UVI Tape Suite

[Funk Dracula]

I mean this as constructive feedback:

- The UI is terrible with accessibility issues and eye strain just from trying to read the parameters off the pics on the UVI site, and I opened up those pics in a new tab and even zoomed in. Tiny knobs in a sea of negative space, with light grey text on a lighter grey background. That is nearly zero contrast to work with, why on earth would you do that? In the last four years, I have seen some of the worst plugin interfaces pop up, I swear. This is definitely one of them.

- The file size is a huge, 1.4GB? Is there an entire sampled grand piano hidden in there? This makes me think the plugin is convolution based, and tweaking a parameter is just loading a new IR?

- Regarding the audio demos on your site; don't have the "dry" signal something that is already blatantly saturated and lo-fi sounding to begin with.. that's super silly.

- Ilok is the worst, you are losing customers based off of that alone. I do not own nor have I used any UVI products before. So for example, when checking out the product page, when I finally noticed ilok requirement, that was an instant pass for me, and further investigating the product stopped then and there. I still have and use an ilok, but it is for older software that I have been actively phasing out over the years as suitable non-ilok replacements for them come along. I absolutely will not invest in any NEW software that utilizes ilok, and I am definitely not alone in this sort of ilok stance.

We are spoiled for choice in 2024. There are a hundred "tape emulation/modulation/delay" plugins. There has got to be a terabyte of free IR's floating out there as well of every tape machine know to mankind, running at every speed, using every brand of tape. Alot of these offerings are free, and some of this free stuff makes the paid stuff seem like a grift. It's scary. So if you come out with one that costs a hundred bucks, that product better be flawless, otherwise it's a moot point. High standards and tough competition these days.

Cheers

[Theo]

The tape modelling is excellent and it's the only tape sim I've tried that does not do weird stuff to the transients. Though as mentioned, there really should be some kind of eq shelving model pre and post tape. It's possible to get a very transparent and pristine tape sound with enough tweaking – so some better presets showcasing the hi-res possiblities and pre and post eq'ing is needed.
The amount parameter is strange though, possibly broken? It seems there is some high and lowpass filtering going on when the amount is lower than 100%. or maybe a better explanation of what the amount parameter actually does?

[otristan]

The amount parameter is strange though, possibly broken? It seems there is some high and lowpass filtering going on when the amount is lower than 100%. or maybe a better explanation of what the amount parameter actually does?

Amount is basicaly a depth on all the tape parameter so you cannot recover more than what happens when modules are toggled on and are at their more transparent settings. 0% is not similar to bypassed.

[otristan]

- The file size is a huge, 1.4GB? Is there an entire sampled grand piano hidden in there? This makes me think the plugin is convolution based, and tweaking a parameter is just loading a new IR?

Clearly not. The only sample used are used in the Color plugin: IR in the speaker section
and sample in the Texture section.

you have 60 MB of image for Chorus, Flanger and Delay
140 MB for Color for images and samples

(140+60+60+60) * 4 plugin format (AAX, AU, VST, VST3) --> 1.3 GO

[otristan]

Is it 4 separate plug-ins, or is it one that you open and from there select which type you want?

4 separate plug-ins

[Liero]

The tape modelling is excellent and it's the only tape sim I've tried that does not do weird stuff to the transients. Though as mentioned, there really should be some kind of eq shelving model pre and post tape. It's possible to get a very transparent and pristine tape sound with enough tweaking – so some better presets showcasing the hi-res possiblities and pre and post eq'ing is needed.
The amount parameter is strange though, possibly broken? It seems there is some high and lowpass filtering going on when the amount is lower than 100%. or maybe a better explanation of what the amount parameter actually does?

Really? With what kind of transients did you test? I guess I just hear it very differently.

[Gam456]

... there really should be some kind of eq shelving model pre and post tape. It's possible to get a very transparent and pristine tape sound with enough tweaking ...

Using a tape modelling is obviously not transparent.
Isn't ?

[bmanic]

The tape modelling is excellent and it's the only tape sim I've tried that does not do weird stuff to the transients. Though as mentioned, there really should be some kind of eq shelving model pre and post tape. It's possible to get a very transparent and pristine tape sound with enough tweaking – so some better presets showcasing the hi-res possiblities and pre and post eq'ing is needed.
The amount parameter is strange though, possibly broken? It seems there is some high and lowpass filtering going on when the amount is lower than 100%. or maybe a better explanation of what the amount parameter actually does?

Really? With what kind of transients did you test? I guess I just hear it very differently.

Yeah, my experience is the exact opposite. This plugin does something very weird to transients.. not at all what a real tape machine does.

[jens]

Which is perfectly fine, just as long as everything is included which is required to make it actually really sound like tape in the first place - and that unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case.

but if what you define as 'tape' is a tape recorder then you are just defining failure into the product rather than talking about the product as it is. That's just a reflection of how you use words rather than whether the plugin is useful or not

I was talking about the product as it is. As I mentioned, I tried the demo (solely because I couldn't purchase it yet without wasting money) and found it really weird sounding and partly (i.e. the tape bit of it which is its selling point / what is supposed to make it special) outright useless for me and thus I looked at this thread.

I wouldn't know what a tape-machine really does (I'm not smart enough to use plugin-doctor (well, tbh I never even tried)). I just know that I quite like what some "tape" plugins do. And I know that I really don't like what these do.

As I said that's why I was visiting this thread in the first place and it was Olivier himself who suggested that the missing EQ is the reason it doesn't sound like tape even though it's supposed to be an advanced model.

So please don't try to put things in my mouth I never said.

Oh, and just for the record: I love both the Neold Warble and Toneboosters' ReelBus, both of which are two - radically different - generic tape emulators.

[otristan]

As I said that's why I was visiting this thread in the first place and it was Olivier himself who suggested that the missing EQ is the reason it doesn't sound like tape even though it's supposed to be an advanced model.

I didn't say that.
I said that if you want to sound like a specific tape machine, you will be missing the input/output EQ.
Tape simulation is not IMHO about input/output EQ, it's about recording head, tape simulation and playhead.

Hope this clarify things.

[sandandpaint]

Which is perfectly fine, just as long as everything is included which is required to make it actually really sound like tape in the first place - and that unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case.

but if what you define as 'tape' is a tape recorder then you are just defining failure into the product rather than talking about the product as it is. That's just a reflection of how you use words rather than whether the plugin is useful or not

I was talking about the product as it is.....

So please don't try to put things in my mouth I never said.

you said...
" you sell an incomplete product one would have to add each an EQ plugin before and after it and have in-depth knowledge in order to achieve an actual tape-emulation of any kind/brand"

[JerGoertz]

Gave these a short-ish demo. Given the glut of such plugins on the market (and in my plugin folder), didn't find anything that impressed me more than what I already have. Sorry UVI, I have all your other FX and especially love Thorus, but this one didn't win me over.

[TIMT]

this is a bit of a strange one innit, lol. it sounds like the model at its core is poorly biased and there is no way to bias it properly, or like what i would expect a really poor quality cassette deck to do. also, no matter how i tweak the tape colour, it's absolutely slaughtering the bottom end and top end at their extremes. i do like the way it saturates, or i can at least hear some potential in the way it reigns in transients is tape like, but it's definitely not there for the most part.

It sounds a bit like Chow Tape when you use "broken"settings or his Hysteresis plugin which i couldn't get to do anything of use, lol

If you use setting like that, it will clearly not slaugther the bottom and top end
Screenshot 2024-06-28 at 10.35.14.jpg

I'm not sure what to tell you. did you check this yourself, or is this just what you was told? having the playback filtering engaged any amount will slaughter the top end from about 10khz upwards. settings at minimum is not all the way off, unless you actually switch it off.

Even without that though, I tried a straight non-band limited saw wave in it with playback filtering switched off, and input gain hovering around -20dBFS. when you take the main drive knob beyond 12 o'clock, the signal is most definitely becoming more bandpassed and producing a lot of what sounds like crossover Type AB/B distortion. I pointed this out once already, but it does honestly sound like the core algorithm is under-biased. tape does not eat into the waveform as much as UVI Tape Color does with that kind of conservative gainstaging when it is properly calibrated. I don't think the lack of the NAB, IEC, CCIR etc EQ explains the difference entirely either. if I open up UAD Studer, Ampex, or IK Multimedia TMC's now and set the biasing all the way counter clockwise, I can get a very eerily similar sound to your UVI Tape Color

[miloszz]

The uninstaller doesn't open (Sonoma 14.1.1) so I manually deleted the various plugins, hopefully there's not more junk in other places.

[martiu]

i is good for lo fi ?