Wave Alchemy Tapewave

[wave alchemy]

Love the interface! Generally I'm a big fan of WA.
Buuut the problem with these things is i have numerous tape emulation vsts. I don't need anymore tbh.
Also, I wasn't overly blown away by the demos.

We aren't emulating a tape machine here, this is cassette decks / tape which has a different aesthetic and character and use case, with a larger focus on degradation, very vibey compression, and authentic cassette tape saturation. As stated earlier, we are not passing off basic sounding waveshaping / soft clipping here, like much of the competition is, so should you hear a considerable difference if you check this out

[revvy]

A: This cassette tape sounds like shit
B: I know, great, isn’t it?

Agreed many of the sound demos are OTT on the effect front. Dial it back a bit!

Sorry to hear that you don't like the plugin.

In case you are interested. Here is a more subtle, but still quite vibey A / B comparison with Tapewave used on the Master Buss with Ultra oversampling mode, applying around 3db of compression, slight 'age' effect and subtle tape saturation. Obviously things can go way subtler still, but hope this helps (note, the Raw mix is still peaking louder than Tapewave here):

Dry

Tapewave


Thanks!

You misread my post I think. The dialogue I wrote was my thoughts on the fact that this mimics cassettes so of course it degrades sound rather than being a mastering tool per se.

The ‘dial it back’ comment was in reference to using quite hard settings on some of the demo clips, which I realise you’ve done for a reason. Not really a criticism of the plugin which I’ll demo later today.

Demo you linked to sounds great!

[wave alchemy]

Ok, just posting some audio examples here, because it appears people aren't getting or understanding what we've done differently or why we made this.

Firstly, the following 2 examples show Wow / Flutter on a 5kHz sine wave on both Tapewave, and likely the most popular existing Cassette plugin:

Tapewave

Other Plugin

Secondly, below are three examples. A completely dry drum acoustic drum loop, and then Tapewave and another very popular cassette plugin saturating it by the same amount. Note the digital wavehapng like quality of the other plugin and large loss of bass (the saturation is heavily focusing on distorting bass only it seems, making it very thin which is unlike like real tape):

Dry Drums

Tapewave Drums

Other Plugin Drums


Below is a full track example, pushing around 12db of saturation from both Tapewave and another incredibly popular cassette plugin. Note how the bass on the other plugin falls apart and the digital sounding / harsh artefacts apparent:


Full Mix Drive Tapewave Drums

Full Mix Drive Other Plugin

Below shows the 'Lofi' mode on Tapewave vs the most degraded setting on the most popular cassette tape plugin. Note the very harsh sound of the other plugin:


808 Lofi Tapewave

808 Lofi Other Plugin


Hopefully this is helpful, and as always I'd encourage people to try the demo and perform some listening themselves

[wave alchemy]

You misread my post I think. The dialogue I wrote was my thoughts on the fact that this mimics cassettes so of course it degrades sound rather than being a mastering tool per se.

The ‘dial it back’ comment was in reference to using quite hard settings on some of the demo clips, which I realise you’ve done for a reason. Not really a criticism of the plugin which I’ll demo later today.

Demo you linked to sounds great!

Oh, haha, sorry, I thought you were commenting that the cassette (as in our cassette plugin) sounded 'shit'

[jens]

Also, I wasn't overly blown away by the demos.

As I mentioned before, the demos really don't do the plugin justice - if you ask me they could well be from a completely different plugin to the one I tested... it's almost like they purposely avoided sweet-spots when making these demos.*

The plugin is really good; great even, one could be justfied to claim.



*when testing it I found it easy to come up with results that were really far from subtle and yet didn't sound ugly or destroyed at all.

[wave alchemy]

Oops, duplicate post. Please delete mods.

[wave alchemy]

As I mentioned before, the demos really don't do the plugin justice - if you ask me they could well be from a completely different plugin to the one I tested... it's almost like they purposely avoided sweet-spots when making these demos.*

We definitely pushed the sound quite far on some of the sounds purposefully to show how 'lofi' you can get things sounding. Some sounds in the video are much more subtle though, such as bass on the first track, Mellotron, some of the drums, sitar, etc, whereas others are more purposefully heavily 'degraded', such as some of the synths, guitar etc. We wanted to show a wide mix. We do need to cater for the lofi / lofi hip hop guys too

[Vortifex]

The demo VST3 outputs only in mono on my system using FL Studio and Windows 10. Also there is considerable crackling when turning the Age dial. Enabling fixed size buffers doesn't help.

[wave alchemy]

For anyone interested, here's another Tapewave video on YouTube, taking a closer look at some of the tape modes and controls / use cases:

[wave alchemy]

The demo VST3 outputs only in mono on my system using FL Studio and Windows 10. Also there is considerable crackling when turning the Age dial. Enabling fixed size buffers doesn't help.

Yes, we've been aware of this since launch (it only affects FL Studio and no other DAW), and it will be fixed shortly. Thanks for your patience

[revvy]

Bought! Particularly enjoying the effect of the comp on drums.

Inappropriate request but I’ll make it anyway:

VHS tape model

Just a slightly bigger cassette right?

_________

EDIT: It's also good to be able to use my 'Wave Wallet' credit alongside intro price and extra code-based discounts. [WW are a bit like JamPoints but are actually usable when you want to buy stuff]

[Burillo]

I've bought this blind because, well, I like all of Wave Alchemy's other effects as well as Triaz, so I thought this would be a no-brainer, especially at that price. I had a bit of buyer's remorse seeing first few comments in this thread, but then when I finally got to test it, all my doubts went away.

I have Klevgrand DAW Cassette, Wavesfactory Cassette, as well as (not strictly speaking cassette but can be used in a similar way) XLN RC-20, and I must say, although I love the other plugins for what they are and they are by no means bad, this is the first cassette plugin that, to me, sounds like a Walkman I had when I was a kid. reading Wave Alchemy's response above also touched on something I long since wondered about cassette-style plugins, and that is that real wow/flutter isn't a sine wave, and Tapewave's wow/flutter is the first cassette that, again to me, actually sounds like mechanical failures rather than an LFO (if you set it up right - of course, it can be LFO-ish as well if that's required). other plugins do model randomness, but I've always felt like it didn't go far enough and in the end they all still felt like "LFO with noise", whereas Tapewave is the first one that I don't get this feeling from, even though technically it's still LFO with noise.

the only thing I'm personally missing is the "azimuth" control (stereo misalignment) that other plugins have, but that is a small price to pay for what is, again to me, vastly superior to other plugins in terms of sounding like what I think of when I think "cassette". so, money well spent!

EDIT: It's also good to be able to use my 'Wave Wallet' credit alongside intro price and extra code-based discounts. [WW are a bit like JamPoints but are actually usable when you want to buy stuff]

not sure if this was a request, but... you can. there's a bug in Wave Wallet where it'll not work unless you specify the amount 0.01 less than you have (e.g. if you have 3.20, specify 3.19), but both intro price, together with loyalty discount coupon, together with Wave Wallet, all work together!

[multree]

. Intro price and xtra discount bring it into the affordable.

What’s the Xtra discount you mentioned?

[Effectsworks]

Also, I wasn't overly blown away by the demos.

As I mentioned before, the demos really don't do the plugin justice - if you ask me they could well be from a completely different plugin to the one I tested... it's almost like they purposely avoided sweet-spots when making these demos.*

The plugin is really good; great even, one could be justfied to claim.



*when testing it I found it easy to come up with results that were really far from subtle and yet didn't sound ugly or destroyed at all.

Thanks for the response. As I say, I'm a big fan of WA. So, I'll check out the demo for myself.

[revvy]

Nm