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The Sausage Fattener, and how BEEFY is different

Gazillion Industries · September 20, 2026

Two knobs, a price under forty dollars, and a decade of producers reaching for it when a sound needs to stop being polite. It is one of the most widely used plugins in electronic music, and we make something that lives in the same aisle, so it is worth laying both out honestly instead of pretending the other one is not there.

The Sausage Fattener is a saturation and loudness plugin released under the Dada Life name and built by Tailored Noise. It has three controls: FATNESS, COLOR, and a small GAIN with a clipping lamp. BEEFY is our saturation and loudness effect, with BEEF, COOK and JUICE plus two switchable output stages. They are aimed at a similar result and they are built around different decisions, and the differences are in what each one gives you a control over.

The short version

What the Sausage Fattener is, from its makers

It appeared in 2011 — the first published reviews are from August and December of that year — at $29, and now sells for $39. The panel carries FATNESS, COLOR and a small GAIN knob with a lamp that lights when you clip it. There are no switches, no meters and no quality or oversampling options on the face.

The makers have said very little about what is inside, and that is a deliberate position rather than an oversight. Their own FAQ describes it as "a combination of several dynamic effects", with the key being to "drive the signal as hard as you want — from mild compression to hard distortion". When Computer Music reviewed it in 2011, the writer noted that the developers were keeping tight-lipped about the signal path.

Since then people have measured it. Sound On Sound's reviewer in 2011 described hearing brick-wall limiting along with compression. A more recent analysis using measurement software reported a soft clipper with a compressor in front of it and a fixed low cut. Those are other people's findings about someone else's product, and they are reported here as that: attributed observations, not facts from the manufacturer.

One thing genuinely is not documented anywhere, in either direction: whether it oversamples. We are not going to guess, and neither should anyone else.

What BEEFY is, from our page

BEEFY is a saturation and loudness effect for making sounds thicker, punchier and more up front. BEEF is the main control: more weight, more density, more loudness and more attitude as you turn it up. COOK changes the color and bite, from a rounder feel toward a brighter, more cooked edge. JUICE sets the level going in, so you can feed it harder or back it off.

Then two output choices that are separate from each other. SOFT CLIP is on when it opens: it brings rounded, fuzzy edges to the loudest parts and takes care of the initial gain staging, so the clipping finds the sound without you hunting for a magic input level. LIMIT is the other option, for keeping output peaks in check. You can also turn both off and push it yourself. Input and output clip lights show you both ends.

Where they actually differ

How many decisions you get. Theirs gives you one drive control and one tone control. Ours splits the job three ways: input level, drive, and tone, which means you can feed it hot and back the drive off, or feed it gently and push. Whether that is an advantage depends entirely on whether you want to make that decision.

What happens at the output. On BEEFY, soft clipping and limiting are two separate switches, either of which can be off. That is an explicit choice about how the peaks get handled, and it is on the panel. The other plugin's output behavior is part of the single drive path and is not separately exposed.

What the tone control means. COOK moves BEEFY from a rounder character toward a brighter, more cooked one. COLOR on the other plugin is described by its makers in general terms only, and reviewers disagree about what it is doing, so we are not going to characterize it.

What we have not claimed. We are not saying BEEFY is cleaner, or louder, or more transparent, or better voiced. We have not measured their plugin and we are not going to publish a comparison we did not run.

BEEFY is $19 for Mac and Windows, and there is a demo on the page with three without-and-with comparisons. Use your ears rather than this article.

Which to reach for

If you want one knob and a result, plenty of people have been happy with the other one for more than a decade and there is no reason to argue with that. If you want to separate how hard you feed it from how hard it drives, and to decide for yourself whether the peaks get rounded or held, BEEFY exposes those as controls.

And for most sources, the honest answer is that either will get you into the same neighborhood, and the interesting decisions happen before the plugin: what you feed it, how loud, and whether the problem is really saturation at all. See saturation explained for that conversation and gain staging for the part that comes first.

Questions people ask

What does the Sausage Fattener do?

Its makers describe it as a combination of several dynamic effects driven as hard as you like, from mild compression to hard distortion, controlled with FATNESS and COLOR plus a small gain knob. The internal signal path is not published.

How much does it cost?

$39 at the time of writing, and $29 when it launched in 2011. Bundles with the makers' other plugins are also sold.

Is BEEFY a copy of the Sausage Fattener?

No. BEEFY is tuned by ear, with its own control set: three knobs plus separate soft clip and limit switches, and input and output clip indicators. Both plugins live in the same category, the way two compressors do.

Which one should I buy?

Try both on your own material. Ours is $19 with a demo on its page; theirs is $39 and widely demonstrated. Anyone telling you which sounds better without hearing your track is guessing.

What BEEFY does

BEEFY is a saturation and loudness effect. It adds body, squeezes some space out of the peaks, and brings out harmonics that help a sound feel bigger. Start with drums: kicks that need more chest, snares that need more smack, a break that needs to stop being so polite. There is no drum-only rule — a thin synth, a chopped sample, an electric piano or a vocal with attitude all qualify. BEEF, COOK and JUICE are the three knobs; SOFT CLIP and LIMIT are separate choices at the output.

Two plugins in the same aisle. The useful comparison happens in your session, not in a blog post.

Keep reading

• Saturation explained — Harmonics, the types, where it goes in a chain, and what it costs.
• Soft clipping explained — What a soft clipper does, how it differs from hard clipping and a limiter, and where to use one.
• Gain staging for beatmakers — Channel levels, plugin input, buses and the master, plus the common mistakes.

Gazillion Industries LLC · reading material