ToTape9
TL;DW: ToTape9 is Airwindows tape emulation and brightness compression.
ToTape9.zip (810k) standalone(AU, VST2)
ToTape9 in Airwindows Consolidated (a separate project) under ‘Tape’ (CLAP, AU, VST3, LV2)
ToTape is one of the most successful plugins I’ve ever had. Step by step, it’s come along and incorporated more and more things, but always in an original way. It picked up flutter, bias, Dubly, and then adapted all these things to the needs of the musician. So if you don’t know how to calibrate Dubly units for heavy music, you have a Tilt that will give you more of a leaning towards brightness, or darkness… but it’s implemented via the Dubly controls so it acts like adjustments on a tape machine. Shape works likewise, going for either more old-school sonority or more big-studio chill. Flutter behaves itself unless you don’t want it to, and the input and output controls make it very simple to manage ToTape9’s gain staging, for gentle use or aggressive slam.
But then the heart of ToTape is completely replaced by what I learned making TapeHack2, itself a giant leap over the original TapeHack, which was itself a huge discovery. When I tried this in the guts of ToTape I was just completely shocked by how huge it sounded. The scale of the sound put the previous version to shame. You do not have to slam this to have it sound amazing, but if slamming’s your thing I think this will bring delight and joy.
And then it’s topped off by not the latest ClipOnly… but the NEXT ClipOnly. The one where I ran with the concept, not completely unlike my old Chrome Oxide plugin but in a new perspective, of ‘dithering aliasing’. It turns out you can’t actually dither aliasing but there’s a large number of interesting effects you can produce by noising up clipping. So when I experimented, I ended up applying it in a way nobody else was doing, introducing noise just faintly as clipping begins to happen, ramping it up, and then as hard clipping takes over, shifting it to the ‘edge samples’ akin to what ClipOnly and ClipOnly2 have always done, meaning the noise goes back away again (and is never all that loud: sorry, no special FX here)
And combining this with the existing ClipOnly2 created a monster.
So that’s what’s on the end of ToTape9. Output at 0.5 means you’re just barely bumping this final clip stage. Boost it and you’re hitting the output clip harder, cut it back and it’s purely the ToTape section. I would imagine mostly leaving it at 0.5 is what most people will do, but it’s yours to experiment with. It produces a ‘beyond tape slam’ that is shockingly big and deep and loud, it applies its work only when clipping is actively happening, it’s all within a very tiny amplitude window so it stays clean on most everything, and it gracefully handles Gibbs effect overslew (intersample clipping) without ever applying upsampling or downsampling, so the sound is aggressive and raw the way I like my tape effects to be.
Try ToTape9. It’s the most intensely tapey plugin I’ve ever done, with new abilities like the ability to soak up highs like the real thing. It’s got all the little details you could ask of a no-compromises real tape model, but adapted to musical purposes so you can think ’tilt towards more brightness’ rather than ‘should I go with a 355 nanoWebers per meter calibration’. And it’s got the most killer output clip stage I’ve ever made, just to let you use it as a kind of loudness maximizer right out of the box.
I hope this brightens your day :)
Airwindows Consolidated Download
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download 64 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Signed M1/Intel Mac AUs.dmg
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download LinuxVSTs.zip
download LinuxARMVSTs.zip for the Pi
download Retro 32 Bit Windows VSTs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac AUs.zip
download Retro PPC/32/64 Mac VSTs.zip
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All this is free and open source under the MIT license, brought to you by my Patreon.
Wonderful thank you sir ! Was happy to see this.
Just a heads up possible bug, in latest logic build, when having the shape slider near higher ranges, when disengaging the plugin and reengaging, the input level jumps drastically and gets very distorted. When I move the shape button just slightly while still engaged, that loudness goes away.
This did in fact brighten my day. Thank you, Chris
I’m LOVING it so far – but came here to report the same thing Brendan did: (I’m on Logic 11.2.2, Sequoia 15.4.1) and engaging the plugin while the shape control is all the way up or down causes a crazy input bump and doesn’t go away until that slider is adjusted slightly. Moving it there while engaged does not produce the same bug.
Yes your kind soul , your humor and your unlimited talent brightens our days . Thank you for this wonder !
Hi all – and especially Chris. I did download this the other day but only just had cause to really test it, on the drums bus along with a compressor, and then also in mastering. I used Cubase pro 13 and had no issues at all.
But the proof of how good this is came when I replaced Waves Abby Road J37 tape (I don’t buy Waves at all any longer for ethical reasons mostly) – ToTape 9 was just smoother, still adding some compression and light crunch, but on this track all I did was lower the head bump to 48Hz to suit where the bass was sitting – a benefit of your ToTape plugins over others out there – and not blow out the higher bass too much.
It’s really, really good! I haven’t tried to use your various mastering plugins.. yet, and rely on Ozone with ALOT of tweaking in that, and even turning off suggested modules etc (sounding too processed), but having ToTape 9 in the mastering chain gels and glues in a lovely way.
Thank You again!
Thanks for all your hard work Chris! This is absolutely fantastic.
Hi Chris! Been a fan of the ToTape series for some time, and this one is sounding great!
Just wanted to report that when engaging Reaper’s internal oversampling (from 48kHz), the slew algorithm clamps down way more aggresively on the high end, and on some sources I noticed distortion on the transients. These issues dissappear when disabling oversampling.
Is there a way to fix these behaviors when using OS?
I continue to admire the creativity, efficiency, and ease of your designs. I bow to you for your passion, responsiveness, and generosity. Sincerely, Boris.
Would you consider adding 5.1 and 7.1 channel compatibility to this? I am mixing in Nuendo and want to try using tape emulation in film mixing. I can handle the filtering and level adjustments externally for the LFE.