Stillwell Audio Remanence is now available

[sstillwell]

Remanence began with a simple observation: many “tape” plugins focus primarily on saturation, while much of what engineers value about tape has nothing to do with distortion.

Tape changes tone. It changes density. It changes the relationship between transients and sustained material. It subtly reshapes frequency balance and harmonic structure. Most importantly, those effects accumulate naturally as more tracks pass through the process.

Remanence was designed around that broader view.

It can certainly be pushed into obvious coloration, but its real strength is often found in more moderate settings, where tracks feel a little more cohesive, a little more substantial, and a little easier to place in a mix.

Use it on individual tracks, buses, or the mix bus. Stack multiple instances. Experiment.

As with all Stillwell Audio plugins:

* Fully functional evaluation
* No subscriptions
* No activation servers
* Simple drag-and-drop licensing

Product page:

https://www.stillwellaudio.com/plugins/remanence/

I’d love to hear what you think.

[bmanic]

I've only tried it for about 60 seconds and I already have a feature request.

Would it be possible to implement a gate (aka "auto-blanking") for the Hiss feature? This way we could keep the hiss going only when audio above, say -60dBFS, is playing.. and it'd auto-blank when it goes below that. This would be super handy. Hiss is so nice to have in many situations but it easily accumulates if there's an instance of the plugin on many tracks that don't happen to play at that time.

Another request: Would it be possible to get a volume control for the hiss? Could be super handy when you want to truly exaggerate it for lofi productions.

.. speaking of the hiss, it's AWESOME! Whatever sample or synthesis you used for it, sounds really authentic. It even moves around a little and is sort of wobbling about.. lovely attention to detail!

Will comment more on the actual sonic qualities once I get more testing done. First impressions are very good though.

Cheers!
bM

[sstillwell]

Questions:

What window time for auto-blanking? 100 mS? 1 S? We don't want to make it too twitchy or the start/stop of the hiss will be more obvious than the hiss itself was.

Is -60 dBFS a proper auto-blanking level?

The hiss level is dependent on tape speed and formulation, so would a +/- offset for hiss level be acceptable? If so, how large of a range?

Thanks for the kudos on the hiss...I really tried hard on that. Hiss across multiple instances is decorrelated so you don't hear them all moving/wobbling identically...that wouldn't be good.

Just FYI I did NOT try to put wow and flutter in the emulation - it's not really meant to be an "effect" or a broken/out of spec tape deck, so lofi isn't really intended to be in its wheelhouse. If more or less hiss would get it over the finish line for you, though...that's a possibility.

[j olhorst]

A simple volume knob for the hiss would be wonderful!

[bmanic]

Questions:

What window time for auto-blanking? 100 mS? 1 S? We don't want to make it too twitchy or the start/stop of the hiss will be more obvious than the hiss itself was.

Is -60 dBFS a proper auto-blanking level?

The hiss level is dependent on tape speed and formulation, so would a +/- offset for hiss level be acceptable? If so, how large of a range?

Thanks for the kudos on the hiss...I really tried hard on that. Hiss across multiple instances is decorrelated so you don't hear them all moving/wobbling identically...that wouldn't be good.

Just FYI I did NOT try to put wow and flutter in the emulation - it's not really meant to be an "effect" or a broken/out of spec tape deck, so lofi isn't really intended to be in its wheelhouse. If more or less hiss would get it over the finish line for you, though...that's a possibility.

I think a short enough autoblanking that is masked by whatever small reverb tails or other audio-tracks would be preferable. So yeah, probably in the 0.1 to 0.3 second range. Threshold of -60dBFS on the input is probably a bit too high if we use the plugin on a reverb send or on some other track that produces noise emulation. So perhaps -85dBFS or thereabouts?

Auto-blanking always has it's small risks of sudden cutoff becoming an issue, thus it should be an optional thing and not enabled by default.

Or just ignore us lazy users and instead just provide that volume control over the Hiss, then we can automate it to turn it off manually, on tracks below a certain threshold. Just make sure the volume control allows us to really bump it up too!! At least 30dB louder than it is now! It really is a very nice noise emulation / sample you have there. It gives some wonderful movement when sidechain ducked with anything rhythmic.

[bmanic]

There's quite a difference in sound when switching oversampling on/off. I'm having a hard time imagining that this is just suppression of aliasing.. sounds like a bunch of things change with that button. Am I imagining things here?

EDIT: Looks like the samplerate in general affects the underlying simulation a lot. So it's not tied to the OS button or oversampling algorithm used. You get the same effect in Reaper using it's built in oversampling.

[sstillwell]

Yeah, it's likely primarily bias because it really IS bias like in a tape deck - an injected high frequency signal...and the bias frequency is above Nyquist at most sampling rates...you NEED 4x oversampling for it to work correctly/accurately. It approximates it as best it can at normal sample rates, but it is NOT strictly accurate.

[bmanic]

I'm also getting quite weird behavior when running low signal levels into the plugin, noticeable on any bass heavy instruments like kicks, basses etc. There is a very narrow sweetspot where the sound stays "normal". You'd expect a ton of distortion when you crank it up but not when you crank it down. I've never had a tape machine go into severe bass distortion simply by lowering the level a little (kick at about -12dFS is enough to cause strange distortion).

The distortion happens no matter what settings are set in the plugin. Exaggerated slightly by the IEC calibration setting.. but yeah, there's definitely some underlying issue here.

Just run a simple 808 kick or 909 kick into it at -12dBFS or less and you'll immediately hear the issue.

[sstillwell]

Oooh...good observation - I'll dig into it immediately. Haven't had any beta comments about it to date, but that's definitely not intended behavior.

[billinder33]

Why not a release control on the auto blanking?

[sstillwell]

Well, conceptually that's not a bad idea, but as a practical matter, it's a tape emulation, not a gated noise source. I want the tools to be simple to use...to do their job and get out of your way. Every knob and parameter added has to pull its weight. The benefit it brings needs to exceed the cost in attention it takes away. I'm not sure that one would make the cut. Not saying 'no', just saying 'hmmm...'

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Personally, I'd rather have a hiss level control. I always want a little with tape, but not too much.

[sstillwell]

That I'm a lot more on board with. We already have an on/off switch, and the hiss level and character varies with tape speed and formulation, but an offset level, plus or minus, wouldn't be a bad thing.

I'm currently working through the issues that @bmanic reported, and think I have a fix...some edge cases that I didn't properly account for. Once I get those nailed down I'll consider feature changes like adjustable hiss level.

What I don't want to do is let feature creep turn it into a Swiss Army knife with controls for everything under the sun. I WANT it to be opinionated to a certain extent...it doesn't have to be the one tool that you use for every job...just a tool that does a particular job VERY well.

[j olhorst]

Stillwell products were always highly regarded and affordably priced. When you double your pricing you've taken away half of the appeal. Also when you double your pricing, those interested in paying your new prices are going to expect more.

[muki]

unfortunately crashes auval in logic 10.5.1 under mojave
crashlogs saved in case of interest