Acustica Taupe - Hype Or The Real Deal?

[sleepcircle]

Just try Taupe is all I'm saying, got blown away by the sound. I didn't have that reaction with Satin

i feel like i should mention that taupe has two other things, a built-in compressor and a built in EQ, both of which provide their own colouration. to do a fair comparison of tape emulation quality you'd have to compare the tape unit alone to satin alone. Satin has a preset for a Studer tape machine at 15ips, and so does Taupe. The difference there is fairly small, (although I notice that taupe by its very design does not emulate tape flutter.)

[Omkar]

On top of that, as someone that's used a number of classic tape machines in the studio, I don't think Taupe sounds much like a well-calibrated tape machine ...

... Taupe does sound fantastic. It's "tape-like" in a pleasant way, and there's more extreme flavours available if you want ...

Viewed as just a saturation processor it's really fun. As a channel strip it's excellent as well.

Pleasure to have peeps memorizing real tapes,
I hope to see your comments as soon as something is labeled "tape".

Going through some more sensitive material again,
I had some additional thoughts.

In the field of the term "analog" like tape I use to refer to the pros
who at some point luckily opened up their vault of skills and equipment to the public.

Here`s a chosen short snippet of Steve Albini:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5VHW1J5o0Q

Noticed?
- People using tape machines hope to hear some magic coming out ... rarely used as fx -

If I`m not mistaken this could be the clash due to expectations on tape machines per se
or the fascination of just things like wow and flutter effects.

Above clash may go there with Taupe as well whith the declaration of being in the field of tape maschines.

A better or more correct exposition could be a channelstrip
with a variety of distortions or sound signatures of tape machines.
It makes sense then: above distortion, then eq, finally comp/lim.

A tape or tape emulation comes into play at the very end, let`s say in a recording situation.
So I see a clash of a gorgeous sounding channelstrip with what it is declared to be.

The good news:
everybody can stick to their tape tools of choice, the position remains vacant.

[plexuss]

Good points. I can't say I use tape emulators as track effects - I use them to emulate tape based workflow - on the mix buss and the master buss. That's just the way I do it because I worked with tape for so long I can't get myself to use these digital tools as effects. I could try, but then that just feels... wrong - to me at least. But knock yourselves out with however you choose to work with them. For me, in the way that I use them, I am looking for a tape sound and screwed up but pleasing effects in the sound-stage, the bottom end and over-all dynamic saturation of tape if that's something I think ends up sounding nice (more often it's not).

[sleepcircle]

i use satin to emulate tape-based workflow. i use other stuff if i want a "this was sampled from a bargain basement cassette" feel.

[wagtunes]

The thing is, growing up in the 60s and 70s, I used tape exclusively. I mean that's all we had back then. I used reel to reels, cassette decks and even 8 track tape decks. And I know how bad they could sound. Bad as in, dirty, distorted, whatever you want to call it. And that was without any additional FX. All I want is to be able to emulate that sound on tracks where I feel that sound will be best.

I still have my old tape recordings so I can easily upload some of them so you can hear what I'm talking about. That's the sound I'm looking for. I've yet to find it in anything I currently own.

[Robert Randolph]

The thing is, growing up in the 60s and 70s, I used tape exclusively. I mean that's all we had back then. I used reel to reels, cassette decks and even 8 track tape decks. And I know how bad they could sound. Bad as in, dirty, distorted, whatever you want to call it. And that was without any additional FX. All I want is to be able to emulate that sound on tracks where I feel that sound will be best.

I still have my old tape recordings so I can easily upload some of them so you can hear what I'm talking about. That's the sound I'm looking for. I've yet to find it in anything I currently own.

Yeah, thats not what you get from these types of plugins.They are after higher end machines, the type generally aimed to be transparent as possible.

“As possible” being the key.

If you want that low/mid range tape sound, I feel like Voxengo’s solutions get much closer than most things out there. Goodhertz’s WowCtrl is also amazing for making ‘Not ideal’tape sounds.

From what you say, Id definitely check out WowCtrl, CRTIV Tape bus and Varisaturator.

Reelbus can do that fostex/teac/tascam range sound, and Klevgrand DAW cassette does what it says on the tin.

[sleepcircle]

Oh, I think you can get the midrange sound out of satin, too! You know, if you crank up asperity, set the tape quality to 'vintage', turn up the flutter a bit, increase the head gap and use one of the more primitive EQ functions, crank down any delicate pre-emphasis and drop the bias to compensate.

The controls are all there afaik; it's very possible to diminish the sound quality to a certain extent, it's just not possible to DEGRADE it—as in, it will always be a well-maintained machine with pristine tape.

[Fantasie]

- no, we'll not feature tapes in other acqua plugins. So this is the only one which features our tape techniques. A bit like lemon, we'll not create an other delay unit. Lemon is "our" collection of delay units. Taupe is "our" collecion of tape units, so if you need "that" sound there is only this choice.

I'm curious why there is a huge sonic difference between the same tape machine program in Lemon and Taupe (I mean A700).

I really like Lemon's A700 and sometimes use it on a mix bus to get a vintage flavor, but today I demoed Taupe and found that it sounds much cleaner and brighter than its counterpart in Lemon.
Is it only due to the updated Core tech?

note: Lemon bank C5 = Taupe bank D0 = A700 tape AFAIK

[bmanic]

If you want that low/mid range tape sound, I feel like Voxengo’s solutions get much closer than most things out there. Goodhertz’s WowCtrl is also amazing for making ‘Not ideal’tape sounds.

I suspect WowCTRL + Taupe may be a really interesting combination. TAUPE has that "je ne sais quoi" thing about it that no other tape plugin quite nails (having said that, my Telefunken M15 doesn't have it either! It's much cleaner and closer to the source than TAUPE at any setting) so combining that with WowCTRL might actually give the source a really nice low-fi vibe with sugar on top.

[bmanic]

I'm curious why there is a huge sonic difference between the same tape machine program in Lemon and Taupe (I mean A700).

Different tape maschine perhaps? Tape in general is extremely dependent on so many factors that it is virtually impossible to match two units unless you have the exact same calibration (which means having the exact same calibration tape or use one of those stupidly expensive original laboratory tapes that seem to keep their recorded tones from batch to batch), same tape brand and formula, same input and output levels and same electronics (not at all a given considering the age of most machines) throughout the recording chain.

Also Lemon is on older Acustica Audio technology (core 10 I believe?) which has improved in various functionality and sound quality over the years. Though in this case I suspect it's mainly different tape/machine that makes the difference.

[bmanic]

double post. sorry

[chk071]

No way! Mate, that's appalling.

Well... I doubt it was only because he brought up the topic. Especially as he has a history with them.

[Fantasie]

Different tape maschine perhaps? Tape in general is extremely dependent on so many factors that it is virtually impossible to match two units unless you have the exact same calibration (which means having the exact same calibration tape or use one of those stupidly expensive original laboratory tapes that seem to keep their recorded tones from batch to batch), same tape brand and formula, same input and output levels and same electronics (not at all a given considering the age of most machines) throughout the recording chain.

Also Lemon is on older Acustica Audio technology (core 10 I believe?) which has improved in various functionality and sound quality over the years. Though in this case I suspect it's mainly different tape/machine that makes the difference.

well, if it's based on a different tape machine or different settings, just fine!
But if a majority of the sonic differences come from the difference of AA Core tech, it would be funny to me because that basically means what made me believe it a magical lo-fi flavor of A700 is actually an imperfection of AA Core tech (Core11 I think).

After demoing Taupe I prefer my old trusty Lemon as far as A700 goes, but I like other programs in Taupe a lot, they are fantastic. I'll probably buy it during the intro offer.

[Omkar]

Final test today
by setting instruments of diff freq ranges into a relation
and the result is clearly distinguishable from original in a pleasing way.
It became noticeable an instrument needs the right choice of recorded tape
and the right amount of input/tape.

I also feel like to have to do a correction on former comment,
the ECONO tab is not related to the comp/lim but to the tape compression.
In the heat of tests and first impressions I may confused some minor details as well.

At the end of the day I thought:
"heck, whatever Taupe is, I do not have something like this in my arsenal".

In case you run into something similar:
after purchase my password oddly no longer worked and I had to do a reset.

[Haraldator]

Purchased both Taupe and El Rey today, for a grand total of 170 euros (I own a bunch of Acustica products, so I get nice loyalty coupons from them). That's a LOT of good sound for not much money. What a time to be alive indeed.