TB ReelBus v3

Jeroen had some tape-ish simulator before. Called Ferox. I loved it. It didn't have this huge PSP-like effect making everyrthing bigger, no. It was little subtle saturation when your drums were too digital and neded just tiny bit of tasteful colour.

So ... when I heard about this one, I had to buy it. Especially for that sweet price.
Goal of this plug is straight and clear. Make it like it was recorded on tape. As far as I know from some Pensado's place episodes, lot of people likes the new UAD tape emulation for this purpose. I guess UAD nailed it pretty good. Unfortunately I have no means how to AB it to the ReelBus, but
when you don't think about manufacturer and just listen, ReelBus does quite a good job.

I remember really active usage of MC tapes from childhood. I know, it's not the same as working with highclass studio recorders, but that taste, that "smell" is just reckognizable. ...and ReelBus definitely has it! Warming really good imho. Just listen to demos on the website, it's really cool.
I've used it so far on few lead instruments. It really kind of shifts it few years back colour-wise. Exactly what it's supposed to do. It's also amazing on too dull sinewavy kicks or bass. It adds little (may be sampled?) noise layers to the signal, that makes it sound cooler.

If you drive it hard, it distorts. Exactly the way I remember old cassete players did when recieved bad tape. It wasn't pleasant for me back then, isn't too much now either, but it's still much more analogue then classic digital clipping/limiting/crazy-over-compressing...

Bad side is, that damn UAD could buy a real Studder to meature. Jeroen had access to Studder too, but had to emulate it's behaviour on Teac recorder and then meature it that way. I can't tell how well he matched it as I don't own UAD, but there always will be certan courioustiy about how that UAD plugin sounds. On the other side ... ehm ... 350 dolars against about 12 bucks. BARGAIN! :)

Conclusion: This is really good and really precise emulation. You need to not overuse it or you end in 2001 again in a minute. :D But for coloring it's really cool. I can't compare it with UAD, but I'd guess it would stand up really well! :) And for 10 euros? For price of 2 or 3 launches...? No-brainer.