Acustica Taupe - Hype Or The Real Deal?

[cfanyc]

GS thread is on fire today. Half of the people saying that it is
nectar and manna from heaven and the other half pointing out to
a nasty bug (termed the "laser bug" because it sounds like
a long laser sound) generated in audio with strong transients like kick drums.

I heard the bug and it is astonishing that it made it to release.
Company head kinda claims it is normal for old tape machines, but no other
IR tape library (acustica or other) has it afaik.

Bmanic, why don't you post a few samples of that? You have been
a beta tester for this plugin?

[sleepcircle]

That's the first time I've heard about tapes doing that.

No tape recording I've ever heard has that.

Satin doesn't do that, either, that I've heard, and it does a simulation of tape machines up to and including a supersonic smear caused by magnetic self-interference from the write head which requires that the plugin run at an internal samplerate of 384khz



EDIT: i realize this is a bit like hijacking another project's thread. i only mention it because some people already said that they definitely were avoiding the company and/or the product.

[wagtunes]

That's the first time I've heard about tapes doing that.

No tape recording I've ever heard has that.

Satin doesn't do that, either, that I've heard, and it does a simulation of tape machines up to and including a supersonic smear caused by magnetic self-interference from the write head which requires that the plugin run at an internal samplerate of 384khz



EDIT: i realize this is a bit like hijacking another project's thread. i only mention it because some people already said that they definitely were avoiding the company and/or the product.

Since you and other people have brought it up, how is Satin as a tape emulation? How much can you get out of it as far as diversity?

[plexuss]

Since you and other people have brought it up, how is Satin as a tape emulation? How much can you get out of it as far as diversity?

I have a lot of tape emulators. I have a tape machine as well (1/4" 15 ips). Satin has pretty much the most versatility as a tape emulator because of the wide range of advanced parameters. It can also do tape delay and flange effects. It also sounds pretty convincing as a tape emulator. Oh and it can work across multiple instances on tracks to emulate a multi-track machine.

[experimental.crow]

i am a satisfied user of Satin ...
deep , and flexible ...

it's a system , as opposed to a strict emulation ...
demo available ...

i still use digitalfishphones , just saying ...

[wagtunes]

Thanks guys. I will probably look into Satin as soon as I scrounge up some cash. Times are tight this year.

[sleepcircle]

as far as diversity goes, if you know the exact response of the tape system you are trying to emulate, you can more or less program a very decent approximation by adjusting satin's electrical and mechanical parameters—adjusting the distance between the tape and the head, adjusting the angle of the head, the signal bias; recording and reproduction EQ circuits used for noise reduction, etc.

[wagtunes]

as far as diversity goes, if you know the exact response of the tape system you are trying to emulate, you can more or less program a very decent approximation by adjusting satin's electrical and mechanical parameters—adjusting the distance between the tape and the head, adjusting the angle of the head, the signal bias; recording and reproduction EQ circuits used for noise reduction, etc.

I'm assuming that you'd have to...

1. Get the specs of the tape machine you want to emulate (i.e Teac A3440) and then understand each Satin control to match the specs of the machine itself. Is that even possible?

[plexuss]

as far as diversity goes, if you know the exact response of the tape system you are trying to emulate, you can more or less program a very decent approximation by adjusting satin's electrical and mechanical parameters—adjusting the distance between the tape and the head, adjusting the angle of the head, the signal bias; recording and reproduction EQ circuits used for noise reduction, etc.

I'm assuming that you'd have to...

1. Get the specs of the tape machine you want to emulate (i.e Teac A3440) and then understand each Satin control to match the specs of the machine itself. Is that even possible?

Not really. Not numerically. You have to do it by ear. It's not so important to emulate a specific machine as it is to get the character you are looking for.

[sleepcircle]

Most measurements you could probably get from just a recording of the tape, (the noise floor and head bump and stuff); you could probably get the ideal gap width and the rep/rec EQs, bias, headroom, etc. from a pdf of an old manual or something—from there you'd only have to adjust a handful of parameters by ear, like wow, tape asperity, and pre-emphasis


(caveat. since satin's middle-of-the-road bias setting is just "0" and you adjust above or below that, there is still SOME GUESSWORK there, too.)

[Omkar]

Howdy,
thought I give AA freebies a shot in the Freeware roundup,
it seems a good portion of KVR members are not so familiar with them.
No cpu hogs and top quality.

Regarding Taupe:
I can easily predict a lot of laser jokes ... the rest remains to be seen.
Planned for the weekend but I can`t give a demo green light at this stage.

[SoundPorn]

I'll be sticking to AirWindows FromTape 5 and console emulations for my sound degradation as in blind test they sound dead accurate and are free.
But if Accustica usually has easily the most accurate emulations of consoles because they use actual Impulse Responses from the hardware which is why they are cpu killers but also make things sound better just by turning the plug on and not even making adjustments.

[sleepcircle]

airwindows totape/fromtape sounds very good but not QUITE like tape. they have the same types of positive effects but not quite in the same configuration. i tried using them but ended up going back to satin (although actually i still use IronOxide5 for some stuff)

airwindows' console plugins are stupendous though, yeah. mind-blowing effect.

(also on the subject of 'turning the plugin on makes it sound better' I've found that effect with satin, as well. it is kind of a sound-gooderizer, in a lot of ways. especially when you use it as a multi-track device.)

[wesleymayhem]

All I can say is Taupe sounds absolutely amazing. Not experiencing any bugs on Windows 10 Ableton 10.

[Omkar]

In case you`d like to have first impressions on YT,
user "AntiTeatar Music" is pretty quick on AA products in general.

The "laser bug" is documented but it is supposed to be fixed as of today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlSZx58gmEY