Low-cost/CPU-friendly alternative to Satin

[Aryaroman]

I also meant to mention I often Print or Freeze Tracks with Tape saturation to help my CPU or UAD DSP chips.

Yeah, freezing is a good method, although I do so much MIDI-editing and tweaking, that it'd become a real chore to freeze and unfreeze them constantly.

My CPU definetely isn't hitting the wall yet. But I prefer to keep it that way and play it safe. That's why I tend to favor CPU/RAM-light stuff.

[lolilol1975]

But why use tape saturation at another moment than the latest stage, i.e mastering ?
At this point, you only need to freeze once the whole mix, and then it doesn't matter any more, right ?

BTW, let's mention FerricTDS which is free. Probably not equivalent to Satin, but still worth mentionning in this thread.

And TBProAudio and PSPAudio have some softwares that might be worth looking at. Don't know how they sound though.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

Satin is a deeply emulated analog tape machine sim

And so is ReelBus. Don´t let the price tag fool you...

surely you can't seriously be comparing the sound of reelbus to satin? No offence intended, but satin sounds far superior as far as a tape emu is concerned.

They did a mini shoot-out on Gearslutz a while back. Reelbus held its own quite well against Satin et. al.

Check it out: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-sh ... elbus.html

I don't really see the point in that shootout TBH.. it's totally non transient material and a really bad mix (eq wise, vile frequencies) to begin with. Sure, not all music is transient, but that entire test is akin to one simple acoustic audio loop (cause it doesn't change) going through a tape plugin.. Tests need to be much more broad than that. That said, i didn't like the vtm or reelbus ones there, so stand by my assessment. I picked satin and the "none", but got the others wrong. I had never heard of "totape" prior to that topic so was trying to guess the four others, but it still threw that 20% unknown variable for me.

Anyway, a really bad test imo.. it always helps to do tests when the person knows how to mix and presents something that sounds good rather than hurts the ears.

[Aryaroman]

But why use tape saturation at another moment than the latest stage, i.e mastering ?
At this point, you only need to freeze once the whole mix, and then it doesn't matter any more, right ?

I don't render tracks for a last mastering stage.

I used to, but I found I got better results with mastering and mixing everything in real-time and keeping external FX to an absolute minimum. Now I mix instruments individually, just reverb, slight EQ and some compression to separated melody/bass/drum/SFX buses, maybe saturation. On master bus, I insert even less compression and saturation, just to colour, not radically alter or change the dynamics of the sound.

Works and I don't miss working with endless FX chains at all.

[JerGoertz]

Satin is a deeply emulated analog tape machine sim

And so is ReelBus. Don´t let the price tag fool you...

surely you can't seriously be comparing the sound of reelbus to satin? No offence intended, but satin sounds far superior as far as a tape emu is concerned.

They did a mini shoot-out on Gearslutz a while back. Reelbus held its own quite well against Satin et. al.

Check it out: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-sh ... elbus.html

I don't really see the point in that shootout TBH.. it's totally non transient material and a really bad mix (eq wise, vile frequencies) to begin with. Sure, not all music is transient, but that entire test is akin to one simple acoustic audio loop (cause it doesn't change) going through a tape plugin.. Tests need to be much more broad than that. That said, i didn't like the vtm or reelbus ones there, so stand by my assessment. I picked satin and the "none", but got the others wrong. I had never heard of "totape" prior to that topic so was trying to guess the four others, but it still threw that 20% unknown variable for me.

Anyway, a really bad test imo.. it always helps to do tests when the person knows how to mix and presents something that sounds good rather than hurts the ears.

Regardless of whether it was badly mixed or not, and whether the material was fully representative of what you might use a tape sim on, many people in the shootout thought Reelbus sound reel-y good (hyuck! ) on the material provided. Some picked it as the best.

Notably, nobody in the shootout complained about the source material being inadequate AFAIK.

[Cimbasso]

TB ReelBus, liked it more than Satin and Slate.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

Satin is a deeply emulated analog tape machine sim

And so is ReelBus. Don´t let the price tag fool you...

surely you can't seriously be comparing the sound of reelbus to satin? No offence intended, but satin sounds far superior as far as a tape emu is concerned.

They did a mini shoot-out on Gearslutz a while back. Reelbus held its own quite well against Satin et. al.

Check it out: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-sh ... elbus.html

I don't really see the point in that shootout TBH.. it's totally non transient material and a really bad mix (eq wise, vile frequencies) to begin with. Sure, not all music is transient, but that entire test is akin to one simple acoustic audio loop (cause it doesn't change) going through a tape plugin.. Tests need to be much more broad than that. That said, i didn't like the vtm or reelbus ones there, so stand by my assessment. I picked satin and the "none", but got the others wrong. I had never heard of "totape" prior to that topic so was trying to guess the four others, but it still threw that 20% unknown variable for me.

Anyway, a really bad test imo.. it always helps to do tests when the person knows how to mix and presents something that sounds good rather than hurts the ears.

Regardless of whether it was badly mixed or not, and whether the material was fully representative of what you might use a tape sim on, many people in the shootout thought Reelbus sound reel-y good (hyuck! ) on the material provided. Some picked it as the best.

Notably, nobody in the shootout complained about the source material being inadequate AFAIK.

Ok but my complaint about reelbus if you read the topic, now and in the past, has always been that it mushes everything too much. In real world music. That test was not representative of 95% of the music today that reelbus would be used on, and since having no transients, therefore has zero mush factor. On that test, on that particular unusual song, reelbus was ok. I am sorry i simply do not accept that as a remotely realistic overall test. YMMV, obviously you do, and that's ok.. anything with drums and reelbus will lose. Anything that is mixed well and relbus will lose as it will ruin the mix. This is my argument and therefore my point.

So because you found an obscure short snippet of audio where reelbus did not fare any "worse" than any other tape plugin, i will correct myself, and say. "In 95% of cases of current music including rock, pop, metal, rnb, hip hop, and all kinds of edm, as well as anything with drums and/or noticeable transients,, i find reelbus mushes the music and changes it for the worse. In cases where there are a couple of non transient acoustic instruments only, it's on par with the others".

[MogwaiBoy]

Can ReelBus do everything Ferric does? Something special about that plugin.

[LFO8]

I don't know what your budget is, but Fabfilter Saturn often goes for as little as $80,- on the marketplace here.

It does tape saturation and so many more types of saturation. And it can process your signal dynamically with the help of modulators like Enveloppe Followers and LFO's.

I got my copy on the market place here a couple years back for €75,- Great deal.