u-he Satin or Slate VTM?

[sascha]

At least pops and crackles have a one-time novelty "special effect" gimmicky aspect

Erm... the vinyl-like crackles are the demo noise the plugin makes occasionally. It's not there in the unlocked version.
[That is clearly coomunicated on our web page, btw.]

, but hiss? Really? I have tried the demo and there were quite a few presets that I would literally never use because I don't have that hankering for the really degraded sounds, but I didn't realize you couldn't dial them back completely. To my ears, that's just plain silly, and would be a deal-breaker if true. I'll have to do some more tests with the demo.

Tried dialing the hiss down to minimum in the service panel?

[sascha]

...or to some excent the Dolby NR systems...

A bit OT, but I wanted to share that Ray Dolby died today. RIP.

Oh, how sad. He's obviously been a brilliant mind. RIP.

[hibidy]

^^^ yes, where would life be w/o that?

@satin:



There are some things that seem to be like WHOA! and others where it's like "hello, is this thing on??????"

I think maybe my ears are letting me down. Trying it with vandal right now

[mljung]

After spending many years doing everything I possibly could to reduce hiss, wow and flutter as much as possible, I would never intentionally add it back. I'm really on the fence about Satin. I'm interested in the tonal effects...the "analogization" of pristine digital tracks, but the particular tape artifacts such as hiss, wow and flutter, like vinyl pops and scratches, have no positive attributes for me whatsoever. At least pops and crackles have a one-time novelty "special effect" gimmicky aspect, but hiss? Really? I have tried the demo and there were quite a few presets that I would literally never use because I don't have that hankering for the really degraded sounds, but I didn't realize you couldn't dial them back completely. To my ears, that's just plain silly, and would be a deal-breaker if true. I'll have to do some more tests with the demo.

I agree with what was said here. There's no need to limit one self to the idea of a tape-machine, as this is an emulation of different characteristics of a tape-machine, so there should be no need to change the sound in ways that we don't like.

I bought Satin and my tests so far tells me that it's a fine tool for "analogization" as you put it Gonga. Sometimes hiss can be desirable, but in most cases I want to have my recordings as quiet as possible too. As it is now Satin seems to have a noise-floor around -100dB, with hiss and asperity set to zero. This is pretty low, but I don't see any reason why this basic hiss can't be turned completely off, from a technical point of view - to me it would be good thing to have this option.

Sascha - maybe you can comment on that!?

::
Mads

[Spitfire31]

After spending many years doing everything I possibly could to reduce hiss, wow and flutter as much as possible, I would never intentionally add it back.

As an aside, it's interesting to note a smiliar 'analogue' trend in photo and video editing software. There's any number of plug ins that will give you push-processed Tri-X grain, dust and scratches, pea-soup Polaroid colour, orange light leakage effects, home movie flicker, and so on.

Nostalgia never dies. In fact, in can be rather cool…

/Joachim

[Spitfire31]

Tried dialing the hiss down to minimum in the service panel?

The hiss is no problem. RX3 Advanced was just released.

/Joachim

[Vertti]

After spending many years doing everything I possibly could to reduce hiss, wow and flutter as much as possible, I would never intentionally add it back.

As an aside, it's interesting to note a smiliar 'analogue' trend in photo and video editing software. There's any number of plug ins that will give you push-processed Tri-X grain, dust and scratches, pea-soup Polaroid colour, orange light leakage effects, home movie flicker, and so on.

Nostalgia never dies. In fact, in can be rather cool…

/Joachim

Now just if movie makers would start using stop motion animation again. I watched Robocop 1&2 few days ago and the best parts were the ones with stop motion animated killer robots!!!

[4damind]

For the noise floor stuff... the enabled compander is important. Afaik uhx 1 goes to 60dB noise to signal which is better than Slate VTM with only 40dB. After enabling the compander I can live with the noise floor.
I think that disabled hiss and asperity is not the best solution if it comes to a accurate tape machine emulation but I still think that auto muting of hiss if there is no signal could be a nice feature.

[lingyai]

I just checked this on the project that I posted above--I turned hiss, crosstalk, asperity and wow and flutter all the way off. I still hear hiss on the track--because it has hiss on it from the recording process. I hadn't realized that and had assumed it was from Satin.

So I went and installed Satin on another project that I know has no hiss on it, and There was nothing objectionable about the hiss from Satin.

So I retract my earlier comments--I think Satin's hiss and noise controls are fine, and you can eliminate them if you want

Yes, I've been playing with the demo and now see that hiss can be dialled back.

Which is good -- only thing worse than the hiss of Satin is the hiss of Satan!

I'm liking the demo, but -- though I understand why there are vinyl crackles every 30 seconds or so -- it makes A/B-ing almost impossible when I've got , say, 5 instances going, as each instance is on its own "crackle clock", so at any given time one or another is making some noise.

[Compyfox]

Even if you dial back the hiss, wow&flutter and the crosstalk, it is still there to a certain extend (example: noisefloor of usually -60dB RMS down to -80dB RMS, Crosstalk to -90dBFS instead of -70dBFS).

Tapes - are - imperfect. Period.


If you want a technical system, get stuff like Variety of Sound. Then again, nobody cares if a plugin introduces unnecessary crosstalk, or has a noise floor of -80dBFS already - since it's part of the "effect" or a "good modeling" (certain tape machines, certain compressors, certain channel strips, etc).

But suddenly it is an issue with a tape simulation like Satin?

[lingyai]

But suddenly it is an issue with a tape simulation like Satin?

Matter of degree. People take issue when the hiss jumps out to the foreground of the track, so to speak, as opposed to being the more subtle warming which you don't really notice during the track, but you notice when you remove it.

Maybe people are talking about hiss "suddenly" now just because Satin is just out, and people are auditioning presets, many of which are hissy, and also probably are still getting to grips with when the accumulation of multiple instances' hiss for the first time

[Compyfox]

Sorry, but "hiss", or "noise floor" is part of a tape machine. Why do you think that digital systems were created in the first place, which not only reduced the noise floor way below audible levels, but also gave us no crosstalk. HDD recorders pretty much eliminated all flaws of the analog realm.

Then, in the last 10-15 years or so, someone started the trend with like "OMG! We need saturation again, else it sounds like crap/not realistic/non 3D!" (which was fine in the 90ies btw, and the rest is just bollocks), and all is going downhill. People insisted on Crosstalk, Noise Floor, Tape/Tube saturation and what not as the only "right thing to do" (yes, I do blame certain engineering schools as well!).


Then, after several years of development, along comes SATIN, a really promising sandbox system to create your own tape machine. A lot of people took their time and efford to model machines after their own ones (see Studio section, or see the delay clones).

Suddenly the noise is too much, the flutter is too much (and wrong), there should be no crosstalk at all. Then by all means - please use a plain HDD recording environment instead!



Really, nobody made an issue out of it as Waves released the REDD console (which is noisy as hell), nobody made an issue out of VCC/NLS, nobody had issues with former tape machines, heck even TAL Dub has a certain consistent noise floor, the Roland Space Echo clones have a noise floor. Modern "emulations" do not only have a sometimes humonous floor but also mostly the unwanted high crosstalk (compressors, EQ, channel strips, preamps, etc). Here - it's totally fine!

But with Satin, it is not. I really, really don't get it!



Learn to use your tools, people:
Take an RMS meter, measure what the noise floor is with your most beloved Tape/Tube/whatever emulations - read up on them when they were built. Then compare it with Satin's Studio Modules (again, get to know when the modules were built!) or even Slate's VTM (it has a fixed noise, unless you use the "reduction" slider). And then tell me it does not(!) belong there.




I'm fairly sure - most of the new "tape machine" users never actually used a R2R Machine - at either scale. Maybe not even Compact Cassette tapes. Still these people insist that this is all wrong.

And that leaves me with heads shaking.





TL;DR:
Tapes are imperfect and have noise/crosstalk at different intensity depending on how well the machine was built, or from which year it was. There is no way around it - this was a limitation from the old days. To "fix" these limitations, HDD recorders were created. And nowadays, they're just "too clean".

I think it's time to wake up and realize, what ignorance, wrong education and uber-clever marketing caused in terms of havoc over the course the last two decades.

[wald]

Let the record show that I am pro hiss.
Some of us are using these "limitations" creatively.

[momalle3]

Sorry, but "hiss", or "noise floor" is part of a tape machine. Why do you think that digital systems were created in the first place, which not only reduced the noise floor way below audible levels, but also gave us no crosstalk. HDD recorders pretty much eliminated all flaws of the analog realm.

Then, in the last 10-15 years or so, someone started the trend with like "OMG! We need saturation again, else it sounds like crap/not realistic/non 3D!" (which was fine in the 90ies btw, and the rest is just bollocks), and all is going downhill. People insisted on Crosstalk, Noise Floor, Tape/Tube saturation and what not as the only "right thing to do" (yes, I do blame certain engineering schools as well!).


Then, after several years of development, along comes SATIN, a really promising sandbox system to create your own tape machine. A lot of people took their time and efford to model machines after their own ones (see Studio section, or see the delay clones).

Suddenly the noise is too much, the flutter is too much (and wrong), there should be no crosstalk at all. Then by all means - please use a plain HDD recording environment instead!



Really, nobody made an issue out of it as Waves released the REDD console (which is noisy as hell), nobody made an issue out of VCC/NLS, nobody had issues with former tape machines, heck even TAL Dub has a certain consistent noise floor, the Roland Space Echo clones have a noise floor. Modern "emulations" do not only have a sometimes humonous floor but also mostly the unwanted high crosstalk (compressors, EQ, channel strips, preamps, etc). Here - it's totally fine!

But with Satin, it is not. I really, really don't get it!



Learn to use your tools, people:
Take an RMS meter, measure what the noise floor is with your most beloved Tape/Tube/whatever emulations - read up on them when they were built. Then compare it with Satin's Studio Modules (again, get to know when the modules were built!) or even Slate's VTM (it has a fixed noise, unless you use the "reduction" slider). And then tell me it does not(!) belong there.




I'm fairly sure - most of the new "tape machine" users never actually used a R2R Machine - at either scale. Maybe not even Compact Cassette tapes. Still these people insist that this is all wrong.

And that leaves me with heads shaking.





TL;DR:
Tapes are imperfect and have noise/crosstalk at different intensity depending on how well the machine was built, or from which year it was. There is no way around it - this was a limitation from the old days. To "fix" these limitations, HDD recorders were created. And nowadays, they're just "too clean".

I think it's time to wake up and realize, what ignorance, wrong education and uber-clever marketing caused in terms of havoc over the course the last two decades.

??? What analague tape machines have a little knob that lets you turn down hiss or turn up Crosstalk?

There's absolutely no reason why, if you offer a control over hiss which does not and cannot exist in the digital realm, you can't make that knob go to zero. You are arguing for fidelity to analogue in a virtual tape machine which already does things no analogue tape machine ever does. Why in the world would you insist on analogue limitations?

I like Satin and like the hiss, though I find it builds up more quickly in satin than it does in VTM, which I've used before. I'm not sure why that's a problematic observation

[@l3x!5]

??? What analague tape machines have a little knob that lets you turn down hiss or turn up Crosstalk?

There's absolutely no reason why, if you offer a control over hiss which does not and cannot exist in the digital realm, you can't make that knob go to zero. You are arguing for fidelity to analogue in a virtual tape machine which already does things no analogue tape machine ever does. Why in the world would you insist on analogue limitations?

I like Satin and like the hiss, though I find it builds up more quickly in sati n than it dos I vtm, which I used before. I'm not sure why that's a problematic observation

+1