The Plugin Alliance has released karacter, an emulation of German processor manufacturer (and Plugin Alliance partner) elysia’s discrete class-A stereo saturator – also called The Coloring Box.

karacter is a bundle of two plug-ins – karacter mix and karacter master, the former providing a straightforward set of controls for treating mono and stereo tracks, while the latter processes full mixes, stereo stems and subgroups using independent left and right channel controls or, in MS Mode, mid and side channels.

The karacter mix and karacter master plug-ins provide three different modes allowing colourful harmonics to be added to a signal – hence the Coloring Box. Creatively, the standard saturation mode allows gentle ‘fattening’, emphasing odd harmonics. FET Shred mode mimics the distortion of a driven tube amp, adding a relative boost to even harmonics. Turbo Boost mode (only available in FET Shred mode) hard-clips signal tops for heavy processing of individual tracks or sound design.