So, as I mentioned in “what are you listening to”, I really like Hainbach & Amulets works with tapeloops. Therefore of course I would like to reproduce the gritty, slightly distorted sound of tape in VCV. But without actually taping anything.
Any ideas how to do this?
Add some noise-source to the original sounds, and put them both through a bit of reverb was something I thougt of on my way to work this morning, will try when back at my VCV.
Or is there some module I am not aware of that distorts the sound somewhere close? Could I use an existing sampler? All ideas welcome
not sure how to emulate that purely in vcv. the easy way out would be to use a sampler in vcv and process its output with a vst plugin like rc-20 retro color or u-he satin in host-fx.
Wavetable is beeing sequenced with a riff from Phrase-Seq, goes to Julste & Lateralus = thats the pure sound.
Caudal is the noise source, adds tape-ish randomness.
Both goes to Befaco Spring Reverb to the Mutiple. From there the noisy, lovely crackling sound goes to Mindmeld Mixmaster, where I actually add more reverb, delay and a bit of AS superdrive to further distort the sound.
Just some ideas to try, I’m still experimenting with this myself, and I think it all depends on the input material as to whether it will sound good or not: There’s a module from Unfiltered Audio called Indent that has a tape saturation mode. Also, cutting some of the lows & highs using the shelf’s on a module like Decline from Vult could help. Or, a tiny bit of modulation of the drive on a filter like Alma with noise or an audio rate signal(try feedback from Alma’s output first for the easy option) can add a little dirt, just make sure Alma is before Decline in the signal flow to kill some of the high frequencies.
Will try. This sounded good on my headphones, straight from VCV, but then I streamed it via SoundCloud on my hifi-system and wasn’t as convinced. But still satisfying to think offline of a solution and finding it kind of works.
The first thing i’d try is Jira Jira echo. It’s a drum echo simulator that lets you turn off the “erase” head. One thing I occasionally do is mix the output of a delay with whatever my original sound was in a mixer to get a feedback loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKCct3Q0aVo
Neither of these sound exactly like a tape loop but they’re okay
+1 Jira jira is a deep module and can produce a lot of cool sounds and effects. Each head has its own output too, so you can do a lot of parallel processing and modulation feedback. It doesn’t add a lot of tape sounds though, but is really good for the loop echo experience without any of the hassle of making actual tape loops
+1 for Jira Jira Echo - amazing for this sort of thing. You can for example have a very gently Caudal nudging the speed from time to time, modulating the erase head, etc etc.
MI Clouds’ looping delay can get interesting tape like textures and behaviors—especially in 8 bit mode (mono or stereo) for more signal degradation. (Some people especially like the parasite code for that — in VCV that would be on Parable Instruments Neil. See e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T2qBZNlkbU)
This quote from a post by user wildfrontiers on muffwiggler gives helpful pointers to work with IMO: “At 100% wet and Position (delay time) and Feedback at 0, you have this bit reduction, Lo-fi mode going on. There’s a lovely flavor of “tape hiss”, the filter (Texture) and when you crank the gain you get some awesome distortion (see r beny track called Wilt for an example of this). With longer delay times, the pitch starts to warble in a pleasing way. There are some sweet spots with Feedback, right before it starts to feedback into noise, where it will repeat for a very long time, but slowly decay the repeats into a blur. Really fun for some Basinski-like tape degradation.”
Other suggestion. If you’re ok with using a VST in Host, Airwindows has several outstanding tape emulations that can be used for free (free and open source, w. the option to chip in on Patreon if you find yourself using them a lot.) In particular, ToTape5 for max realism (for a fun and telling review, see https://youtu.be/5F38l_j2vPY), and Iron Oxide 5 for more extreme coloration.
Sounds nice ! will check these vsts !
Edit : Wow he has linux versions too ! i sometime use Reaper on my linux computer to make some music when i’m at university, but i don’t have much LV2 plugins, so new ones for my collection ^^
It’s pretty fantastic! The UI is a little rough around the edges, though. I’m saving my favourite module feelings for something more like a VCV Grayscale Supercell!
