u-he Satin or Slate VTM?

[Urs]

Uhe, is there any chance at all even if as you say its incorrect to do so, that you will add a linear phase oversample option like VTM with latency, just as an option, for those who want absolute seas on sample accurate pdc?

The effect of transient softening in tape recordings is by definition not linear phase. Even if we oversampled with a linear phase kernel of 64 samples or more, the difference would surely be inaudible.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[Compyfox]

I think you're failing to understand what a proper ABX test is.

I know it all to well, and I've seen enough people fail at it. Myself included.
I think I just do not count to the "golden ears" people.

SKNote StripBus does it

StripBus does MORE than plain Crosstalk (chanel bleeding from L into R and the other way around). It also influences adjacent channels if the source channel is overloaded. I do not call this "crosstalk".

Now. If anyone says that we don't have a model of tape, they're just bullshitting themselves. It's the same as saying that the people who built analogue tape machines have used the wrong formulae.

Then let's advertise it as: "Satin - the revival of the spirit of the tape machine (actually, it is a newly developed tape machine that is not based upon anything but built from ground up, so yeah)".

But that name would be too long and cheezy.

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So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[Burillo]

StripBus does MORE than plain Crosstalk (chanel bleeding from L into R and the other way around). It also influences adjacent channels if the source channel is overloaded. I do not call this "crosstalk".

exactly now re-read my original quote. you said that no plugin was doing what you just described. i provided a counter-example - there actually *is* a plugin that does it!

[Urs]

Ok I just don't understand why VTM has massive latency but works perfectly with pdc and satin has that phase effect thing. I'm confused,

Satin works perfectly with PDC too - it's typically 22 samples. It just isn't a linear phase process and it's not meant to be mixed Dry/Wet. No-one ever did that with real tape either. Those 22 samples are an average for the whole spectrum. Some frequencies are delayed less, some more.

We did however add a mix knob internally, so one can do parallel compression/expansion in the compander section.

That said, I can of course not comment on VTM in any way. I have no knwoledge about their way of oversampling whatsoever.

[Urs]

Then let's advertise it as: "Satin - the revival of the spirit of the tape machine (actually, it is a newly developed tape machine that is not based upon anything but built from ground up, so yeah)".

A bit less cheezy, this is exactly what our introduction text on Satin's website says.

http://www.u-he.com/cms/satin

Only, because we added a certain degree of flexibility, it's merely a construction kit than a single tape machine.

[whyterabbyt]

I think you're failing to understand what a proper ABX test is.

I know it all to well, and I've seen enough people fail at it. Myself included.
I think I just do not count to the "golden ears" people.

Fail at what? Its not a test to see if someone can 'get it right'.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[whyterabbyt]

But wouldn't there be frequency cancellation between a file with satin on it and another with some of the same frequencies without satin?

More than there might be between two files with the same frequencies, but without Satin?

[kylen]

Shy - you like to poke a stick in everybody's eye to ensure people have to listen to you...

This is for everybody else:
My memories of 7.5/15 ips 1/4" tape decks include the 'electronics sound' and the 'tape sound'. Pushing too hard into the electronics during recording just sounds gawd-awful to me on the playback. Establishing the proper bias/recording level and switching from the record electronics to the playback head is where you hear the actual sound of the tape. Some tapes sound mostly transparent, switching brands from Ampex, Sony, TDK is where I could hear the difference between various tape formula. Some tapes are somewhat neutral, some sweet, some obviously could use denser coating, etc. I thought my 7.5 decks to have to most interesting color - because the color of the tape is more obvious, 15ips is sounding mostly neutral and by the time you get to 30ips (have only heard these on records) then... also there's the sound-on-sound world of 4trk tapes from early beatles days, echoplex (not the delay part but the tape sound & sound on sound), maestro space echo (not as fun as the echoplex for me).

I'm just starting out with Satin and I expect it will take a while to be able to tweak the nice presets into any of my 'tape sound' memories, if I need to. However I find myself just going for a good sound, if it matches some long-past memory I hadn't really been thinking about that necessarily. I think regarding future dsp development (back to shy again) and them laughing at the past developers I believe they will rightfully see that they are standing on the shoulders of those who came before, the story of civilization in certain respects.

Anyway if I get a spare moment I have the Nebula R2R which has sampled 'tape sound' and may see if I can hear anything that triggers a memory of 'tape sound' and try and make Satin do it. As I said somewhere else most of my tapes are now a sticky gooey mess (need to bake them) but it was an interesting journey.

With Satin I can push into the electronics and get an interesting sound, more flexible than some of my deck electronics in certain respects. Switching to different tape formula I don't know how to do yet as I'm still walking the presets.

I think Satin is a fine step forward for emulations as well as a new way to experience old things!

[Urs]

But wouldn't there be frequency cancellation between a file with satin on it and another with some of the same frequencies without satin?

If one file contains an oboe while the other file contains a sxaophone, then no. They may have overlapping frequency bands but any phase cancellation is purely random, regardless if one is played through Satin.

If however both files contain the same music material, e.g. one contains a submix of drums, bass and guitar while the other one conatins just the guitar, then yes. There's likely to be some phase cancellation if just one file is treated with Satin while the other isn't.

[Howard]

But wouldn't there be frequency cancellation between a file with satin on it and another with some of the same frequencies without satin?

Assuming you mean "with the same audio source" (not "with some of the same frequencies") then the answer is "of course"... but that's practically the same scenario as not using Satin as an insert effect i.e. not 100% wet.
[Edit: Urs beat me to it, and explained better]

[sascha]

Concerning the non-modeling we're accused here, some insights from 'under the hood':

The analyzer in the service panel shows how the high frequencies get dampened, especially when no pre-emphasis is applied. This is what everybody can observe with a real tape machine or cassette recorder. Double the speed and the 'cutoff' frequency will double as well.
But 'cutoff' frequency isn't the whole picture. What actually happens is known as 'gap loss' ('Spaltdämpfung Ds' on page 100 of the German Agfa book Urs posted here today). As we stated in the Satin manual, the gap loss occurs with frequencies that just fall right into the repro head gap, meaning that any frequency of the reciprocal gap width or multiples get diminished as no induction takes place.

This gap loss for a given gap s is defined in the 'gap function' as:

Ds = -20 * lg ( (sin(pi)*s/lambda) / (pi*s/lambda) )

If you plot it, it looks similar to a comb filter, and pretty much the exact thing is happening. A kind of inverse phenomenon can be observed at the lower end of the spectrum where the whole core comes into play and resonance buildup and eddy-current effects occur because the pole pieces are also picking up the flux. Our model exactly replicates this effect, and everyone can see it by playing with the speed and gap width control and looking at the spectral view. We wouldn't have implemented an analyzer if we wanted to disguise that we're just faking. Some tape effects plugins might actually apply some basic filtering to obtain a similar curve. We don't.

Another example is our model of the hysteresis curve. We apply a high-frequency sine wave in order to linearize the operational curve, just like in the 'real world'. That's basically why we need to oversample 8x at 44k1 or 48k. We could have had it much cheaper, but the end it would sound very different because we have all the by-products that naturally occur using this technique.

These aspects are integral parts of our model, but the tape itself is a different beast. Sure, we can't model each oxide particle for itself, we only have sort of a cluster view, but we're able to fiddle with the coating thickness and basic magnetic-domain aspects. This - and know it gets important - surely can't be done without finding susbstitutes as a model, but from an engineers perspective, this isn't uncommon. This is how practical engineering works. This is what I was taught in lectures. Modeling is about finding a practical solution to a problem and imply as many aspects as possible. At least we've done what was possible for us at this point.

[Bathrobe]

In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

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The guide states that the infinite improbability drive is a wonderful new method of crossing interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. It was discovered by lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form of propulsion by the Galactic Government's research center on Damogran.

Discovery

The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambelweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood — and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance to the theory of indeterminacy.

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sorts of parties.

Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered while trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralyzing distances between the farthest stars, and at the end of the day they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible.

Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning in this way: If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, it must have finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out how exactly improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea... and turn it on!

He did this and was rather startled when he managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator. He was even more startled when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he was lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had realized that one thing they couldn't stand was a smart-ass.

Side effects

Side effects of using the Infinite Improbability Drive include temporary (and sometimes permanent,) changes to environment and morphological structure and hallucinations.

[electro]

But isn't it ok for him to think it sounds nothing like tape?

The Shy rant is pure BS. I ran multitracked drums through Satin and got unmistakable "tape glue". Bypassed all the instances and the glue disappeared, end of story.

Somebody with a Studer or Revox want to set up a blind A/B with Satin and see how many opinion makers on these forums can guess which is which?