Building Setekh

When you’ve already got a folder full of plugins, the last thing you need is another one that slows you down or sounds just like the rest. That’s exactly why we built Setekh, a tool designed to give you instant results without the endless tweaking. Whether you’re after warmth, grit, or just a touch of character, this plugin was made to slot right into your mix and actually stay in your chain.

Overview

Creating saturation and distortion plugins are unique in the types of processing that occur and in which amounts and locations. Often distortion plugins that utilize wave shaping (like Setekh) will create harsh sounding distortion even in the course of a soft clipper. To combat this, high-shelf boost/cut filters before and after the wave shaping are used to isolate portions of the distortion that is applied.

At a high level, the processing of the effects plugin is quite simple straight forward. Consider the following signal processing flow diagram.

High Shelf

The signal path begins with a high-shelf boost at 7.5 kHz, pushing extra top-end into the waveshaper. This emphasizes harmonic content during distortion, but to keep the end result smooth, a matching high-shelf cut is applied right before the output. The boost–cut pair doesn’t change overall loudness — instead, it warms the distortion by keeping frequencies above 7.5 kHz out of the final signal.

Gain treatment

Section about gain treatment The input gain is read from the input gain slider and is applied prior to splitting the signal into dry/wet chains and applying the distotion. This further serves to amplify the signal being routed to the distortion. On the opposite end of the chain is the output gain which applies the chosen gain to the fully mixed signal. Optionally there is a link that can be enabled that will inversely modify input/output gain by the same amount.

Wave Shaping

The wave shaping algorithm in Setekh uses a simple hyperbolic tangent function. This kind of soft clipping gradually rounds off the waveform once it passes a certain threshold, producing natural-sounding harmonic saturation without the harshness of hard clipping. It is a classic approach you will also find in commercial plugins like FabFilter Saturn, Soundtoys Decapitator, iZotope Trash 2, and Klanghelm SDRR, which shows how versatile and musical this type of distortion can be.

Mixing

The plugin automatically blends the processed (wet) signal with the original (dry) signal. This ensures the distortion adds character without overpowering the original audio, keeping the effect balanced and musical without any user adjustment.

Bypass mode

The dashed line indicates the optional bypass path, which is only active when this feature is enabled. This can be helpful for easily disabling the plugin if it’s not easy to do this in your DAW of choice.

Conclusion

Setekh delivers warm, musical distortion with minimal fuss. Its simple signal chain and automatic blending let you focus on your mix while adding character and harmonic richness to your tracks.