturation is on a whole another level.
  • High Grade Processor: As a mastering engineer, this is the workflow and processing I haven't experienced before. If you know a bit about how sounds work, you'll highly appreciate this plugin - it definitely deserves respect.
  • Not limited to certain genres: This plugin isn't limited to certain genres, which means you can use it on any genre.
  • Highly interesting to use: Kraftur is super fun and professional at the same time. It takes time to learn, but once you do... it'll become your favorite sound enhancer.
  • Responsible & Supportive Customer Service: Their team is always available for any questions.

Cons

  • None: Finding cons for this one is impossible. You have way more than you would expect from a saturator.

Filed in: Mastering, Mixing, Mixing Tips
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