Tape has always been an obsession here at Softube. From pristine high-end 2-inch machines that adds that extra shine to a mix, all the way to the beat-up cassette that contains the soundtrack of our childhood. Tape is special. It’s a combination of many engineering schools: mechanical, electrical, and chemistry, and the emulations requires modeling of both electric circuits and magnetic phenomena. The side-effects of tape are all over the place, electric distortion, magnetic saturation, bad motor drive, bad tape, pitch effects, harmonic effects, crosstalk and much more.
We want to put these side-effects in the spotlight. With just two main knobs, DRIVE and DIRT, you can exaggerate either the distortion effects (DRIVE) or the tape speed, wobble, flutter, drop-outs and other modulation effects (DIRT).
Use it as a lo-fi machine, or even as a stereo widener. Use it to distort stuff to pieces. Put it on that track or bus where you need to make something happen. It was designed to be used whenever a track is too static, too boring and just … needs something.
VU Meters: Shows In and Output volume.
Drive: Sets the amount of input gain. Higher settings will result in increasing levels of tape distortion.
Dirt: The Dirt parameter controls wow, flutter, drop-outs and crosstalk levels. Dirt also adds color based on tape degradation caused by lower tape speeds. That is, Dirt set to max will give you the sound of a tape machine running at a low tape speed while Dirt at min corresponds to a tape machine with a high tape speed.
Stereo Mode: Choose between De-coupled or Normal Stereo mode. De-coupled stereo means that sound fx variations between the left and right channel can occur. The stereo mode will affect wow, flutter and drop-outs.
Low Cut: The High Cut filter cuts frequencies starting from 20,000 Hz down to 200 Hz and can be deactivated by turning the parameter to the “OFF” position.
Output Volume: Output Volume controls the overall output level of the plug-in.
Dirty Tape presets are located in Preset Collection, which can be found by clicking the dropdown Preset Browser menu. Please see separate Preset Collection manual for more information.
A whole range of added control can be accessed with Extended Features. Please see separate Extended Features manual for more information.
Patrik Jensen – Product management
Kim Larsson – DSP and sound design
Mattias Flygare – DSP
Niklas Odelholm – Sound design and graphic design
Ulf Ekelöf – 3D rendering