Wavesfactory releases Cassette

[foosnark]

I'm in the middle of mastering an already pretty noisy album that features the Soma Lyra-8, and I find that Cassette works really well in the mastering chain.

One thing that I'd like immensely would be a slider rather than a toggle switch to control the frequency response amount. Being able to dial in about half of the frequency response difference, while keeping the full saturation, compression, etc. and not getting the phasing/chorusing caused by the overall wet/dry control, would be great. Trying to partially compensate with EQ can be a little awkward.

[plexuss]

I'm in the middle of mastering an already pretty noisy album that features the Soma Lyra-8, and I find that Cassette works really well in the mastering chain.

One thing that I'd like immensely would be a slider rather than a toggle switch to control the frequency response amount. Being able to dial in about half of the frequency response difference, while keeping the full saturation, compression, etc. and not getting the phasing/chorusing caused by the overall wet/dry control, would be great. Trying to partially compensate with EQ can be a little awkward.

The idea of a slider for frequency would be a great addition!

[noiseboyuk]

Is it because they're boombox recordings or just more energetic arrangements that recall some of their best work from a few years earlier, though?

Simple Minds' earlier demos are often much closer to the album version, especially when you listen to Hillage's treatment of Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call or Leckie's work with them. By going overboard on bombastic, Lillywhite pretty much stripped the energy out of the songs on Sparkle in the Rain and, IIRC, the album got panned on release because of it. Book of Brilliant Things is practically a different song here and better for it IMO, possibly because it's got shades of Cabaret Voltaire going on.

Very much true that. Sons And Fascination and New Gold Dream are both extraordinary. I still have affection for Sparkle In The Rain which I think of as a transition album, but then Don't You Forget About Me aside it all went completely to pot after that. When Forbes and McNeil left, all the magic went with it. Still play the early stuff to this day.

Anyway,... I remember Simple Minds actually used to say that they struggled to match the energy of cheap boom box recordings in the studio.

Obviously you couldn't master anything with anything that extreme, but I'm kinda fascinated in the idea you could dial-in some of that insane lo-fi energy. Must have been dirt cheap electronics in those things, and I've heard nothing that even claims to emulate it.

[onerob]

I, too, have memories of recording 'jams' with friends on boombox type affairs and they sounded great. Amazingly well mixed and compressed. Perfect for the job of capturing a rehearsal and hearing how the band are doing.

[pheeleep]

I demo’d it last night. I like it a lot. The only thing preventing me from buying is the issue with the Dry/mix, as mentioned. Not setting to 100% wet introduces an undesirable Effect. Has this been acknowledged as a bug and that it will be fixed?

[ilmai]

I demo’d it last night. I like it a lot. The only thing preventing me from buying is the issue with the Dry/mix, as mentioned. Not setting to 100% wet introduces an undesirable Effect. Has this been acknowledged as a bug and that it will be fixed?

It's easy to fix yourself: just set wow depth, flutter depth & stability randomness to 0/off in advanced settings.

[JerGoertz]

I demo’d it last night. I like it a lot. The only thing preventing me from buying is the issue with the Dry/mix, as mentioned. Not setting to 100% wet introduces an undesirable Effect. Has this been acknowledged as a bug and that it will be fixed?

It's easy to fix yourself: just set wow depth, flutter depth & stability randomness to 0/off in advanced settings.

Yep. If wow/flutter is at all active, the intrinsic nature of this behavior will unavoidably cause that swirly flanging effect.

[pheeleep]

That makes sense. I was trying to have my cake and eat it too.

[ilmai]

If you want your wow & flutter cake and eat the saturation too, you could always use two Cassettes in series, one 100% wet doing the wow and flutter, and another with a dry/wet mix taking care of everything else.

[pheeleep]

If you want your wow & flutter cake and eat the saturation too, you could always use two Cassettes in series, one 100% wet doing the wow and flutter, and another with a dry/wet mix taking care of everything else.

Interesting suggestion. Have you tried it? I will tonight. It would seem to me that the Modulation effect would still occur on the output of the second instance if it isn’t set to 100% wet but perhaps I am wrong. I will check this out.

[ilmai]

Interesting suggestion. Have you tried it? I will tonight. It would seem to me that the Modulation effect would still occur on the output of the second instance if it isn’t set to 100% wet but perhaps I am wrong. I will check this out.

It shouldn't, as long as the Cassette instance with <100% mix doesn't have any wow or flutter.

[pheeleep]

I’ll try it out

[Ah_Dziz]

Man. I must say that Wavesfactory is one of my favorite developers of both sample libraries and plugins. I’ve used trackspacer on almost every single mix I have done that included vocalssince it was released. Even though I already have almost every “sound degrader” on the market, this is one of the best cassette emulators I’ve heard. Between this, Speakerphone, sonitex, Vinyl, RC-20, Chipcrusher, reelbus, ferrox, Vinyl Strip, and many more, I feel like I can screw up sounds in damn near any way I can imagine.
Good job!

[Ah_Dziz]

I would love to see someone go this deep on a VHS Audio processor.

[Ah_Dziz]

I demo’d it last night. I like it a lot. The only thing preventing me from buying is the issue with the Dry/mix, as mentioned. Not setting to 100% wet introduces an undesirable Effect. Has this been acknowledged as a bug and that it will be fixed?

It's easy to fix yourself: just set wow depth, flutter depth & stability randomness to 0/off in advanced settings.

Yep. If wow/flutter is at all active, the intrinsic nature of this behavior will unavoidably cause that swirly flanging effect.

This is correct. Any pitch/ time modulation mixed with a non modulated signal is going to cause a chorus or flange effect. One copy for the modulation with everything else shut down and another for just the wow, flutter, and tape sticking will eliminate this. It could be cool to have a switch that adds the wow, flutter, sticking, and such to the very end of the chain and keeps it 100%, or an option to lock the time modulation to 100% while the wet/ dry effects everything else is effected by the mix.