CharBooster is a composite overdrive effect designed to enhance your instrument's tone by acting as a booster placed before any virtual amplifier model. It features a pre-emphasis filter section that offers various voicing options for your signal, followed by a saturation circuit that enriches the sound with harmonics while maintaining clarity and transparency. The user interface is focused on functionality rather than emulating hardware, providing a range of meters and scopes to give detailed insight into your audio signal.

The effect is organized into three main sections: Character, Saturation, and Boost. The Character section allows adjustment of filter amount and selection among pre-configured filter types to shape your tone. The Saturation section adds harmonics with selectable modes that define the saturation behavior, including a tube model inspired by Softamp 3OD and a simplified tape model based on the Ampex ATR-102. The Boost section controls the output gain, offering a range from -6dB to +24dB, ideal for driving amplifier models into natural saturation. Additional features include stereo mode, 16x oversampling for improved sound quality, and an easy enable/disable button.

CharBooster is optimized for use with full-scale 0dB input signals and is best paired with amplifier models that respond well to input overdrive. While the plugin can deliver high output levels, users should ensure proper signal limiting in their processing chain to avoid unwanted distortion. The plugin runs on Windows systems with the Windows Imaging Component library and is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. CharBooster is offered with a free license for unlimited personal or commercial use, encouraging users to explore its capabilities and experiment with different amplifier setups to achieve unique tones.