Satin...when?

[Selfik]

ooopsss...got my answer
That's good to hear, thanks Urs!

[sascha]

On my home PC (old Dual-Core E5300, 2.6GHz), one instance consumes around 5%. The office machine is some i7 3GHz something, quite fast. There, I have 3%.
[I test these thing in Samplitude, where I stack up at least 10 instances (serialised) in order to have steady measures].

Having the 'service mode' open on Satin (which involved a spectrum analyser) eats another percent approx., but the analyser isn't finished anyway (for instance, missing the according test tones and streamlining the whole test process).

The delay mode eats another 1 or 2 percent, depending on whether you have 2 or 4 repro heads. But we haven't optimised that much yet.

Due to the 'real' approach using high-frequency bias (~150k) and to avoid aliasing, the 'tape' part (head->to tape->to head) runs at ~370..390k, depending on the project's sample rate (8x oversampling max.). Other parts at half that rate. This comes at a price, but I think it's already quite ok yet. The rest of the optimising work will happen after Musikmesse.

My biggest concern was the cpu use in multitrack/multi-instance mode. Satin lets you create 8 different Groups where each one is tied to a set of instances. This is available in 'studio' mode, where you only need one stereo repro head, therefore the process is the fastest.

[nilhartman]

I sincerely hope I'll be able to reproduce the setting I currently use on my 2-buss with "that" native, ilok2 protected tape sim...
Satin's features, obvious versatility and - I bet - sound quality are so appealing ! And I'd rather have only one tape plugin instead of collecting them on my hard drive...
Really looking forward all the new U-He plugins.

[sascha]

I sincerely hope I'll be able to reproduce the setting I currently use on my 2-buss with "that" native, ilok2 protected tape sim...

Hm, difficult for me to ensure that. 'That' plugin tended to crash on my machine(s) or turned white almost every time I tried it. And then it expired

[nilhartman]

"Reproduce" might not be the right word. "Mimic then improve" is more what I meant
I bet I'll be able to dial something similar with Satin. Not as an achievement, but as a nice starting point.
I'm such a huge fan of Diva that I have no doubt Satin (and Presswerk) will share the same high sound quality standard.

[taoyoyo]

Diva otoh is shaping up nicely - I just need to find that font for the panel again. It's lost on a crashed harddrive.

Pretty sure it's SnellRoundhand.

Nah, not the Diva logo itself, I mean the labels in white text that are everywhere else. It's an almost square font (grotesque, capitals, reduced contrast/even width, based on round rectangles, characteristic E with short middle bar), I think I got it from one of those 1000 free fonts online sites.

@Raikard, I'll try this...

Ahhh, sorry Urs... read that wrong!

*sees below*... Bank Gothic. (yup!).

[audiosabre]

Thanks for the replies Urs and Sascha. This all sounds very promising, considering the amount of parameters available

[Dominus]

[Ch00rD]

Found it! - I also had some layers in Photoshop... it's Bank Gothic. Hmmm... why is that on my laptop but not on my dev machine?!?

Perhaps this explains: http://nomulous.com/blog/hidden-fonts-on-mac-os-x/ - both Bank Gothic and Snell Roundhand are mentioned.

[Simon-Claudius]

Hello there,

I have a question for Urs or/and Sascha:

I understand that Satin is designed to do everything actual tape can do ("all of tape" as described by Urs).
At the moment I'm using Slate Digital's VTM on every mix and as far as I know it does what it's supposed to to really well - simulating the sound and behaviour of properly working and calibrated tape machines (not that I ever worked with any...). This is really useful, HOWEVER, my less sensible, more artsy side is longing for an old, effed up tape machine with old, mangled tape that produces loads of over-the-top wow and flutter and just degrades the input horribly/beautifully, with lo-fi frequency responses all over the place - you know... for sound design purposes .

Will satin be able to do that?

Also, this might have been asked already, but can you already say something about the price? Not that it matters much, I'm probably going to buy it anyway - always found your pricing to be really fair and appropriate. I'm just curious.

Many thanks and all the best,
Simon-Claudius

[sascha]

Will satin be able to do that?

I think so
There is a 'service' panel, used for various alignments. You could as well 'mis-align' the machine. Although, I've narrowed the range of most params to what sounds 'good' in most cases. For instance, if you underbias a tape, it will tend to sound brighter (because of less self-erasure/self-inductance effects), but massive amounts of cross-over distortion will occur. And that's a kind of distortion that may sound strange, especially in the bass region.

Also, this might have been asked already, but can you already say something about the price? Not that it matters much, I'm probably going to buy it anyway - always found your pricing to be really fair and appropriate. I'm just curious.

It'll be in the $129 ballpark, regularly, and $99 as intro price, not sure but I think Urs already posted that.

[Simon-Claudius]

Thanks, Sascha !

That's great. To give a more specific example, I'd like to achieve similar effects to what Podfarm is used for in this video: http://vimeo.com/54688494

I have to say, my personal feature request would be a button labelled "ridiculous" (or whatever...) that just scaled up the range of the parameters in the 'service' panel a good notch - to make it sound really wonky and unstable/broken.

Really looking forward to this unit !

[sascha]

Thanks, Sascha !

That's great. To give a more specific example, I'd like to achieve similar effects to what Podfarm is used for in this video: http://vimeo.com/54688494!

I see. Using Satin, the wow&flutter knob can be used in the first place, to add a bit of tonal imperfection (paired with modulation noise, if you like). Although w&f depends on the current tape speed and the actual capstan diameter we've chosen.
More flexible is the head-position modulation through 4 dedicated LFOs, from 0.1 to 10Hz. The delay mode can be quite drastic. The feedback path has its own limiter and filters, and feeds back from the repro-eq back into the pre-eq (both eqs independently selectable), so anything goes

[Simon-Claudius]

Look what I found.

I absolutely ADORE this interface!

[Ch00rD]

Look what I found.

I absolutely ADORE this interface!

Smooth as silk- err... satin!

Btw, the u-he logo as shown here is not overlapping the panel with the controls. I guess this is more or less what EvilDragon meant earlier (re: Bazille):

[...] One thing I'm not fond of is the location of LFO 2 label - if u-he logo wasn't as big it could've been placed symmetrically to LFO 1 label, it would make more sense. [...]

[...] the overlapping u-he badge is somewhat important to me [...]

Not that this is very important at all, imho, but it makes me wonder: why is the larger, 'overlapping' u-he logo (cf. Diva) so important? And why is that variant not used consistently for all u-he plug-ins then?