Here’s another freebie for you from Italian plug-in maker HoRNet, if you act fast. Graffio is 3-band (or fullband) distortion and saturation with switchable excited and bitcrusher.
So, first, since I got this slightly wrong last time — installation. “Buy” the plugin and add it to your account (you’ll need to create a login, though you can opt out of mailings). Once you’ve done that, be sure to download the unified installer, HoRNetDoIn (64-bit for macOS or Windows). That’ll smooth over any installation issues, including getting through macOS’ nag screens, and you’ll find it on the download page. HoRNet very loudly opposes any copy protection, so no headaches there.
Graffio is a very reasonable multiband distortion with lots of options and worth adding to your arsenal. Each module can be switched off or on. Note that all the per-band / per-module controls are labeled BYPASS, meaning if they’re lit, they’re disabled (full bypass mode). That’s how you want to work, though, typically: you’ll start with all the modules in bypass and gradually enable and tune what you want.
And it’s up-to-date: full latest OS support on Mac and Windows, Apple Silicon support, 64-bit, VST + AAX + AU.
There’s the potential for precise processing here; they’re using 4X oversampling in this as in their Magnus plug-in (though you can try switching that off, too). You’ve got a low-, high-, and mid- (crossover) band, each with its own dedicated saturator, odd/even harmonic exciter, and bit reducer. For some reason, I had trouble getting results with the last two some of the time, but I’m still experimenting. The key is the saturation, which is just your bog-standard transistor distortion. e
Here’s a useful tour. In the nine years since they released this, we’ve had a lot of other distortion options (plenty of which I’ve covered onCDM), but I like the straightforward hardware-style interface here.
Enjoy!
https://www.hornetplugins.com/plugins/hornet-graffio/