Fuse Audio Labs presents the TCS-68 Cassette Tape Channel Plugin

[hivkorn]

Hum , why use this kind of plugin

I think he means why would anyone want their digital audio to sound like a crappy cassette tape ?

I had a Tascam 244 and can't not see why anyone would want to emulate that thing. We couldn't wait until digital recording became affordable for the masses and now to see someone who wants to go backwards is baffling. Cassette tape has absolutely no magic to it at all.

Whatever, to each his own I guess.

Next, people will be asking for a plugin to emulate 60Hz Ground Hum.....

Old does not always equal good.

I'm out.........

i don't know why it should be not exist a tascam channel strip , we have SSL , Neve , API ..... honnestly i was waiting for this one , my tascam is broke and i miss it really hard.

[Lesha]

I think he means why would anyone want their digital audio to sound like a crappy cassette tape ?

I had a Tascam 244 and can't not see why anyone would want to emulate that thing. We couldn't wait until digital recording became affordable for the masses and now to see someone who wants to go backwards is baffling. Cassette tape has absolutely no magic to it at all.

Whatever, to each his own I guess.

Next, people will be asking for a plugin to emulate 60Hz Ground Hum.....

Old does not always equal good.

I'm out.........

Noise can be turned off, and it's already much lower than hardware, around -125 dB.

[garfield78]

Teksonik wrote:
I think he means why would anyone want their digital audio to sound like a crappy cassette tape ?

I had a Tascam 244 and can't not see why anyone would want to emulate that thing. We couldn't wait until digital recording became affordable for the masses and now to see someone who wants to go backwards is baffling. Cassette tape has absolutely no magic to it at all.

Whatever, to each his own I guess.

Next, people will be asking for a plugin to emulate 60Hz Ground Hum.....

Old does not always equal good.

I'm out.........

Exact , i can't understand the goal , but... if people like this kind of sound
However i can understand the preamp vst plugin with tube emulation , it sound good..

[fuseaudiolabs]

Hi Ray,

I'm interested! What aspects of the tape and preamp sections were modeled?

Hi JerGoertz,

The preamp ist almost flat in the original hardware, but the harmonic response is emulated (keep in mind this isn't a V76, 1073 or some other high quality class A implementation).

The tape stage emulates the NR system including sidechain pre- and demphasis filters (circuit modeling) as well as the cassette tape/tape system frequency response, harmonic structure and noise floor.

For the sake of completeness: The EQ is modeled using the usual circuit modeling approach I would use in any other type of hardware. In this case it's an active 3rd order Baxandall network for the shelf bands and a tunable, proportional Q API-style peaking band for the mids.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Ray

[JerGoertz]

Thanks, yes this is helpful to me.

Would you consider modeling wow & flutter on the tape section? I've never used the hardware so I don't know how prominent it was there, but I often like such effects to add a "retro" flavor.

[bmanic]

Teksonik wrote:
I think he means why would anyone want their digital audio to sound like a crappy cassette tape ?

I had a Tascam 244 and can't not see why anyone would want to emulate that thing. We couldn't wait until digital recording became affordable for the masses and now to see someone who wants to go backwards is baffling. Cassette tape has absolutely no magic to it at all.

Whatever, to each his own I guess.

Next, people will be asking for a plugin to emulate 60Hz Ground Hum.....

Old does not always equal good.

I'm out.........

Exact , i can't understand the goal , but... if people like this kind of sound
However i can understand the preamp vst plugin with tube emulation , it sound good..

@both of you:

Ignorance is bliss.

There are so many uses for these lower end tape emulations but if you never try you'll never understand why there are plenty of uses for these.

Hint: it has to do with transient manipulation / squashing / distortion that is unique and can not be had any other way.

.. but sure, judge the book by it's cover and preconceived notions, it's the easy way to do things.

[garfield78]

Well , i'm may be "ignorant" , but i prefer digital instead analogique tape emulation, sorry it's my mind.

[bmanic]

Well , i'm may be "ignorant" , but i prefer digital instead analogique tape emulation, sorry it's my mind.

That is perfectly fine. Everybody is entitled to their tastes and opinion. The "ignorance" part comes from you stating (or in this case agreeing with Teksonik) that you can not understand how others can like these types of audio systems or how they possibly could be of any use.

ignorance = lack of knowledge or information

There's plenty of clear uses for anything that severely warps the spectrum and dynamics of any incoming signal. In this case it's a plugin that has a unique twist on this concept, being an emulation of something that nobody else has emulated yet.

If you just need basic mangling to a certain degree and don't care exactly how it sounds then sure you could use any basic waveshaper + EQ but like any of these deeply modelled systems the TCS-68 has it's own unique sound and thus simply by this token alone should be obvious that it's useful to somebody.

As for tape in general, it's very useful the way transients get chopped off.. and this one does it in it's own way. Being an emulation of a pretty low-end hardware piece, it actually chops the transients quite nicely on a lot of things. There's a reason why there were plenty of sample CDs back in the day that had run their loops and one-shots through Cassettes. Chances are that a lot of the classic stuff you've heard played had some of the content go through a low-end tape system for this very reason. Sure, you can chop the tops off on a high-end machine too but it does it very differently. It's usually way more transparent and polished instead of being a bit brutal like a Cassette is.

So yeah, think of it as a specific tool.. don't think of it as "who would want to emulate this low-end garbage and add tons of hiss??" (there isn't tons of hiss btw.)

Frankly, I'm surprised it has taken so long for us to get more low-end machines emulated. Toneboosters Reelbus has a few as well but none of them Cassette.

Cheers!
bM

[garfield78]

It's write "advanced noise reduction system" , dbx ?

Sorry for my ignorance , my bad

[VariKusBrainZ]

Well , i'm may be "ignorant" , but i prefer digital instead analogique tape emulation, sorry it's my mind.

Some dude was asking here at KVR for a Tascam emulation not so long ago.

I like to stick tape emus in the feedback chain of delays, such as the those in Bitwig which all have feedback inserts, or Mux for example

[Winstontaneous]

I had a great time doing a quick track on my Tascam 424 PortaStudio a few weeks ago, and I lived in a house in the '90s with a guy who had the Tascam 8 track cassette.

There's definitely something to the sound & workflow of this consumer gear many of us learned on, a different flavor than you get from digital emulations of top-shelf equipment.

[Russell Grand]

Cool.

+1
I love plugs like this.

[J4R1O]

Bought! Next Fostex X-26 emulation plugin?

[Halonmusic]

Cool.

+1
I love plugs like this.

Me too

[sqigls]

Hum , why use this kind of plugin

I think he means why would anyone want their digital audio to sound like a crappy cassette tape ?

I had a Tascam 244 and can't not see why anyone would want to emulate that thing. We couldn't wait until digital recording became affordable for the masses and now to see someone who wants to go backwards is baffling. Cassette tape has absolutely no magic to it at all.

Whatever, to each his own I guess.

Next, people will be asking for a plugin to emulate 60Hz Ground Hum.....

Old does not always equal good.

I'm out.........

Please, tell me more...
what colour jumper were you wearing?