Whats your favorite tape emulation VST?

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Whats your favorite tape emulation VST?
Posted on: 26.09.2009 by Xavier Emanuels
Hey guys,

Keen on trying out some different tape emulations, i have been using PSP Vintage Warmer pretty much exclusivly (which i <3) but wouldnt mind trying out some others.

For those who are wondering what tape emulation is i recommend reading this article on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel-to...tape_recording

Even today, many artists of all genres prefer analog tape's "musical", "natural" and especially "warm" sound. Due to harmonic distortion, bass can thicken up, creating the illusion of a fuller-sounding mix. In addition, high end can be slightly compressed, which is more natural to the human ear. It is common for artists to record to digital and re-record the tracks to analog reels for this effect of "natural" sound. In addition to all of these attributes of tape, tape saturation is a unique form of distortion that many rock and blues artists find very pleasing.
The hotter your run the signal onto the tape the more of this tape saturation that you get, personally i believe it sounds really nice and adds a really pleasant sound to a mix. Very useful as as insert effect(sounds mint on basslines or drums) or on your master channel.

The only issue i find with PSP vintage wamer 2 is the huge amount of plugin latency that it has This makes it unusable for a live performance or if your doing your production recording in lots of automation from your midi controllers. PSP Vintage Wamer LE (basically a low latency version of PSP vintage warmer 1) however has a lower latency but doesnt have the nice options that PSP VW2 has like the totally awesome fat mode which is total awesomeness.

Off topic: Looking forward to getting this production section of the community s off the ground, i believe we can turn it into a really good resource with enough work Props to anyone who contributes and helps get it going strong. Its kinda a case of use it or lose it, if this section dies off then these threads will close up this section of the community and put it back into the General section, which would be a shame ! I will certainly be doing what i can to contribute my knowledge here and do my best get this off the ground so hopefully it doesnt come to that.
Belen Wermes
16.10.2009
Originally Posted by djhipnotikk

@duerr - tbh I don't use tape emus on a lot but there are occasions when i do. I thought I'd give a thought on it though: drums with an analog feel would be pretty cool if mixed right with pads/synths with no emu on them I believe. that way you're kind of mixing the digital/analog styles together , almost giving it a feel like the drums were sampled or recorded live (and somewhere expensive where they offer tape recording still :P)
haha you sound about as sure about the technique as I am, but thanks anyways bro :P
Random X
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by Fatlimey
In my car, I currently run the output of my cellphone through a pre-amp into one of these:



and it does some great poor-man's-compression on the signal. Sounds way better than you might imagine, mainly due to amplifying _before_ sending through the tape.

You could use the same thing on your live output. As real-time as it gets!
LOLz, I used to have that one too. (Untill the wire broke... :eek: )
Xavier Emanuels
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by Fatlimey
In my car, I currently run the output of my cellphone through a pre-amp into one of these:



and it does some great poor-man's-compression on the signal. Sounds way better than you might imagine, mainly due to amplifying _before_ sending through the tape.

You could use the same thing on your live output. As real-time as it gets!
Lol ! now theres an idea !!
Harold Jaras
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by rjw
running your mixes through an old tape machine!
do it.

edit: DO IT
Random X
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by compact
..did anybody even believe of clicking the pic i
Gertha Coprich
13.10.2009
Originally Posted by compact
..did anybody even believe of clicking the pic i
Fernande Jada
29.09.2009		..did anybody even believe of clicking the pic i
Xavier Emanuels
26.09.2009		Hey guys,

Keen on trying out some different tape emulations, i have been using PSP Vintage Warmer pretty much exclusivly (which i <3) but wouldnt mind trying out some others.

For those who are wondering what tape emulation is i recommend reading this article on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel-to...tape_recording

Even today, many artists of all genres prefer analog tape's "musical", "natural" and especially "warm" sound. Due to harmonic distortion, bass can thicken up, creating the illusion of a fuller-sounding mix. In addition, high end can be slightly compressed, which is more natural to the human ear. It is common for artists to record to digital and re-record the tracks to analog reels for this effect of "natural" sound. In addition to all of these attributes of tape, tape saturation is a unique form of distortion that many rock and blues artists find very pleasing.
The hotter your run the signal onto the tape the more of this tape saturation that you get, personally i believe it sounds really nice and adds a really pleasant sound to a mix. Very useful as as insert effect(sounds mint on basslines or drums) or on your master channel.

The only issue i find with PSP vintage wamer 2 is the huge amount of plugin latency that it has This makes it unusable for a live performance or if your doing your production recording in lots of automation from your midi controllers. PSP Vintage Wamer LE (basically a low latency version of PSP vintage warmer 1) however has a lower latency but doesnt have the nice options that PSP VW2 has like the totally awesome fat mode which is total awesomeness.

Off topic: Looking forward to getting this production section of the community s off the ground, i believe we can turn it into a really good resource with enough work Props to anyone who contributes and helps get it going strong. Its kinda a case of use it or lose it, if this section dies off then these threads will close up this section of the community and put it back into the General section, which would be a shame ! I will certainly be doing what i can to contribute my knowledge here and do my best get this off the ground so hopefully it doesnt come to that.
Belen Wermes
16.10.2009
Originally Posted by djhipnotikk

@duerr - tbh I don't use tape emus on a lot but there are occasions when i do. I thought I'd give a thought on it though: drums with an analog feel would be pretty cool if mixed right with pads/synths with no emu on them I believe. that way you're kind of mixing the digital/analog styles together , almost giving it a feel like the drums were sampled or recorded live (and somewhere expensive where they offer tape recording still :P)
haha you sound about as sure about the technique as I am, but thanks anyways bro :P
Random X
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by Fatlimey
In my car, I currently run the output of my cellphone through a pre-amp into one of these:



and it does some great poor-man's-compression on the signal. Sounds way better than you might imagine, mainly due to amplifying _before_ sending through the tape.

You could use the same thing on your live output. As real-time as it gets!
LOLz, I used to have that one too. (Untill the wire broke... :eek: )
Xavier Emanuels
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by Fatlimey
In my car, I currently run the output of my cellphone through a pre-amp into one of these:



and it does some great poor-man's-compression on the signal. Sounds way better than you might imagine, mainly due to amplifying _before_ sending through the tape.

You could use the same thing on your live output. As real-time as it gets!
Lol ! now theres an idea !!
Harold Jaras
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by rjw
running your mixes through an old tape machine!
do it.

edit: DO IT
Riccardo gava
14.10.2009		Recently I've been using the camel crusher to grit things up a bit. Used subtly you can coax some nice tape emu effects type out of it. But Vintage warmer2 is the best at this, short of running your mixes through an old tape machine!
Harold Jaras
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by sj03w4t
interesting...
Is it not possible to do 'manually' what the wikipedia article says? as in:
.. bass can thicken up, creating the illusion of a fuller-sounding mix. In addition, high end can be slightly compressed..
By somehow splitting the audio signal into 3 signals (lo-mid-hi) and applying a compressor to the high signal and some sort of effect to the lo signal for 'fatter' bass..
Advantage is that you might have more parameters to control with this setup..

lolz... just looked at the vintage site and it already has alot of parameters.. ^^fail
yeah tape emulation is quite complex and still doesn't come 100% to sounding like actual tape. when people say that tape gives a "warmer" sound to it, what that actually is is noise in the background. this type of machine noise is obviously eliminated in digital production, and the result is what someo people refer to as "dry". all it really is is a cleaner signal. cool thought.

@duerr - tbh I don't use tape emus on a lot but there are occasions when i do. I thought I'd give a thought on it though: drums with an analog feel would be pretty cool if mixed right with pads/synths with no emu on them I believe. that way you're kind of mixing the digital/analog styles together , almost giving it a feel like the drums were sampled or recorded live (and somewhere expensive where they offer tape recording still :P)
Belen Wermes
14.10.2009		i have a question for you guys.

do you just use tape emulation for the master bus track?

or do you apply tape emulation to indivdual track parts like drums/percussion, bassline, lead, pad, vocal etc. ???

what gives the best results?
Random X
14.10.2009
Originally Posted by compact
..did anybody even believe of clicking the pic i
Gertha Coprich
13.10.2009
Originally Posted by compact
..did anybody even believe of clicking the pic i
Fernande Jada
29.09.2009		..did anybody even believe of clicking the pic i
robert chanda
29.09.2009		In my car, I currently run the output of my cellphone through a pre-amp into one of these:



and it does some great poor-man's-compression on the signal. Sounds way better than you might imagine, mainly due to amplifying _before_ sending through the tape.

You could use the same thing on your live output. As real-time as it gets!
Jayne Yellowhair
30.09.2009		interesting...
Is it not possible to do 'manually' what the wikipedia article says? as in:
Originally Posted by wikip.
.. bass can thicken up, creating the illusion of a fuller-sounding mix. In addition, high end can be slightly compressed..
By somehow splitting the audio signal into 3 signals (lo-mid-hi) and applying a compressor to the high signal and some sort of effect to the lo signal for 'fatter' bass..
Advantage is that you might have more parameters to control with this setup..

lolz... just looked at the vintage site and it already has alot of parameters.. ^^fail
Fernande Jada
29.09.2009
Belen Wermes
27.09.2009		I used to have this neat plugin called ThrillMe that i'd use on almost all my tracks. I'm just in the process of rebuilding my digital studio again for the 3rd time in 5 years (ughhh groan....) so gotta get a new copy.

I'm getting back into production very seriously now, I'm even putting the djing thing on the backburner until I get some real progress done with my original music and remix work. So suffice to say I'll be a regular in this new section, so far it's off to a good start i'd say. Good on you for getting this thing goin Bento!

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