Tape simulations for that mastering mojo.

[4damind]

Waves Kramer is a rather old plugin, it should be about 10 years old? I used it before VTM. You had to be careful with gain-staging otherwise it sounded quite reasonable. I would even say it was a popular tape saturation plugin.

[heavymetalmixer]

Did anyone test CHOWTape against the others mentioned on this thread?

[Dark Fiber]

Doesn’t Kramer’s alias like crazy, though? I’ve been preferring Magnititie from black rooster and Softube Tape for the last two years.

No. I've tested this thoroughly with plugindoctor.
There's a steep LP filter preventing audible aliasing.
I've only recently purchased KMT, so maybe they've implemented this shortly before my purchase.

[telecode]

you can get all the IKM TM's for $99.

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/i ... r%20Filter

[jens]

Doesn’t Kramer’s alias like crazy, though? I’ve been preferring Magnititie from black rooster and Softube Tape for the last two years.

Nope, a quick check seems to indicate that Kramer aliases a little less than Magnetite (which doesn't alias a lot either though) - it also uses only a little less CPU than Magnetide and about the same as Toneboosters' ReelBus V4, so it certainly does the number crunching.

Waves are the real deal - they are often ahead of the game, which is why some of their plugins use quite a lot of CPU, even though some of their others are extremely efficient.

MetaFilter, for instance, which is certainly one of - it if not THE - best analog-sounding delay plugin(S) there is, uses quite a lot of CPU cycles and that one is quite a few years old too, right? The same goes for Saphira, some of the AR plugins, etc. . Their coders simply know what they're doing. I Always trust them because I know that whatever they come out with will Always have some of the best code possible.


People claiming otherwise simply have no f**king clue - it's like those dudes who claim Phil Collins can't sing or drum while tinkering around with some MIDI files they just downloaded from the internet.

Edit, just to make sure:

the last bit above is of course just my personal opinion. After all it might be me who hasn't got the slightest clue what he's talking about.

[Kwurqx]

How do people like the most recent Airwindows Tape?

Generally free stuff is looked upon with some disdain. Apparently for many people functional value is highly correlated with monetary value. If it's expensive it must be good. And if it's free it must be crap.

Personally I believe that there are bulks of well meant free plugins. But there is also a wealth of truly high quality free plugins (instruments and effects).

I have a lot of respect for Chris from Airwindows.
https://www.airwindows.com/

He has many free plugins (now on Patreon). Ranging from outrageously experimental to bread & butter. Often his plugins controls/settings range from inaudibly subtle to wildy experimental or even out-of-control. But they are always of the highest quality.

No GUI though. Just focused on function. GUI's just gobble up unneccessary development and CPU time (he says). Also, he could never cough up so many great plugins if he had to develop nice GUI's for them too.

For most of the plugins there is a (long) video where Chris talks you through the hows and whys of the plugins.

Loads of emulation / character type of stuff too
https://www.airwindows.com/category/emulation/

And yes, he does Tape emulation too.

Airwindows - ToTape6
https://www.airwindows.com/totape6/

Very recently he added

Airwindows - Chrome Oxide
https://www.airwindows.com/chrome-oxide-vst/

[Noumena]

Hey man, I don't disagree with you that Waves really does their work. I use ADT, like *everywhere,* and used J37 on my master channel for years. I have Kramer but always preferred J37 once I got it... I'll fire it up again but it never really stuck with me... my work has no drums in it, though, which often means that different algorithms work better for me than others. I seem to remember Waves themselves touting J37 featuring improvements over Kramer, too.

[jens]

I totally & absolutely love J37 - I once posted a piece of music here where I literally only used J37 as the sole processor for everything - distortion, compression, modulation, delay, EQing…

That being said, however, Kramer Master Tape simply seeks to emulate a totally different tape-machine / preamp. Just like the IK-pack emulates four different machines, and it makes perfect sense to use both alongside each other.

Here's again the (one of the) Bob Ohlsson post (from over at Gearslutz) I posted earlier in this thread:

The Kramer and the VTM are apples vs oranges. The old Ampex is a very colored machine compared to more modern tape machines and has a much narrower "sweet spot." Most people never used more than three tracks and maybe ten of us in the world ever used an 8 track based on that design. It's the sound of the '50s - '60s and not the sound of 8, 16 and 24 track tape in the '70s-'90s.The old tube Ampexes have a sound I love and waves really nailed a specific machine and tape but it's not something to mindlessly throw on every track. Something a lot of us did in the '70s and '80s was to intentionally use a different kind of machine and tape for mixing than the multitrack to minimize the build up of colorations. There can be a real synergy between an old Ampex and a more modern multitrack.

[sascha]

@jens

So basically what Bob Olhsson says there is that Waves completely 100% f**ked up the internal calibration of the plugin? Wouldn't be the first time.

Also, I 100% trust Bob's opinion. That dude is extremely talented and knowledgeable.

Partially the general public is at fault. They are so incredibly bad at hearing and especially appreciating subtle nuances in audio. Not all analogue audio processing is immediate and "wow what a huge difference!!". This is a complete myth..

Having felt kind of offended by how bold some plugins claim they do it right but actually turn laws of physics upside down, I've pointed it out a couple of years ago: people who use tape (even virtual) should have a basic knowledge of how the process actually works, in order to validate whether claims are true or false, and how to get the best out of it for a particular application.
For instance, what biasing is and how it affects tonal balance and distortion (and different kinds thereof). Less bias is crossover distortion, and a relatively 'thin' sound. The more bias current (a high-frequency sinusoidial signal) is applied, the less crossover distortion occurs, as more of the audio signal can pass the 0-transition and remain intact when travelling along the hysteresis loop. This is because it's riding on top of the HF modulation signal. Bias is there to linearize the recording within the... (important:) operation window. A too high bias current leads to saturation on the opposite ends of the hysteresis curve; a voice coil has a limited field strength, has core saturation, and the number of magnetic particles in the tape-layer emulsion that can be aligned is limited. The HF bias signal will be gone naturally because of gap loss in the replay head (if it even survives a couple of replays because of eddy-current effects), but a too high bias signal leads to self-erasure on the tape. This starts in the treble region first. 'Overbiased' settings are possibly louder but also more mellow in the high. It kind of becomes fatter but darker.
That's how magnetic-tape physics work. If a plugin does the opposite and still claims it's doing tape, well...

[mcbpete]

^ This post is *exactly* what language needs to be used when describing plugin effects. There's always so much vague fluff about 'dimensionality', 'sheen', 'depth', 'warmth' but so little about specific tangible tonal changes (and the causes behind such changes). High five Sascha !

[curtiscole]

I use J37 most of the times

[acYm]

i know i keep harping on about mixanalog.com but they're a small company and i really want them to succeed

I heard about them a couple times, but forgot about it, but you made me take the time to check out their youtube yesterday.

Gotta say... I think I know why you want them to stick around. Seems very legit. I'll be trying this out.

[c1c2]

Yes, really unique approach!

[Ploki]

i know i keep harping on about mixanalog.com but they're a small company and i really want them to succeed

i hope they do since a friend works there.
and thanks to them, i did a shootout with some plugins. museQ vs PA museQ vs Voxengo (ikr?), 1176 vs various plugins, and Studer vs Satin.

In a blind test, some people pick satin some pick studer. after you match the frequency curves with something clean, they sound insanely in the ballpark.

i'd love for analog to have some magic mojo - but frankly, Satin does everything an analog tape does (or, at least 99% there) except you don't need to fiddle with service.

[acousticglue]

Turn down the treble = tape?