Another plugin by Waves, the Kramer Master Tape is an earlier tape emulator produced before they introduce J37. Kramer Master is modeled on a vintage ¼” reel-to-reel machine and has adjustable controls for bias, wow, flutter and tape speed.
Waves has been putting everything on sale lately. I think the Abbey Roads J37 Tape was near 300 bucks and lately has been something like 69 or 79. I do not use a lot of their stuff since the DAW has a lot of good native plugins and there are some nice free VST out there for the finding.

Analog tape has a smoothing effect and adds weight and glue to a mix – it turns the recording from a collection of individual tracks into a song, where everything is connected and works together. Tape, with its component-level and physical modeling of three different tape machines, gives you all the warm vintage cohesion you could want in one plug-in. Add a few premium level features, like. Switch to other, brighter tape models, or decrease the speed to enhance grunge, or change the saturation structure to produce obvious distortion. Read more: Softube. IZotope Ozone 9 Vintage Tape. IZotope Ozone comes with a Vintage Tape module, which can also be used as a standalone plug-in when mixing a track.

Which are the Best Tape Emulation Plugins? Let me share my top 5 recommendations. Sham pistols. =)

Hello, Mike here, and I am a composer.
Just. Like. You.

I love using plugins that add that vintage, analog vibe to the instruments and sounds in my music.

I even like using it on the master stereo bus, to color the entire track with that warm, analog character.

Best Tape Emulation Plugins

Softube Tape
Slate Virtual Tape Machine
U-he Satin
Waves J37 Tape
Waves Kramer Master Tape

What is a Tape Emulation Plugin?

Using a tape emulation plugin is one of the easiest way to get this sound, unless you happen to have high-end analog hardware to route your audio through.

In the classic vintage era of music production they used analog master tapes to record the music to. And it shaped the sound with that analog, warm vibe.

The great thing about tape, and the reason for us wanting to use it even today, is that it colors the sound in what many consider a very musical way, much like vinyl, due to the analog “roundness”. But which tape emulation plugins should you choose?

1. Tape by Softube

Includes three distinctly different tape machine types.
Beautiful and easy to use interface.
Extra features speed stability, cross-talk etc.

2. Virtual Tape Machine by Slate

16-track 2-inch tape machine and a 1/2 inch stereo mastering deck.
Tape speeds of 15 and 30 ips.
Switchable tape type.

3. Satin by U-he

Advanced tweakability options.
Switch between modern and vintage tape.
Build your own custom tape unit.

4. J37 Tape by Waves

Includes models of three exclusive tape formulas.
Tape delay feature.
Created in association with Abbey Road Studios.

5. Kramer Master Tape by Waves

Vintage 1/4″ reel-to-reel machine.
Flexible slap & feedback delay.
Developed in association with Eddie Kramer.

Extra Mentions

Now there are of course a few more tape emulation plugins on the market, so you can dive deeper into this subject if you wish. One brand I feel I need to mention is UAD, which does amazing plugins which work well on their hardware DSP.

Here are 3 tape plugins they have developed: UAD Oxide Tape Recorder, UAD Ampex ATR-102 and UAD Studer A800.

Tape Emulation Plugins: Summary

Your Time to Take Action!

I recommend that you start by installing a trial version of a tape emulation plugin, and experiment with adding different amounts of analog warmth and saturation. Good luck and have fun with tapes! =)

PS. Get these Free Bonuses Today

Quick question… What’s a good way to inject analog life into a cold digital mix?

Well, you could start with recording your tracks using a tape machine… But in this digital world, who’s got time for that?

So one of your best bets is a tape emulation plugin. And this post will introduce a few of them to you. Plus go over a few of their features.

So, what are the best tape emulation plugins, you say?

Quick answer: Check out the Virtual Tape Machines (VTM) by Slate Digital and Satin by u-he. Those two are our top recommends, with Satin being the cheapest.

But there are some other great Waves plugins here for you if you’d want to take look at those.

Now, let’s take a closer look 🙂

Table of Contents

Find more great gear here:

Tape Emulation Plugin Buying Guide

Back in the day of analog produced music, engineers used big tape machines to record tracks (Wikipedia link). In fact, within the age of the DAW you can actually see this “tape machine” metaphor in use in the way the digital audio workstation works.

J37 Tape Plugin

On your arranger view, there are strips of rows that contain either your MIDI notes or waveform of your audio files. You can cut these up, splice, copy, past, move them around… These are your “tapes.”

But they won’t have that “tape sound” because, well, they are visual representations of digits on a computer screen. A great GUI to work with… but not like the real thing.

In comes the tape saturation plugin, which is used to emulate the sound of those old analog tape machines of yore, giving you that warmth that is usually limited in the digital realm.

How does Tape Saturation work?

Tape saturation introduced ‘warmth’ into the music recorded on tapes in earlier times.

When instruments or vocalists were taped and re-taped multiple times and mixed with one another at various stages producing, you would’ve gotten various stages of warmth in your mix.

Each of these tape recordings had minor noise and distortions that are not evident in each recording. But they do accumulate in the final mix to introduce a warming effect.

As time went on, analog tape recording in modern day digital technologies eliminated these distortions. But we also lost that warm sound effect that the noise introduced.

We call these noises “audio saturation.” More about what that is from this Music Radar article.

Moving forward, software developers, working with engineers, created a plugin to deliberately introduce noise into the tracks, hence emulating the effect of tape records.

This technique is referred to as Tape Emulation and is typically applied by adding plugins to your desired track, or to your entire mix. The tape saturation plugins can be applied to the output of each instrument or can be collectively applied to the master track, or even both!

One of the cool “side effects, so to speak, is that you not only get a more rich sound with grit and character, but a tape emulation plugin can really help to booth the apparent loudness off you mix if done right.

With all that said, let’s take a look at best saturation plugins to get.

Best Tape Emulation Plugins to Get

Several tape emulation plugins are available on the market today. Here are some of the most recommended online.

Virtual Tape Machines (VTM) by Slate Digital

The VTM plugin by Slate Digital provides a tape effects on music recordings by emulating two authentic tape machines, a 16-track 2-inch tape machine, and a ½ inch stereo mastering deck, and providing control of bias, tape speed, and tape type. These options give you sufficient flexibility to apply tape effects on recordings, plus control the level of warmth to hear in your tracks.

It requires a minimum Quad Core i5 processor and 4GBs of RAM and supports multiple plugin formats for both MAC and Windows computers.

Several users recommend the use of Slate’s VTM plugin although the majority of them highlight that it tends to make the sound slightly louder, so you might need some sound normalization, just as a heads up.

Since it emulates the effect of two good-sounding tape machines, it is known to appropriately mimic

Softube Tape Vs Waves J37