Slate Digital Virtual Tape Machine: Released

[Kaboom75]

The first audio demo Slate put on youtube I found disapointing it sounded as subtle as VCC sounded on youtube demos. I thaught maybe thats more realiastic.

On my own mix listening to it for 10 mins then bypassing all the VTMs the sound sounded flat 2D, boring lots of nice stuff in the sound goes missing doesn't sound as exciting.

Re enable VTM and I can here a load of stuff come back a lot of it is hard to explain it's alien to me main thing i notice is the instruments sound like they are at different distances infront of me like the sound is 3D. It's no where near as subtle as VCC but it is very transparent. The more I tweak each VTM for each track the more I notice. All VTMs grouped with the same settings I don't get the same vibe.

[bmanic]

I wasn't referring to the high frequency region, but the overall kind-of attenuation of overly "resonant"/"sharp" sounds, which is not in a usual "eq"-like way.

Ok, I do actually now realize what you are talking about. This kind of taming of resonant buildup is actually what I find is still lacking in all digital tube emulations. It's exactly the thing I hear that is "wrong" with the Kemper Amp profiler when they post examples of the kemper vs the profiled amp.

It's like the digital version actually sounds very compressed whereas the tube amp just tames everything but it does NOT sound compressed. It's something that most mastering engineers use to good effect for proper loudness without stuff actually feeling compressed.. simply by gain staging stuff.

I really need that ultimate "summing" box with a lot of different selectable input and output transformers and some various tube paths, all selectable of course. I will have to tempt Kingston to build me one at some point.


Now with tape machines I don't think they quite do it the same way but perhaps this depends on the tape brand as some of them are more soft knee in their saturation than others? What tape are you running in your M15? I need to get hold of a proper service manual in English to tweak the machine so that I can actually run the tape hot enough. I don't dare touch those tiny adjusting screws on those cards before I know exactly what I'm doing.

With tape I'm always after the transient taming effect. This is done really well in the VTM and Toneboosters ReelBus. I also like to use them for crushing things. Try driving a reverb send into ReelBus at +60dB. Some interesting things happen, especially on short drum room type of reverbs.

In general, I like anything that sounds unique and can't be easily duplicated with something else.. it's the main cause of my nightmarishly huge plugin list.

Anyhow, I do think I know what you are looking for sound wise and I still do agree with you that this subtle "smoothing" is missing in plugins. Some of the Nebula libraries do this actually very well (like the Massive Passive program from analogueinthebox.com) but you have to tweak some of the internal settings quite a lot and drive the input just right or it will all go to hell. It's such a fiddly plugin though..

EDIT: I'd like to add here that this resonance taming thing is a VERY SUBTLE effect though.. well not for everybody but the general public will not hear it. I've had my wife listen to a lot of various A/B tests of things running hot through some tube outboard and our M15 tape machine and she couldn't tell the difference at all. Even after pointing out the things that had changed she still couldn't hear the effect. Same thing when I play the differences to other people who aren't in the music business. But music and music production is something we do for ourselves (well at least we should be doing it for ourselves) so if something isn't satisfying then it's best left alone and just continuing the search.

Cheers!
bManic

[kmonkey]

Steven i just wanted to report problem. It seems that VTM is causing FL Studio to hang. Especially if i load more instances and then close and again open VTM GUI.

I just tried every possible thing within FL Studio plugin wrapper. I noticed that as soon as i load first instance VTM graphic becomes laggy, spinning reels are kinda skippy and when i try to move knobs they also feel laggy.

Going to FL Wrapper settings and disabling "Ensure processor state in plugin callback" option (it is enabled by default for all plugins) will make it less laggy but close-open gui crash is still there making VTM plugin completely unusable for FL Studio folks.

I tried it in Ableton and Cubase and there it's working nicely. It just doesn't work well with FL Studio. I have another completely independant machine and i could try there if needed.

Since i own several ilok2 products and a lot of other 3rd party plugins and since i only have problem with this VTM plugin i am guessing that it is some sort of bug in VTM. Feel free to PM me if you need further details about this. I could contact FL Studio developers in the meantime asking what could it be.

[kvaca]

It's like the digital version actually sounds very compressed whereas the tube amp just tames everything but it does NOT sound compressed. It's something that most mastering engineers use to good effect for proper loudness without stuff actually feeling compressed.. simply by gain staging stuff.

good effect?

actually,I have a strong feeling that almost every record Ive heard in last decade is overcompressed as hell...and this trend is getting even worse today,becouse many of them are also distorted as hell

sorry for OT...its just very different opinion here...

[Lenticular]

After another day of demoing & am getting nice results on mastering using several different Nebula programs pre VTM, adjusting the bass alignment slightly per track.

The modern FG9 tape seems to work the best on my material & when more dynamics are needed.

I've used it on a dozen or so projects & so far it hasn't crashed, can't find any bugs or issues yet.

That in itself is a huge +

.

[bduffy]

I keep submitting my email & name for the demo and not getting any iLok demo license - am I doing something wrong?

[Lenticular]

Did you get an email with the iLok license redeem code?

[bduffy]

Did you get an email with the iLok license redeem code?

No...

[Lenticular]

Did you get an email with the iLok license redeem code?

No...

Did you get the ' enter email, first last name' box that gave you the 1.0 installer link?

[bduffy]

Did you get an email with the iLok license redeem code?

No...

Did you get the ' enter email, first last name' box that gave you the 1.0 installer link?

Yep! I've downloaded the installer, but I assume I need an iLok serial.

[Slate]

Hi guys, thanks very much for the comments. If you are running into bugs, we want to fix them! Report them at www.slatedigital.com/support

Bduffy, make sure to check your spam folder, and if you see nothing there, hit up support.

The bass alignment is very powerful... you can read more about it in the manual but it's interactive with each machine and tape type, so it's not just an eq.

The VTM can certainly be pushed and still sound really nice. This is the hard part about tape... we had to model that 'pushed but not nasty' thing that it could do. It drove Fabrice pretty crazy but was worth it.

Another suggestion I have is to really get to know the main aspects of the VTM:

- The 2 machines
- 30ips vs 15ips
- FG456 vs FG9

Once you get familiar with these things, it's much easier to hear something and go "that will need 2" 30ips FG456" or "This mix needs some extra life and smack from the 1/2" 15ips FG9"... etc

One of the most exciting things for me with the VTM is using 15ips, which I love since it has such a lively frequency response and nice sublow energy bump.. but being able to reduce the noise! I would have loved to that as easily with the real machines!!

Cheers,
Steven

[Lenticular]

Did you get an email with the iLok license redeem code?

No...

Did you get the ' enter email, first last name' box that gave you the 1.0 installer link?

Yep! I've downloaded the installer, but I assume I need an iLok serial.

I just tried getting another demo, I entered my info, got the link & just received the email with the redeem code.

Spam filter?

Try getting the demo again?

[bduffy]

Hi guys, thanks very much for the comments. If you are running into bugs, we want to fix them! Report them at www.slatedigital.com/support

Bduffy, make sure to check your spam folder, and if you see nothing there, hit up support.

The bass alignment is very powerful... you can read more about it in the manual but it's interactive with each machine and tape type, so it's not just an eq.

The VTM can certainly be pushed and still sound really nice. This is the hard part about tape... we had to model that 'pushed but not nasty' thing that it could do. It drove Fabrice pretty crazy but was worth it.

Another suggestion I have is to really get to know the main aspects of the VTM:

- The 2 machines
- 30ips vs 15ips
- FG456 vs FG9

Once you get familiar with these things, it's much easier to hear something and go "that will need 2" 30ips FG456" or "This mix needs some extra life and smack from the 1/2" 15ips FG9"... etc

One of the most exciting things for me with the VTM is using 15ips, which I love since it has such a lively frequency response and nice sublow energy bump.. but being able to reduce the noise! I would have loved to that as easily with the real machines!!

Cheers,
Steven

Thanks Steven! Looks like I have to hit up support, nothing in my spam folder.

[audiosabre]

so how much latency does this VTM actually produce?

Here it reports 39.21ms/1729 samples latency.

OUCH! f**k that!

Totally worth it!

FL can compensate no problem. Plus if I was tracking I'd print to tape afterward, like one would in reality...

[Sequent]

@bduffy

Do you have an alternate email address that you might be able to use? With a handful of vendors I have had trouble with email not even going into the spam folder. It just doesn't even show up, even if I have the sender's name in my contact info, etc. So the issue may be on your end with your isp and not at all with Slate Digital. In my case email from Slate Digital works fine but other legitimate emails that I'm waiting for disappear into the void, meanwhile the junk mail still comes through! Usually, having an alternate email address is the easiest way to clear things up.