Your favorite Tape plugin in 2023? [#POLL]

[Dark Fiber]

Is it enough to put a single instance of one of these (i.e reelbus 4) on the mixbus to have a tape feel, or is it too little?
Thanks

That depends on what a tape feel is
This is highly subjective, foremost because every tape device sounds different.

whenever I use ReelBus 4, one instance on the master bus is enough.
You'll get a head bump, depending on the amount of "spectrum" you dial in.
Saturation is there, hysteresis to soften the highs, even some lo-fi settings if you like.

[martinjuenke]

I still use the Waves tapes with pleasure.

[martiu]

i tried free toneboosters reel 3, very nice

[mementus]

I don't know what
• Hysteresis: set the master bus hysteresis level and
• Wow and flutter: set the master bus wow and flutter amount
do.
How do you approach them?
TIA

[Vortifex]

..

[questionaire]

PSP audioware saturator

can't believe it is not mentioned yet, which proves me that everything here is around the amount of hype being created

[Igro]

PSP audioware saturator

can't believe it is not mentioned yet, which proves me that everything here is around the amount of hype being created

I heard good things about it. How is the CPU load?

[_leras]

So many tape emulation options...

I think this list could be further split up, vanilla tape emulation, and more like tape fx (lo-fi, wow flutter etc).

There's no way anyone will have tried all these.

I really like the UAD ones. Oxide is pretty flexible for channels and buses, and the ATR102 is more subtle and 'expensive/studio/record' sound.

[masterhiggins]

Thought Satin is more subtle and ultimately more "realistic," I voted for Tupe as it's heavy-handed as hell and perfect if you want to exaggerate the tape effect. The modulation also adds a lot of character.

[DCrown]

All Waves tapes are awesome

[questionaire]

PSP audioware saturator

can't believe it is not mentioned yet, which proves me that everything here is around the amount of hype being created

I heard good things about it. How is the CPU load?

Really low and excellent sound quality

[DCrown]

Waves tapes are not included in the poll, must be a joke!? l know almost all tapes of the poll, either I have/had some or demoed, I always end up using Waves, because

Cpu-friendly
Makes tracks warm , glued together,
adds analog tape saturation without
increasing nominal volume, adds depth and
width

Abbey Road J37 Tape

Studer - all-valve snalog tape
lo-fi 60s tape (Type 888)
more refined mid 60s (Type 811)
advanced early 70s (Type 815 with
minimal coloration)

Kramer Master Tape

Models the American tube recorder used in Olympic Studios
Tames harshness very well

(Eddie) Kramer was engineer of Hendrix, Led Zeppelin etc.

This tape plugin is another masterpiece of Waves imo.

I remember IK Multimedia have some presets, that first make you think it sounds better until you realize it's just louder, the
"loud sounds better" trick!
So ikm tapes are more or less volume knobs with a fancy gui imo
and the high cpu usage wants to give
you the impression, it must be a very good
plugin lol

[planet_b]

Yes, that 84 page thread on Gearspace about IK Tape Machines Collection is just guys confused whether it really is just collection of volume knobs with huge CPU load.

[idoru97214]

Waves tapes are not included in the poll, must be a joke!?

That's funny. The first tape emulation I ever got was Waves (I think it was J37 - but can't remember and I've deleted my Waves acct). It was so bad sounding I decided for literally years after that tape was just something that digital could not do.

Finally, in 2018, I found one that I thought sounded really good, and began accumulating tape emus again. Now I have many. None of them Waves.

Different strokes I guess.

[Igro]

Waves Kramer. A workhorse.