Saturation & drive

Analog character is not one knob in Aconite - it is a family of drive and saturation stages spread along the whole signal path, from the mixer through the filter to the master bus. Each one colors a different point, so you can dial in anything from a whisper of warmth to overt distortion, and stack several gentle stages instead of pushing one hard (which is usually how the best-sounding patches do it).

This page maps them all in one place. Every stage is covered in depth in its home chapter; this is the “which one, and when” guide.

The stages at a glance

Reading down roughly in signal order - where the sound is made, through the filter, out to the master:

Stage	Where it acts	What it does	Home
Mix Drive	the mixer, before the filter	Minimoog-style “mixer overload” - grit rises as you push the source mix hot, and the filter then shapes the saturated tone	Mixer & Mix Drive
Filter Drive	each filter’s input	pushes a filter model into its own non-linearity; the character depends on the model	The two filters
Voicing (Analog) + Depth	inside the filter resonance	Analog voicing adds per-stage clipping inside the Ladder/Diode resonance; Depth sets how hard	The two filters
FB Sat	the filter feedback loops	warms and tames the resonant “bark”; only bites when a filter’s Feedback is up	Feedback & FB Sat
Global Sat	the voice output	an always-on gentle warmth on the whole voice, regardless of patch	The two filters
Waveshaper	before, between, or after the filters	a full drawable transfer-curve shaper - from subtle to overt, wherever you place it	Effect by effect
Bus Glue + Warmth	the master bus	gentle whole-mix “console glue”; Warmth shifts its harmonic character	The Master band
PSU Sag	the master bus	not distortion but its sibling: loud chords duck then bloom back, like an analog power supply sagging under load	The Master band
Distortion / Tape / Bit-crusher / Compressor	the effects rack	overt, characterful coloration - tube, fuzz, tape, lo-fi, or driven compression	Effect by effect

Which one do I reach for?

Per-note grit that reacts to how hard you play → Mix Drive (before the filter) or Filter Drive. Both respond to the level hitting them, so dynamics translate into dirt.
Whole-voice warmth on any patch → Global Sat. Set it once and every sound gets a gentle analog sheen.
Tame or color a screaming resonant filter → FB Sat (with the filter’s Feedback turned up). It rounds off a harsh self-oscillating peak into something more musical.
Mix cohesion and the “alive” polyphony bloom → Bus Glue + PSU Sag on the master. Glue is the console-style paste; Sag adds the breathing movement of a stacked chord ducking and recovering.
A specific, obvious distortion voice (tube, fuzz, tape, lo-fi) → the effects rack. This is where you go when you want the distortion to be a sound, not just a seasoning.
A bespoke, hand-drawn character → the Waveshaper, which you can draw by hand and place before, between, or after the filters.

Per-voice versus master

The stages split into two families, and the difference matters:

Per-voice stages (Mix Drive, Filter Drive, Voicing, FB Sat, Global Sat, the Waveshaper) run inside each voice. A stacked chord therefore saturates three-dimensionally - every note has its own drive, so the voices don’t smear together the way a single bus distortion would. These stages are the ones the Quality setting cleans up: turning Quality higher keeps their driven high end smooth (see The Aconite philosophy).
Master / bus stages (Bus Glue, PSU Sag, and the effects rack) run once on the whole mix after the voices sum. Glue and Sag are kept deliberately gentle so they cohere the mix rather than smear it; the rack effects are where the heavier, more overt coloration lives.

A good instinct: shape character per-voice (down low in the path), and add cohesion on the master (up at the top of the Master band).