Reelbus sounds great, its also compresses the source more than others, makes it more intimate.
For 19 euros its clearly a winner.
J37 and Slate are also great, while J37 has a more vintage sound, the Slate has a more modern, cleaner sound.
All three are great.

 

Honestly, none of these emulations actually sound close enough to tape, in my opinion.

Real tape softens the transients and tames harshness in a very particular way. I've never heard any digital imitation which gets close enough. Even Nebula.

But...These plugins are cool and useful in their own rights. I think it's kind of stupid to keep trying to emulate old analogue gear anyway.

 

I agree it has a somewhat rich character when applied on a mix and i am eager to test it. What i don't like is the fact that for all these presentations they use loud rock mixes with overdriven/distorted gtrs. Same goes for Slate too. "Sonically" this type of audio material is the most tolerant of all, so imho for the most part of the presentation it feels a lot like cheating. Still an interesting plug all in all.

 

Last edited: May 6, 2017

Is this similar to U-he satin?
Nobody seems to have mentioned satin yet, nobody use it?

 

Yes, ReelBus is definitely my favourite one. Slate VTM sounds really nice, too, but I just don't trust Slate plugins as I've been playing with them and analysing them and I found out that they are not as good as they claim to be. Waves is in the similar ballpark, but both have some plugins that are very good and some that are rather crappy regarding sound quality and algos used. Same with pretty much any plugin developer. I like these ToneBoosters plugins: ReelBus, Ferox, TimeMachine, Module, EBULoudness, Barricade and Dither. His EQ is also much better than you might think.

Regarding GUIs, it really pisses me off when developers become graphic artists and they cock up their plugins by impairing usability and/or visibility. The first and foremost thing that I evaluate is *sound*. Second thing is efficiency. Like, can I run 100 instances of this plugin? The last thing I evaluate is "can I see everything clearly, the values on the knobs?" "How fast can I work with this?" "Can I input values directly with the keyboard?" and things like that. How beautiful the plugin looks has no importance whatsoever for me. None. Zilch. Nada.

It's pretty much only the quality analogue hardware emulating algos that make me feel excited. So you know - I don't have to use hardware all the time.

Yes, I use Reaper. The most efficient and flexible DAW on the planet. There is a couple of things I really hate about it like there's no pure mono tracks like in Cubase and ProTools and way too cluttered UI, but it is very stable and efficient, and both of these are the most important things to me.

A little anecdote regarding GUIs: I almost bought Sonimus Satson when it was v1.0. It looked like this:

But then he changed it too look like this:

I got so pissed off that I just forgot about it. I often have to look at the plugin values from afar and when a stupid fake reflection obstructs the view of the vu-meter it is not that easy to see it.
Then he released beautiful and proper looking Britson:

It is easy to see the vu-meter and all the values from afar, but I can't risk it being turned into Satson's "brother", if you know what I mean. So I'm not going to buy it. Anyway, I found better alternatives in the mean time and my studio is half hardware half software now. I don't need a console emulation plugin because I got myself a real one. Speaking of "realistic GUIs".

I mean what can you expect from a guy that thinks this is a proper way to make a GUI for a computer software audio plugin!

This is horrible. It makes me dizzy, this fish-eye look. The monitor is flat FFS! But the Satson reflection on the *most important thing* that is a vu-meter is just a complete idiocy. So this guy has lost a customer due to a terrible non-functional/impairing design. When you design plugins you have to get your priorities right!

1) quality of sound - as analogue as possible algorithms and great stability.
2) processing as efficient as possible, depending on the type of plugin [track, bus, mastering, synth]
3) functional design that is fast to work with, easy to change presets, big enough controls, no wasted space as space is at premium in every DAW.
4) nice looks with pleasant colours and good contrast so all the controls are clearly visible even from afar!
10) all other gimmicks that you think will attract customers, but without impairing 1-4!

There. My little "too real-looks design" over function rant. Sorry for the OT guys. Just couldn't help it.

 

Last edited: May 7, 2017

Sinewave, your post made me download TB Reelbus and i will demo it.
Also regarding Slate, imo his bus compressors and vmr are really good. Though its very hard to get weight with just one kind of these plugins, because it will still sound paper thin and flat, hence why including more similar emulation plugins in a chain yields better results.

 

Guys, which Reelbus tape models should be the closest to A800/A827 and Atr102 ?

I know that some (Swiss & Japanese for example) alter the spectrum a lot for example, I can't find any documentation on what glue 1 & 2 or soft and smooth should represent.

 

Reelbus afaik, emulates Studer Revox A77mk4 and Teac A4300SX. I find their Teac emu as quite faithful to my ears and i have used it a couple of times lately.
To my knowledge, the closest to a Studer A800 emulation, is the UAD A800, it comes about 80-85% close imho. Of course we 're talking paid DSP card and plug here. There must be a Nebula A800 library as well but i haven't tried it.

 

Last edited: May 8, 2017

Yeah, I know that ! But I thought that maybe the other settings "soft & smooth", and glue I & II, could maybe get into the same-ish ballpark...

Slate VTM emulates A827 if I remember well for example... Uhe Satin has varios tape machine presets

 

I just fiddled with Reelbus again, and maybe the "glue" ones, come close to a A800 sound although not as much as perhaps you 'd want them.
Just for history's sake, I do have a pretty good idea of how the original machine sounds, i have "made" (as production/recording advisor and also mastering engineer for the digital master), an entire roots reggae album on a A800, about 12 years ago. To me, it is as good as it gets. There is a good story behind that recording but it would take a good amount of space to write it down. The short version is the studio engineer and owner insisted on doing the rec on his Pro Tools rig and not on the almost defunct A800. The main producer asked him to fix it because he knew how, and after 3 days of fiddling it was up and running. The main thing is we did a simultaneous ProTools vs A800 recording with almost all the band recording live. And guess what. Everybody in the room,about 14-15 people or so, agreed unanimously that the A800 was by far superior sounding
Here's a piece from that album

Peace and love

 

Last edited: May 8, 2017

Nice record man ! Sounds beautiful

 

If it does, it'd better have 24in/24out or some way of elegantly achieving this.

 

thing with all tube,tape console etc sat plugs , because we dont have the processing power to actually replicate what is going on we these we have to deal with the little they actually do which means you have to stack a few not being hit hard to get a rough estimation of the real thing.
to accurately simulate just one stage of 12ax7 would take a super computer, our plugs do very little in recreating but they do good enough if you evaluate them by the sound the plugin imparts, not the picture or the text of a plugin, then stack them based on that.

 

What are peoples thoughts on this?

http://cdsoundmaster.com/site/cds-software-online/vtmpc.html

I really like the sound but have no reference as to how much it actually sounds like tape

 

CDSoundMaster.com Note

$179


(*If you are considering purchasing both the VTM-M2 and R2R, make sure that you purchase R2R FIRST in order to receive the biggest discount on VTM-M2.)

*Important! R2R Customers: Contact Us for your Returning Customer Discount.

 

Reelbus sounds great, for me is in the way of Kramer which is my favorite at the moment. But for price relation Reelbus is clearly the winner

 

somebody tried this allready? I nearly allways have a guitar or vocals or another lead isntrument i print console emulation -> tape emulation -> console emulation on after editing before i start to (really) mix. If it sounds good it would save me a good amount of time.

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 17, 2017

Satin will cover all of your needs.

 

+1 for ReelBus, careful tweaking and you got your tape sound