Softube Tape "It's time to get reel"

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Marco Raaphorst
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08 Jun 2017

this one is super cheap and very nice: http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-reelbus/

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Marco Raaphorst
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08 Jun 2017

EnochLight wrote:
Marco Raaphorst wrote:I love the Waves J37. Not sure if this will be any better though.
According to at least one user, it is:
[Regarding Softube Tape] The "amount" setting is incredibly useful in conjunction with the input level. This is missing from Satin and j37 and really, really works. You can dial back the amount setting to 25 or 50% and then push the input until you get a little bit if drive and then back it off. THEN, you can push and pull that amount setting and really dial in what you want. This is easier and more effective than the competition.

The speed stability is great. Better than Satin, better than j37. It sounds very real and there is a wide range of warble. I really like it. AND you can use this in conjunction with the wet/dry to get some very nice phasing effects. Useful.
Source
You can set the Sat and input of the J37 indepently. Not sure what this reviewer is referring to.

Don't know what he/she means with 'speed stability' either. The speed is not stable, that's why it's causing wow.

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EnochLight
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08 Jun 2017

Marco Raaphorst wrote:You can set the Sat and input of the J37 indepently. Not sure what this reviewer is referring to.

Don't know what he/she means with 'speed stability' either. The speed is not stable, that's why it's causing wow.
Might be best for you to demo Tape instead and see for yourself. If you prefer J37, then you're fine.
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adfielding
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08 Jun 2017

This thread has reminded me that I was hoping to see Satin in Reason, and now... well, it is! Time to give it another look.

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EnochLight
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08 Jun 2017

adfielding wrote:This thread has reminded me that I was hoping to see Satin in Reason, and now... well, it is! Time to give it another look.
Having Satin in Reason is pretty damn cool, that's for sure. I've been playing with it for a while. That said, Softube's Tape has my interest peaked... mainly for its simplicity (Satin is by no means simple, IMHO). It's tempting at its intro price.
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selig
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08 Jun 2017

Flavolous wrote:
selig wrote:
gak wrote:
aeox wrote:people will buy this just because it looks cool
Yeah.

@U-HE: Yeah, it was great. A lot of sound sculpting iirc, and the fx are nice.

But, I'm over most saturation. Maybe on drums, maybe on the master. But this "every track" is overkill to the max.
If you hear saturation, it's probably too much in most cases.
What ?! I have come across people who say this too often! If you can't hear the effect then why are you using it ? People say the same about compression, I mean if it has to be that subtle its probably not needed. Imagine saying something like this back in the day, before DAWs, when you had to listen to make your decisions. I've never understood this saying, that is all! :lol:
Can you hear all the EQ applied to every mix? That's what I'm talking about here…not everything you do as an engineer is intended to be "heard", much work is "corrective" in nature and intended NOT to be heard. This could include compressing a vocal to level it, EQing an instrument to remove noise etc, and adding subtle saturation on a thin sound to make it 'thicker'.

I say the same thing about reverb in most cases - in some cases if you actually hear the reverb, it's too prominent. In other situations you want the reverb to be obvious and stand on it's own rather than blend with the rest of the tracks. Sometimes I use both approaches in the same song - whatever works!

To be clear - I'm talking about the listener when I say this, not the person doing the mix.

This is what everyone I ever worked with says, btw. Sometimes you DO want the listener to hear things, like a heavily distorted guitar, or a dark/distorted vocal.

But it's the subtle layers that create the final effect. As for the saturation effect specifically, just because you can't hear the it clearly stand out in the mix doesn't mean it's effect is not FELT in the final mix by the listeners. In the case of my "saturation" comment, what I mean is sometimes you want it to sound "saturated", sometimes you just want it to sound bigger and better - saturation can accomplish BOTH results in my experience!

This is far from being "THE" way to produce music - if this style of production doesn't work for you, don't use it!
:)


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Marco Raaphorst
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08 Jun 2017

Tried it. It's not bad but it's seriously lacking compared to the J37. Everything about the J37 is better: saturation, wow & flutter and stereo image. Some of the Tape saturation can be nasty while it doesn't offer much range. The Normal setting for Wow is rather extreme. The J37 is best tape sim I have ever heard. For subtle stuff it can create a very deep and open stereo image thanks to the 2+3 mode.

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selig
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08 Jun 2017

Marco Raaphorst wrote:Tried it. It's not bad but it's seriously lacking compared to the J37. Everything about the J37 is better: saturation, wow & flutter and stereo image. Some of the Tape saturation can be nasty while it doesn't offer much range. The Normal setting for Wow is rather extreme. The J37 is best tape sim I have ever heard. For subtle stuff it can create a very deep and open stereo image thanks to the 2+3 mode.
Hey Marco, can you compare the Waves plugin with the tape plugins from UAD? I've enjoyed the UAD when I've had the chance to use them (when working on other folk's systems) and wonder how they stack up against the Waves.
:)


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FLVZ
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08 Jun 2017

selig wrote:
Flavolous wrote:
selig wrote:
gak wrote:
aeox wrote:people will buy this just because it looks cool
Yeah.

@U-HE: Yeah, it was great. A lot of sound sculpting iirc, and the fx are nice.

But, I'm over most saturation. Maybe on drums, maybe on the master. But this "every track" is overkill to the max.
If you hear saturation, it's probably too much in most cases.
What ?! I have come across people who say this too often! If you can't hear the effect then why are you using it ? People say the same about compression, I mean if it has to be that subtle its probably not needed. Imagine saying something like this back in the day, before DAWs, when you had to listen to make your decisions. I've never understood this saying, that is all! :lol:
Can you hear all the EQ applied to every mix? That's what I'm talking about here…not everything you do as an engineer is intended to be "heard", much work is "corrective" in nature and intended NOT to be heard. This could include compressing a vocal to level it, EQing an instrument to remove noise etc, and adding subtle saturation on a thin sound to make it 'thicker'.

I say the same thing about reverb in most cases - in some cases if you actually hear the reverb, it's too prominent. In other situations you want the reverb to be obvious and stand on it's own rather than blend with the rest of the tracks. Sometimes I use both approaches in the same song - whatever works!

To be clear - I'm talking about the listener when I say this, not the person doing the mix.

This is what everyone I ever worked with says, btw. Sometimes you DO want the listener to hear things, like a heavily distorted guitar, or a dark/distorted vocal.

But it's the subtle layers that create the final effect. As for the saturation effect specifically, just because you can't hear the it clearly stand out in the mix doesn't mean it's effect is not FELT in the final mix by the listeners. In the case of my "saturation" comment, what I mean is sometimes you want it to sound "saturated", sometimes you just want it to sound bigger and better - saturation can accomplish BOTH results in my experience!

This is far from being "THE" way to produce music - if this style of production doesn't work for you, don't use it!
:)


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Haha thank you for the clarification, quite frankly if you are mixing something and making decisions to add stuff you can't hear you're essentially putting your mix on autopilot and when you run into problems later on, figuring out what it is will be a nightmare.

So this saying basically surprised me because some people mix this way, "not hearing" the changes and really I guess they also heard the saying somewhere and misinterpreted it. Every change can be heard by a trained ear, using sweeping and extreme settings to emphasise the effect.

Some people say a master compressor glues the mix, but simply it makes the mix a more consistent in volume by reducing the dynamic range and tightening the average volume. This is the glue that gets spoken about imo.

So yes, not to be heard by the listener, the saying makes much more sense this way for me! :D

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Marco Raaphorst
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08 Jun 2017

selig wrote:
Marco Raaphorst wrote:Tried it. It's not bad but it's seriously lacking compared to the J37. Everything about the J37 is better: saturation, wow & flutter and stereo image. Some of the Tape saturation can be nasty while it doesn't offer much range. The Normal setting for Wow is rather extreme. The J37 is best tape sim I have ever heard. For subtle stuff it can create a very deep and open stereo image thanks to the 2+3 mode.
Hey Marco, can you compare the Waves plugin with the tape plugins from UAD? I've enjoyed the UAD when I've had the chance to use them (when working on other folk's systems) and wonder how they stack up against the Waves.
:)


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Don't own the UAD. If you send me a WAV/AIF I can run it through different setting so you can compare. Please send me then also a UAD treated version.

Or we can do a sine wave test.

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FLVZ
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08 Jun 2017

Marco Raaphorst wrote:Tried it. It's not bad but it's seriously lacking compared to the J37. Everything about the J37 is better: saturation, wow & flutter and stereo image. Some of the Tape saturation can be nasty while it doesn't offer much range. The Normal setting for Wow is rather extreme. The J37 is best tape sim I have ever heard. For subtle stuff it can create a very deep and open stereo image thanks to the 2+3 mode.
What is your opinion of Kramer's tape Vs J37 ?

I've watched many comparisons and ultimately Kramer is more to my liking, the j37 seems quite aggressive, harder to find a sweet spot but also has more controls to compensate ?

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selig
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08 Jun 2017

Flavolous wrote:
selig wrote:
Flavolous wrote:
selig wrote:
gak wrote:
aeox wrote:people will buy this just because it looks cool
Yeah.

@U-HE: Yeah, it was great. A lot of sound sculpting iirc, and the fx are nice.

But, I'm over most saturation. Maybe on drums, maybe on the master. But this "every track" is overkill to the max.
If you hear saturation, it's probably too much in most cases.
What ?! I have come across people who say this too often! If you can't hear the effect then why are you using it ? People say the same about compression, I mean if it has to be that subtle its probably not needed. Imagine saying something like this back in the day, before DAWs, when you had to listen to make your decisions. I've never understood this saying, that is all! :lol:
Can you hear all the EQ applied to every mix? That's what I'm talking about here…not everything you do as an engineer is intended to be "heard", much work is "corrective" in nature and intended NOT to be heard. This could include compressing a vocal to level it, EQing an instrument to remove noise etc, and adding subtle saturation on a thin sound to make it 'thicker'.

I say the same thing about reverb in most cases - in some cases if you actually hear the reverb, it's too prominent. In other situations you want the reverb to be obvious and stand on it's own rather than blend with the rest of the tracks. Sometimes I use both approaches in the same song - whatever works!

To be clear - I'm talking about the listener when I say this, not the person doing the mix.

This is what everyone I ever worked with says, btw. Sometimes you DO want the listener to hear things, like a heavily distorted guitar, or a dark/distorted vocal.

But it's the subtle layers that create the final effect. As for the saturation effect specifically, just because you can't hear the it clearly stand out in the mix doesn't mean it's effect is not FELT in the final mix by the listeners. In the case of my "saturation" comment, what I mean is sometimes you want it to sound "saturated", sometimes you just want it to sound bigger and better - saturation can accomplish BOTH results in my experience!

This is far from being "THE" way to produce music - if this style of production doesn't work for you, don't use it!
:)


Sent from some crappy device using Tapatalk
Haha thank you for the clarification, quite frankly if you are mixing something and making decisions to add stuff you can't hear you're essentially putting your mix on autopilot and when you run into problems later on, figuring out what it is will be a nightmare.

So this saying basically surprised me because some people mix this way, "not hearing" the changes and really I guess they also heard the saying somewhere and misinterpreted it. Every change can be heard by a trained ear, using sweeping and extreme settings to emphasise the effect.

Some people say a master compressor glues the mix, but simply it makes the mix a more consistent in volume by reducing the dynamic range and tightening the average volume. This is the glue that gets spoken about imo.

So yes, not to be heard by the listener, the saying makes much more sense this way for me! :D
You are talking about something entirely different than what I just described. It's not flying blind because you CAN hear the effect if you solo the track. So let me be cleared that I NEVER add stuff I can't hear! No "auto pilot" was implied with anything I've said.

Yes, every CHANGE can be heard, but the person listening to a mix cannot hear these changes since they don't get to hear the before/after, right? Make sense?


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selig
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08 Jun 2017

Marco Raaphorst wrote:
selig wrote:
Marco Raaphorst wrote:Tried it. It's not bad but it's seriously lacking compared to the J37. Everything about the J37 is better: saturation, wow & flutter and stereo image. Some of the Tape saturation can be nasty while it doesn't offer much range. The Normal setting for Wow is rather extreme. The J37 is best tape sim I have ever heard. For subtle stuff it can create a very deep and open stereo image thanks to the 2+3 mode.
Hey Marco, can you compare the Waves plugin with the tape plugins from UAD? I've enjoyed the UAD when I've had the chance to use them (when working on other folk's systems) and wonder how they stack up against the Waves.
:)


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Don't own the UAD. If you send me a WAV/AIF I can run it through different setting so you can compare. Please send me then also a UAD treated version.

Or we can do a sine wave test.
Might take a while - the last time I used the UAD was last month in Portland mixing a friends project. I can ask him to process a file, but more important to me are experiential observations. One file at one setting would only tell us so much - more important would be how easy it would be to setup both systems, and what results can you get when tweaking the settings to work in a particular mix.

But maybe I can figure out some way to do this - will get back to you!


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MarkTarlton
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08 Jun 2017

still love the kramer mpx for delays...it has some vibe/tone that is perfect for me.

uad's studer is really good for just making things sound better...kinda what selig was on about with the saturation stuff.

I'd love to see satin or something equivalent on each channel so it's global..that would be rad :)

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Marco Raaphorst
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08 Jun 2017

MarkTarlton wrote:still love the kramer mpx for delays...it has some vibe/tone that is perfect for me.

uad's studer is really good for just making things sound better...kinda what selig was on about with the saturation stuff.

I'd love to see satin or something equivalent on each channel so it's global..that would be rad :)
The Flux of Kramer can do super nice things to overtones/saturation but for a super transparent 3D sound I think I always would use the J37.

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EnochLight
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08 Jun 2017

It should be mentioned that Wave's J37 is currently on sale for just $69 USD, which makes it an awesome alternative to Softube's offering.

That said, it seems like Scott Forstall vomited a skuemorphic fruit salad all over both of them. This could either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your tastes! Lol
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EnochLight
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08 Jun 2017

Marco Raaphorst wrote:Tried it. It's not bad but it's seriously lacking compared to the J37. Everything about the J37 is better: saturation, wow & flutter and stereo image. Some of the Tape saturation can be nasty while it doesn't offer much range. The Normal setting for Wow is rather extreme. The J37 is best tape sim I have ever heard. For subtle stuff it can create a very deep and open stereo image thanks to the 2+3 mode.
Seems like the J37 is modelled after EMI stock tape formulas from the 60's (EMI 888 and 811), as well as one from the early 1970's (EMI 815). I think Softube's are modelled after 1970's tape (primarily Swiss and British models, though they don't mention specifically which ones). According to Wave's J37 manual, the tape models were made when recording levels were a lot lower than modern standards.

I have no idea if this has any bearing, but thought it worth mentioning.
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FLVZ
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08 Jun 2017

selig wrote:
Yes, every CHANGE can be heard, but the person listening to a mix cannot hear these changes since they don't get to hear the before/after, right? Make sense?


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We are clearly on the same page. :thumbs_up:

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stratatonic
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08 Jun 2017

QVprod wrote:You know very well that the trend is adding in everything that you tried to avoid in analog. XD
:lol: :lol:

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stratatonic
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08 Jun 2017

adfielding wrote:This thread has reminded me that I was hoping to see Satin in Reason, and now... well, it is! Time to give it another look.
If you happen to bump into Urs, tell him Reason owners want a discount. Some Reasoners didn't get VST Satin at the Intro Price because it was going to be a RE at a lower price. So they missed the boat on the Satin VST deal because U-he decided not to do the RE after all.
Bad Urs. Bad Bad Urs.

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Libraquaricorn
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08 Jun 2017

The first VST I bought was Waves Kramer Master Tape, because I wanted a more advanced tape emulation, after years with only Audiomatic in the arsenal. I really like it. It has lots of character and it's on sale for only 49$ at the moment. The Softube one looks reely nice, though, and I wish I had that tape stop effect it features. I guess I would get the Softube machine if I didn't already buy the Kramer one.

EdGrip
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08 Jun 2017

First offering of a non -skeumorphic tape sim gets my money.

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QVprod
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08 Jun 2017

EdGrip wrote:First offering of a non -skeumorphic tape sim gets my money.

Why? the image makes it more fun :puf_smile: . You could always "buy" this free Reaktor ensemble

Image

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miscend
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08 Jun 2017

EnochLight wrote:U-He's Satin has far more features and control. I'm not sure what this brings to the table that I can't do with Satin instead (aside from low CPU use). In fact, even at its sale price - it seems priced too high IMHO. Eh... I'll try it though.
Maybe it sounds like a real tape recording?

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EnochLight
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08 Jun 2017

miscend wrote:
EnochLight wrote:U-He's Satin has far more features and control. I'm not sure what this brings to the table that I can't do with Satin instead (aside from low CPU use). In fact, even at its sale price - it seems priced too high IMHO. Eh... I'll try it though.
Maybe it sounds like a real tape recording?
They all do, in some way. ;)

Funny - I was reading up on Music Radar's original review of Wave's J37 tape emulation - which many seem to prefer. Their comments ?
Needlessly bulky interface. Very taxing on the host CPU. Not the best tape emulation out there.
I'm looking forward to how Softube's Tape does.
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