SUBKEEPER SATURATOR

Saturation where you decide how much of the low end goes into the drive. What you leave out comes through the output the way it went in.

Software EffectSaturator

Free

Download without an account. There’s nothing to unlock, and the plugin works offline. It’s yours to keep.

Subkeeper Saturator interface

Covered by

Drive without mud

The low end is usually the first thing to suffer when you drive a signal. So it tends to end one of two ways: a workaround that costs you time and brings its own artefacts or latency, or less drive than you actually wanted. Neither is necessary here.

Nothing is removed

Sub Protect filters what goes into the saturation, not what comes out of it. Below the point you set, nothing reaches the nonlinearity, so those harmonics are never generated in the first place. The signal itself passes through at full bandwidth, with the drive added on top.

Four ways to drive

Gentle stays subtle, Round pushes harder, Bite starts to cut and Crush is as far as it goes. Sub Protect stays where you set it in all four, so changing character does not change what happens at the bottom.

Room to push

16× oversampling keeps the harmonics where they belong instead of folding back down the spectrum.

Specifications

Characters
Four drive characters: Gentle, Round, Bite and Crush.
Sub Protect
Attenuates the low frequencies you select before the nonlinear branch, so they never generate upper harmonics. No crossover reconstruction.
Signal path
The latency-aligned dry signal stays at full bandwidth. Only the nonlinear residual is added on top.
Oversampling
16x, so the harmonics stay where they belong instead of folding back down the spectrum.
Activation
None. No account, no trial, no network dependency. Processing is always available.
Formats
VST3 and AU on macOS, VST3 on Windows.
Documentation
Read the manual

Changelog

  1. 1.0.017 Aug 2026

    • A new footer at the bottom of the plugin adds bypass, undo and redo.
    • Knobs show their value while you drag them.

  2. 0.1.15 Aug 2026

    • Sub Protect no longer loses its gain compensation.

  3. 0.1.04 Aug 2026

    • First release.

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FAQ

Does Sub Protect cut the bass?
No. The dry signal passes through intact. Sub Protect attenuates low frequencies going into the saturation and filters the resulting harmonics below the frequency you set. The original bass stays, the low-end saturation does not.
Does Subkeeper Saturator add latency?
Yes, a small fixed amount from the oversampling filters. Subkeeper Saturator reports it to the host for automatic compensation. The latency stays the same across all modes and settings.
How do Mix and Sub Protect work together?
Sub Protect sets how much of the low end stays out of the drive. Mix sets how much drive you hear in the output. You can push hard, keep the bottom clean with Sub Protect, and dial back the overall amount with Mix. The two work independently.
Does Subkeeper Saturator color the signal with Drive at zero?
No. With Drive at zero, nothing is saturated and the signal comes through clean.