TapeScam

TapeScam is a lo-fi drive and tape simulation plugin. Like using the battle-worn four-track of your dreams. Dial gentle glue or crank it into sputtering cassette overload with a classic gain stage, floating pitch fluctuations and classic dropouts.

Controls and Tone Shaping

• Drive: Feeds the two op-amp stages. Below noon it's glue, past 2 o'clock you're into chewy, asymmetric cassette breakup.
• Color: Morphs the clipping curves and HF emphasis. Left is rounded and dark, right is edgy with a hint of pre-emphasis.
• Wow / Flutter: Depth + rate on one knob. Subtle waver at the bottom, chorusy vibrato at the top.
• Noise: Tape hiss that's independent from the Age slider. Sprinkle as needed without changing headroom.
• Tone: A tilt EQ between a bass bump and crisp highs so you can make TAPESCAM sit in any mix without extra EQ.
• Output: Final trim to match bypass or automate boosts when you switch presets.
• Age: New = clean headroom. Used = occasional dips. Worn = clustered dropouts, extra wow, and HF loss.
• Tape speed: Defines bandwidth + saturation scaling. Low is dark and thick, High is open and hi-fi.
• Comp: Output makeup presets (Off / Lite / Heavy) so you can keep perceived loudness level without flattening the tone.

What you hear

• Dual-stage clipping tuned to ±3 V rails just before hard clip.
• Bass/treble shelves voiced like that four-track you have in your basement.
• Post-drive 20 Hz HPF and tape-style LPF to keep DC + aliasing in check.
• Randomized dropout envelopes with attack/hold/release segments per channel.
• Stereo wow/flutter with phase offsets and randomness tied to tape age.