Heatwave

Heatwave is a free one-knob saturation plugin designed to do one thing: Bring the Heat.

Heatwave is a fast, effective, and free way to add grit and aggressiveness to almost any sound while preserving its original transients. Add sizzle to drum parts without losing the snappy attacks. Beef up a funk bass without softening the slap. Distress an acoustic guitar while preserving the intricacies of fingerstyle playing.

Heatwave employs a minimal but inspiring interface dominated by a single control to “add heat” to the sound. All the magic is hidden behind-the-scenes, so you don’t need to learn anything technical to make skillful use of the plugin. Heatwave preserves and can even exaggerate transients through a complex use of transient shaping, saturation, compression, and EQ.