Vintage Tape [ADV] - Ozone 8 Help Documentation

Publish date: 2024-05-03

Overview

Vintage Tape provides the frequency response (magnitude plus phase) and saturation characteristics of magnetic tape without the crosstalk, hiss, wow, and flutter that might ruin your mix. It’s inspired by a well-maintained Studer A810 two-track tape deck, a clean and accurate machine perfect for mastering. The amount of tape saturation depends heavily on a very high frequency (~100 kHz) AC bias signal, and changing the level of bias can dramatically change the character of the saturation effect. A high bias reduces dynamic range providing more compression, a low bias also adds distortion but in a different manner. Tape-saturation is a wavelength (tape speed divided by frequency) dependent process so the exact sound of the saturation is a complex interplay between tape speed, bias-level, program material and other factors. Tape saturation typically produces distortion with odd harmonics. However, inaccuracies in the AC bias design or distortion from machine electronics often mixed in even harmonics. Vintage Tape allows you to customize the amount of even harmonic distortion and the “lumpiness” of the reproduction head frequency response if you want to undo some of the engineering work that made tape quite transparent for an analog medium.

Controls

vtape

INPUT GAIN

Changes the gain of the input signal prior to tape emulation. Tape becomes non-linear when recording high amplitude signals, leading to saturation. Increasing the input gain prior to tape emulation can lead to more saturation, while lowering the input gain decreases saturation. The level necessary to achieve a certain amount of saturation depends on the frequency content of the source material and the bias setting.

Vintage tape also contains internal automatic gain adjustment, which uses the value of the input gain and knowledge of the tape saturation process to avoid large jumps in output level, whatever the amount of input gain you apply.

BIAS

Bias primarily impacts the the shape of the distortion curve, but also changes the frequency response (mainly the high end). Negative bias boosts high frequencies, and causes more high frequency distortion than positive bias. High values of positive bias can severely limit dynamic-range, a characteristic of over-biased tape machines.

SPEED

Speed primarily changes the frequency response, but also changes the level where different frequencies experience distortion. Specifically high frequencies (small wavelengths) distort at lower input levels than low frequencies (long wavelengths). Changing the speed changes the wavelength (wavelength=speed/frequency), so a 500Hz signal at 7.5 ips will experience distortion at the same level as a 1kHz signal at 15 ips and a 2kHz signal at 30 ips.

HARMONICS

Adds even harmonics into the tape distortion.

LOW EMPHASIS

Controls the resonant peak of the reproduce tape head bump. Increasing this control will add gain to bass heavy material.

HIGH EMPHASIS

Compensates for high-frequency losses in the reproduce tape head.

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