KVR Audio

kylen · Post by **kylen** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 1:25 am

I like a lot of the Beatles sound (separate from their music which I like a lot of also) , the character of the sound as it stacks on tape, overdub'd from tape to tape, sound on sound thru real live tube amplifiers played in great sounding rooms recorded by great engineers - all that stuff.

I might demo this plug cause it looks fun and I haven't seen the ADT workflow presented like that before...but the demo I saw where they 'hit the tape harder' for some tape saturation, yikes. I hope it sounds better than that, it sounded like they hit the transistors too hard or something equally scratchy.

But in the end I believe that ADT wasn't really one of my Fav sounds as much as the sound of stacking different performances of the same vocal/guitar. I could be wrong though so we'll see after I demo the plug. Glad ADT was able to save John Lennon's voice! For a while...

IK has the EchoFlex which I might really like also and will demo. I had an Echoplex with a bump on the pinch roller that produced a very nice doubled chorus but that's another story...

valhallasound · Post by **valhallasound** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 1:34 am

A question for anyone who has tested it: Does the VARISPEED actually control the speed of one of the "tapes," or just the delay between the two? In other words, if you set the VARISPEED to a non-zero value, and just leave it there, do the tapes end up horribly out of sync, as they would in the real world?

Sean Costello

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 1:46 am

Ain't it crazy that whilst modern people are desperately trying to avoid any latency (keyword: PDC), now they're applying techniques from 50 years ago, introducing up to 30 ms latency again?

MickGael · Post by **MickGael** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 2:03 am

valhallasound wrote:A question for anyone who has tested it: Does the VARISPEED actually control the speed of one of the "tapes," or just the delay between the two? In other words, if you set the VARISPEED to a non-zero value, and just leave it there, do the tapes end up horribly out of sync, as they would in the real world?

Sean Costello

Hi Sean,

If I understand your question, the speed controls the distance between the 2 heads. AFAIK, you cannot control the speed of the tapes.

MickGael · Post by **MickGael** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 2:05 am

Tricky-Loops wrote:Ain't it crazy that whilst modern people are desperately trying to avoid any latency (keyword: PDC), now they're applying techniques from 50 years ago, introducing up to 30 ms latency again?

Well, vacuum tubes are still alive an well, and that technology is what, over 100 years old?

woodsdenis · Post by **woodsdenis** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 2:31 am

Tricky-Loops wrote:Ain't it crazy that whilst modern people are desperately trying to avoid any latency (keyword: PDC), now they're applying techniques from 50 years ago, introducing up to 30 ms latency again?

Well no actually as this plugin can advance the ADT effect to pre delay if you want to. The whole purpose of ADT in Abbey Rd was to solve the issue when using standard tape delay of the signal being just delayed. This in one way makes it unique to me, I dont know of any other that does this.

While this plugin is not for me I made that decision by actually demoing it, is that a first for KVR.

ftech · Post by **ftech** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 3:01 am

woodsdenis wrote: While this plugin is not for me I made that decision by actually demoing it, is that a first for KVR.

I think that it might well be

hibidy · Post by **hibidy** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 5:24 am

LIVE users:

Can you confirm that if you add an instance, not only does it add latency (which we all know it does) but if you delete it that latency is kept for any/all inputs? In Studio one it releases when disengaged.

@plug. Don't like it so far. Easily the most disappointed I've been in a waves plug in quite some time. Too much latency, can't use it in realtime, too cheesy sounding. It's easier just to double track

hibidy · Post by **hibidy** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:21 pm

Report sent. Hopefully, they can fix the LIVE issue which is unacceptable (they probably will) but I also mentioned how impossible the plug is for realtime use. Seems quite odd to me that delay compensation is useless in both live and studio one. Maybe they can fix that? That would make testing much better.

woodsdenis · Post by **woodsdenis** » Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:55 pm

Surely its impossible to use as live input. The fact that it predelays the ADT signal up to 20 ms if you want, would have to compensated for, which will make it nigh impossible. Possible of course as an insert on playback , but as a live input ?

hibidy · Post by **hibidy** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 12:08 am

Maybe. But it's really hard to test with so much latency. If you can't do anything about it, so be it. I just thought I'd bring it up since there is an obvious issue with live that needs to be addressed.

Breeze · Post by **Breeze** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 1:05 pm

MickGael wrote:
valhallasound wrote:A question for anyone who has tested it: Does the VARISPEED actually control the speed of one of the "tapes," or just the delay between the two? In other words, if you set the VARISPEED to a non-zero value, and just leave it there, do the tapes end up horribly out of sync, as they would in the real world?

Sean Costello
Hi Sean,

If I understand your question, the speed controls the distance between the 2 heads. AFAIK, you cannot control the speed of the tapes.

This doesn't really make sense if it's an emulation of the real world technique. Perhaps that's how it's visualized on the GUI, but in the real world the heads are bolted down. Plus how could an LFO possibly alter the physical location of the heads?

From my understanding, tape hits the rec/sync head before the play head, and one rec/sync head is sent to the rec/sync head on the second machine with an identical gap between the rec/sync and play heads. If the speed of the two machines is the same, the playback heads are pretty much in sync, barring wow, flutter and any natural speed deviation between the two machines.

If you introduced a fixed delay between the machines, the playback from the second would just be delayed by a constant; it would be out of sync but it would simply be offset by whatever time the delay is. it wouldn't keep going out of sync.

The way the effect works is precisely by altering and modulating the tape speed of the second machine. Since the two rec/sync heads are synced, if you speed up the tape speed on the second machine, the signal recorded by the 2nd machine's rec/sync head will arrive at its play head before it does on the play head of the original machine, and will precede it. If the tape speed is slower, it will be late. And the LFO modulates the speed of the 2nd machine, automating the process.

So "Varispeed" is in fact what it is in the conventional sense: control of a tape recorder's speed. It might have been simpler to visualize if they showed 2 tape machines, the signal path, and speed variations on the reels of the second, but that would have been more complicated to animate. BTW, this is also why this will never be a live effect without creating latency; you need to create precedence and last I checked, our computers still don't travel through time.

But it might be possible to create a useful variation that only delays the signal...

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Wed Mar 12, 2014 6:17 pm

Why am I smirking about this post?

Don't know... must be something about "technical description" and "debunking".

tplusj · Post by **tplusj** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 2:49 am

At first I dismissed this plugin as symptomatic of the crazy age we live in, and there is some irony here. In the days of track limits and other currently nonexistent constraints, Abbey Road develops a second-best alternative to double tracking. Today, double tracking is a snap in most DAW environments. I am a Logic user, and my standard routine is to cycle record each section of the song and then layer the two (or three) best takes. Simple and cheap. Now a major developer releases an expensive plugin to recreate an effect that was designed to remedy a problem that digital technology has solved. Funny.

BUT:

Just for fun, I installed the demo last night, and after spending some time doing the A/B routine vs. real double-tracked vocals, I'm rethinking my position. I actually ended up preferring the sound of Reel ADT in many cases, especially the version with dual sync tapes. One of the reasons I like it is that you can go as crazy as you want with your rhythm and phrasing without having to duplicate the performance precisely. Another thing: sometimes my real double tracking introduces what sounds to my novice ears like phase cancellation. Sometimes I'm okay with the resulting sound, but in some cases not so much. With Reel ADT (and I might be imagining this, so go easy on me) I didn't notice this problem.

I've bought too many plugins lately, so I'm still trying to talk myself off the ledge, but the $84 Audio Deluxe price tag is beckoning me like a triple-tracked siren.

hibidy · Post by **hibidy** » Thu Mar 13, 2014 3:23 am

Yeah, but I can dig it for vocals. Problem is I don't sing

I think that is the primary target. I was hoping that it would be killer for guitar, it's kinda meh for that. The effect aspect could be juicy but you can't use it in realtime so kinda takes the fun out of it.

Still haven't heard back from waves. Usually they don't take this long. Maybe they are checking into it with ableton?

Waves Abbey Road Reel ADT