Tape saturation plugins

[yammer107]

Hi all,

Just curious how many are using tape saturation, and what type of music you do if so. More specifically if you feel its best left to retro type productions or does it have a place in more modern tracks. I realize some of this will be subjective... perhaps even biased on what age group your in etc.

Basically its been on my bucket list for some time, but I want to be sure Im not hindering what I already consider to be bit of a struggle creating up to date mix's. I'm aware my style may not be 2017 regardless... but I try to keep my aim true. Guess Im fishing for your 2 cents here. On a personal level I tend to go for warm 'n wonderful over loud 'n brittle. Waves had the J37 Tape plugin on sale for $29 recently... very tempting

Thanks !

Chris

[Len911]

Well Chris, I suppose I have a couple plugins with that sort of thing. The Melda Saturator has more adjustment for the harmonics.
Basically I suppose tape saturation is harmonics and compression. It does something, I'm not sure if it's really better or worse. If you could try before you buy, that's what I'd do. The melda you can adjust the 2nd 3rd, 4th and 5th order harmonics. The thing is instruments are going to have harmonics anyway, and compressors are common. Some of the Sonnox plugins I have do have that sort of thing going on such as the inflator, the limiter has an enhance, even the dynamics has a warmth control, but it wouldn't have been a make or break situation if it did or didn't have those features. It's probably like a guitar amp and the difference between
clean and a slightly less clean sound, but then maybe they're more useful if you crank the input into distortion??

From a mixer perspective, if tape saturation = harmonics+compression, and if you have a tendency to use subtractive eq and cut harmonics, and then add compression, how much harmonics do you really add and compression with a tape saturator? Besides, that's kinda what muddy is, low frequencies and harmonics, high frequencies don't have as many harmonics(within hearing range) by nature. But then again I use mainly virtual instruments that have probably been eq'd and so I'm only generating harmonics on the more fundamental tones in a more linear fashion that doesn't quite excite me,lol! What a vicious circle! I think the bottom line is that most mixers probably go for a cleaner compressed sound, than a harmonically merged orchestral compressed sound. I don't think a tape saturator alone is what is going to date your sounds.

I'm not sure much of that made any sense,lol!

[yammer107]

Hey Len

I appreciate it just the same. I'm already using 'T racks' which is full of old analogue sounding gear, which makes me think maybe the tape is overboard or not necessary. I love the Fairchild compressor etc..

To your point I did try a tape demo few years back and didnt think it added much. However I didnt get to spend much time before it expired, and from my experience your ears need some time to adjust and 'catch' what some of these more subtle plugins are doing. Some folks will say then 'why bother' ... but one thing thats always rang true with me is the 'there are no magic bullets' comment > but there are a few dozen small bullets that make a HUGE difference when all aimed correctly. Your shaving your way to perfection one small slice at a time

Again just interested in others 2 cents ....

Chris

[ochaim]

I do hip hop primarily, edm secondarily.

I use uad's studer tape emulation. i find it really gives a gentle extra thump to kicks and a nice roundness to bass. I also like to use it on vocals. basically the stuff that matters to me lol.

oh i also put it in the first slot of the master bus.

i would put it in the first slot of every channel, which is how you get the most of the plugin, but i dont have enough uad dsp for it.

[Len911]

Okay Chris, but I did get an email today from softube on the "tape", plus there's a free saturation plugin

https://www.softube.com/index.php?id=tape

https://www.softube.com/index.php?id=satknob

[GuitarKit]

Tape saturation is good to help midi instrument not sound so lifeless.

Another thing that works to bring midi instruments into a more realistic sound is to re-amp them. (If your DAW allows you to)

[yammer107]

Sorry was out of the loop for the weekend!

Thanks again guys

Len I’ll check those links but I have yet to be successful getting a free Softube plugin to work! Seems it’s always something..... like my password not working IMMEDIATELY after registering and that dumb pop up window having no links to reset or forgotten etc ? I dont get it

Thats a great point about midi instuments Guitarkit; though I tend to buy the smaller packages of higher quality (less is more) the sounds in my Fantom are a decade behind the times

Ochaim I was very curious to hear if any rap / hip hop people were using....! makes perfect sense from a LoFi standpoint plus the points you made.

Another reason I asked is I just finished re mixing about 7 songs 3 months ago and didnt want to go backwards unless I got some real glowing responses here. So Im still gonna jump in the water but gonna pass on doing the heavy laps!

[mojobone]

There's a lot going on when you use a tape deck; transformers on input/output, head bump at around 100Hz, depending on the tape speed, some emphasis of 2nd and 3rd-order harmonics, relative to how hard you're driving the levels, harmonic and intermodulation distortion and some unintentional stuff related to bias and azimuth adjustment or lack thereof, plus whatever amount of wow & flutter is endemic to the particular machine at your chosen speed. You get at least 3dB of compression thrown into the deal, for free, with every bounce. Then there's tape formulation and format, the head stack with its attendant crosstalk, etc. so it's all very, very complex, yet...pretty damned subtle, really, cuz the manufacturers were of course, trying like hells to eliminate all that, so we could just. hear. the music.

The thing is, all those little subtleties can add up to one really big difference as we combine multiple tracks, the 'murk' helps glue everything together almost effortlessly. Minus all of the above, digital recording can be so impossibly clean and clear that it sounds...well, pretty sterile. So what generally happens is, we throw a bunch of compression on there and end up overbaking our cake. It turns out you really can't ask one (or even two or three) compressors to do all that stuff above, so I use tube, tape, transformer, preamp and console emulations along with a variety of compressors. When you start stacking these things, you get a quality of bigness, size, weight, etc. It sounds so delicious that it's easy to overdo it. So don't.

[mojobone]

I do hip hop primarily, edm secondarily.

I use uad's studer tape emulation. i find it really gives a gentle extra thump to kicks and a nice roundness to bass. I also like to use it on vocals. basically the stuff that matters to me lol.

oh i also put it in the first slot of the master bus.

i would put it in the first slot of every channel, which is how you get the most of the plugin, but i dont have enough uad dsp for it.

With tracks I know will get the tape treatment, (bass, kick, toms, some guitars and vocals) I'll throw the tape sim on and render it out before looking at EQs and compressors, even before I start the mix. I usually end up needing a LOT less compression, this way.

[Danny]

I use Steven Slates VTM emulator on my Drum busses and Master busses. I just feel that they make the mix sound rich and thick.

I don't know if this was mentioned but many tape sims tend to ad a few DB of bass on each instance. I tend to cut 3 Db of bass right from the start on the tape Sim settings.

As far as use, I tend to use them a lot more in live instrument mixes than in the box type mixes.