![]() Its high-frequency distortion makes full mixes jump out, with presence and a wide image. The tape formula buttons are to the left of the upper panel.Ĭhronologically, the EMI 888 tape formulation came first. However, depending on your application, that doesn’t necessarily mean the J37 is better than the Kramer Master Tape.įigure 1: The J37 settings used for the audio example of processing a master tape. This is the more sophisticated of the two plugins-there are more options for altering the sound, including three different tape formulation “flavors” (Fig. You can overload the virtual tape for effect but start with more conservative settings until you get a feel for how the plugins react to level. Remember that VU meters show average levels and that the virtual tape is soft-clipping the transients that normally register on peak meters. With either plugin, you need to be careful with input levels. Both plugins also allow for bias adjustments, although the J37 is the more flexible of the two. However, 7.5 IPS can work well with lower-frequency sources, like kick and bass, if you don’t need the bass bump. 15 IPS places the bass bump well within the audible range and gives a better high-frequency response with less distortion. Having been raised on tape, I can vouch for the plugins’ ability to reproduce the sound of tape, as well as recognize what makes each of them different.īoth plugins can choose between 7.5 and 15 IPS (inches per second) tape speeds. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), and the Kramer Master Tape, which models Ampex’s vintage machines. This is why even though I didn’t like working with tape, I like working with tape emulation: it emulates the sound of tape running on a perfectly aligned tape recorder, outfitted with brand-new tape heads, using virtual tape-whose virtual production run never has quality control problems! Waves offers two tape emulation plugins: the J37, modeled after the modified Studer 4-track deck used in Abbey Road Studios (most famously for the Beatles’ Sgt. Think of tape as a mechanical limiter that knew when, and how, to distort as it limited. Depending on the recorder, the tape and the bias, distortion could become audible at input levels as low as -10 dB, or even lower. What’s more, the harmonic distortion was dynamic-it tracked input levels by being more distorted at a peak’s onset, and less distorted as the signal decayed. It combined harmonic distortion, limiting, transient softening, and a low-frequency “bump” that helped lift the bass. Let’s not even discuss the cost of alignment tapes, re-lapping heads, or doing window splices in multitrack tape (and if you don’t know what a “window splice” is, be thankful you missed that part of audio history).īut the sound of tape was unique. It stretched, self-erased high frequencies the more you played it, required constant maintenance, needed noise reduction (which had its own issues, unless you were slamming it with punk rock), cost a lot, depended on semi-subjective bias and EQ settings, was tough to store, the quality varied and of course.rewind and fast forward times. Dive into the sound and differences of the two emulations.įull disclosure: I didn’t like working with tape. file to disk which has been created after bouncing to disk and this is the master.Abbey Road J37 and Kramer Master Tape give the authentic sound of two classic tape recorders-without the drama of maintenance, variable tape quality, or high tape costs. You can find out more about bouncing to disc in your reference guide. In Pro Tools the simplist way of creating a master or final mix is using the bounce to disk function which allows you to mix the tracks to a stereo mix which can then be turned into a CD master or an MP3 etc. This is when the whole session has been mixed down to a stereo master, again in the days of tape normally a 1/2 or 1" tape machine. You may be confusing this with the master or final mix. ![]() When hard drive recording arrived the hard disk became the place where these master were stored, so now my master tapes are hard drives. These were the things you went back to if there were any problems that need to be corrected later. When you mixed the session the masters would contain the individual tracks. Historically in the 'good old days' of tape, the master tapes were the multitrack tapes of the recording session, so that would normally be a bunch of 2" Ampex Reels which contained the set of multitrack sessions recording when tracking. It may be easier to answer your question backwards.
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