u-he Satin or Slate VTM?

[billcarroll]

I did that, and considering the money I put into it, it's great what I got. So I'm not complaining... er... that much.


But Shy does have a point. Doesn't mean that these plugins are crap though. Learn how to use them, produce something great.

Really? Other than bashing the hard work and intentions of at least 3 top notch development teams, what's Shy's actual point?

I've talked to him extensively about it via pm many times this year. He actually does know what he's talking about and has absolutely tons of experience with many type of tape machines. Sometimes maybe he says it a bit harsh,(that's how *I* like it personally but I know many don't) but I will say it the nice way.. And Bill this is precisely what he means, nothing more, nothing less:

"Whatever this plugin is doing, whether one can find uses for it or even loves it, it doesn't actually sound like tape."

That's it in a nutshell

I begged him to try satin as I value his opinion. He wasn't going to and I said this time he might be surprised as I think uhe was getting closer than the others, and he did for me and I guess was kind of an I told you so moment for him (in a nice way as we are forum mates).

Mind you he also mentioned the distortion is quite nice compared to many of the others, ie not harsh, I think he might have missed this out the previous page but definitely said that via pm, but that even if it can sound nice it doesn't sound like tape.

He claims the developers are trying to exploit people's ignorance. He also claims they have not tried to emulate tape. Incorrect and at least somewhat slanderous on both parts.

Not really,that's his opinion. He feels they are selling snake oil land on the flipside if you talk fraud etc i think he's the one offended that they even market it as tape. There's always two sides to anything. I'm staying out of it from here on though.

While I disagree with your assessment, I appreciate your thoughtful responses. Seriously

[QuintaQuad]

Pray tell, what exactly does Shy expect a good tape emulation to do? Tape doesn't impart some magical sound to the source material. I'm no technical whiz but It seems to me that tape does one thing only to the signal and that is distorts it (the definition of distort being anything that alters the original sound). It does this in one of four ways - equalization, compression, saturation or modulation. If it does some things other than these four things I'd be interested in knowing what they are.

So in order to emulate tape you need to manipulate those four things which is exactly what all the tape emulations do in one way or another. The key factor being that tape machines do these things in nonlinear ways.

Whether or not the developers succeed is open to debate but they certainly aren't deceiving anyone with their plug-ins...

[hibidy]

But it doesn't have the magnetic magnatizer megaphonic do whippy jabam!

Actually, I read the manual. They do their very best to try and explain all that. I think some time was put into this, despite what some people say.

[Shy]

Pray tell, what exactly does Shy expect a good tape emulation to do? Tape doesn't impart some magical sound to the source material. I'm no technical whiz but It seems to me that tape does one thing only to the signal and that is distorts it (the definition of distort being anything that alters the original sound). It does this in one of four ways - equalization, compression, saturation or modulation. If it does some things other than these four things I'd be interested in knowing what they are.

So in order to emulate tape you need to manipulate those four things which is exactly what all the tape emulations do in one way or another. The key factor being that tape machines do these things in nonlinear ways.

Whether or not the developers succeed is open to debate but they certainly aren't deceiving anyone with their plug-ins...

A magnetic tape is covered with magnetic particles which, during the recording process, are arranged by a magnetic field and there you have the "tape recording". That recording is played back by the tape machine which uses a magnetic field to interpret the data from the magnetic particles. That's the huge oversimplification of it. The "tape sound" characteristics come from the mere fact that the data is stored/"printed" on that physical object in the form of particles arranged in a specific way.

Overdrive distortion from tape doesn't come from overdriving transistors, diodes, tubes or any other usual overdrive you know. It comes from a magnetic field impinging the particles on the tape too powerfully for them to get arranged accurately, resulting in a messy arrangement. Different types (as well as brands) of tapes and tape machines differ greatly in the sound of not only the distortion from overdrive, but also the distortion and overall inaccuracies which have nothing to do with plain overdrive. You don't have to have an obviously distorted sound (caused by overdrive) for a tape recording and playback to have "a tape sound". You get the "tape sound" whether you want it or not, from low amplitude to high amplitude signals. In fact, low amplitude signals have more inaccuracies, more "tape sound" (including the undesirable amount of noise) than high amplitude signals, and it has nothing to do with overdrive. Pitch inaccuracies which are not usually obvious unless the tape is of low quality, are not a byproduct of some plain instability of a playback device, they're the byproduct of the physical properties of the medium, and the "smoother" or "smeared" sound, which can usually be noticed more and more if you re-record a tape recording, are related to exactly the same physical property that the pitch inaccuracies are related to. Some tapes have a very obvious "tape sound" because they're not capable of storing the data in a very accurate way, and some have such high quality that they're usually indistinguishable from high-end digital recordings. Still, even in the most "accurate" tape recordings, the aural benefits of tape recording can be noticed when compared to a recording that wasn't stored on such media.

People here can keep their virtual laughs and trolling, but the fact remains that no current plugin "emulates", or "simulates" sound from a magnetic tape. No one has ever released anything that even attempts that. A real emulation would attempt to model the physical properties and phenomena in a tape recording and playback process. Current computers' processing power may very well be inadequate to handle a proper emulation of those things in real time, but so far, not even a low quality, half-baked implementation is available. I assume that it will be a very long time before real magnetic tape emulation, as opposed to a bunch of basic digital algorithms wrapped in a pointlessly huge graphical user interface, becomes available.

Yes, developers have been exploiting people's ignorance, plain and simple. Stay mad at me, if you want. I'm out, in any case, I don't have time for ridiculous debates.

[sascha]

I'm out, in any case, I don't have time for ridiculous debates.

Thank you.

[hibidy]

[Kindred]

I'm out, in any case, I don't have time for ridiculous debates.

I LOL'd hard at that too. First thing I thought was that it was the equivalent of saying "I don't have time for murder", holding a hatchet and standing in a room full of dead bodies.

[Shy]

I guess that's somewhat right, Kindred. Saw your name and expected something more interesting, though. To me it's much funnier that the developer above can only troll instead of reply to my points, because he knows what his "emulation" is really worth. It is a relief to those people. Hmm, I kind of broke what I said. Now I'm really out.

[xh3rv]

I've seen Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya ( http://www.debashishbhattacharya.com/ ) a couple times. His current tour was here two nights ago. It's last year's Raga ensemble - Debashish with his brother and daughter - along with a trap set ( http://jeffsipemusic.com/ ), flamenco guitar ( http://www.adamdelmonte.com/ ), and electric bass. Both times he's replaced the iconic Raga drone with electronics. In fact this time it was literally coming off an iPhone, first performance of this tour and there was a little bit of hassle.

Perhaps aware some in the audience would naturally be puzzled by this substitution, the guru in infinite wisdom remarked: "Digital or analogue, what matters is that it is done with love."

( off-topic: Herbert Gronemeyer is coming up at the same venue soon, is it true he's huge in Germany? Like, bigger than David Hasslehoff?!?!?!??)

[chokehold]

the developer above can only troll instead of reply to my points, because he knows what his "emulation" is really worth

The developer knows damn well better than you what his emulation is really worth, correct. As do most others here. You don't seem to agree, but how many tape emulations have you ever written to make your opinion about the topic more valuable than Sascha's?

[sascha]

To me it's much funnier that the developer above can only troll instead of reply to my points, because he knows what his "emulation" is really worth. It is a relief to those people. Hmm, I kind of broke what I said. Now I'm really out.

Ah, I thought you were already before... well then, nobody forces you to buy any product from us, and you can't force me to speak to you, especially not under these circumstances.

[Urs]

Hi Shy, still mad at for mocking your "smart aliasing theory", after all those years, hahaha. I don't recall any product of ours that you haven't bashed with yet another rant.

I dare you to ever go into a modern building. The "finite element methode" used by civil engineers to calculate the ideal thickness of concrete, glass and metal is an oversimplificiation of what's happening in the material. It can't even start to model all aspects of the interaction of particles within the material, and the incompletely understood effects of gravity. A building which was designed using this method can not be safe. It will ultimately collapse.

[Sampleconstruct]

Shy on his notorious anti-mission against everything, classic!

[Shy]

Hey Sascha, I just want to say don't worry, I never tried to force you to speak to me (that's scary), and I know no one tried to force me to buy your product (thank goodness) which does a few things but not the main thing it claims to do. Of course, you'd always be able to find ways to avoid discussing that fact. I don't mind. Good luck with your sales.
Urs: being personal as ever, I see. Even when I didn't talk about just your product specifically. It's hilarious, but also somewhat sad.
Sampleconstruct: (I may as well reply to that as well, why not) If you really think this is an "anti-mission" instead of a little commentary about the poor state of things and how things should improve (improvement, a positive thing), it's too bad that you're missing the point, but if you're happy with the current marketing fad, enjoy it.

[dalor]

In fact, low amplitude signals have more inaccuracies, more "tape sound" (including the undesirable amount of noise) than high amplitude signals...

I'm not experienced with tape machines at all but maybe the noise level could dynamically adjust to the input level? No input signal = no noise, full 0db signal = -40db noise floor max. So lower input signals have lower noise floor? Either way these guys know what they're doing.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but tapes didn't work this way.
And the behavior you're talking about is a load of work to implement. If it's even possible.

You're talking about "adaptive" noise, which behaves like a synth.

While my statement is wrong, the point I was making, IF shy is right, the input signal is related to the noise level. The reason I mentioned this I used tons of cassette tapes back in the 80s, where the amplitude (I called it input signal above) was somehow related to the saturation and noise level. I remember I bought a dance tape it had Inner Cities "Big Fun" - which was overly saturated and the noise was clearly more audible on quite parts. I sampled parts of it directly on my Amiga 8 bit sampler and could see the saturation of the waveform even after turning down the volume knob. However, this might be all BS and (again) Team URS knows what they're doing. Satin sounds good to me.