How would one go about determining what effect to add for each cassette type? I don't know much about cassettes, I'm curious if this was something that could be done by ear or if these are commonly held opinions about the sound of each tape.
Again knowing nothing about tape, if I were tasked with this I would probably try to record the same audio to each of the tapes and then compare it with the original.
Similar to how the different film stocks affected the look of the image, the different tape formats would effect the sound similarly. Crudely explained, the more light brown the tape, the more noisy it would be. The darker the tape, the cleaner it could be. If you like the sound of someone standing behind you constantly saying shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, then choose a brown tape.
By now, the audiophiles have lots of profiles of what the various tape formats would sound like. It's been ages since I've looked at audio plugins, but I would be shocked if there's not presets to make your pristine audio sound like a Maxell cassette that's been played hundreds of times.
There's great VST plugins like "Sketch Cassette 2" that will do hiss, flutter, all of that, along with some great presets. That one's less about creating authentic sound profiles, more like creating lo-fi tracks and instruments for music production.
This is interesting as I would assume multiple passes from each output would result in further multi generational loss akin to tape trading of band demos, soundclashes and dj mixes from pirate radio
I’m wondering besides the hiss and wow/flutter, what is the frequency range of cassette tape? Is there an “eq” to tape where certain frequencies are rendered more strongly than others? And how does it compare with records?
Back in the day, the plastic that wrapped blank tapes was printed with details about the tape inside, including a frequency response chart.
Of course it differed by brand.
It's also worth considering that a lot of tapes were recorded with Dolby B noise reduction, which boosted high frequencies on the recorded tape, to increase the signal to noise ratio. (You had to use Dolby B at the playback end, too, or it would sound too bright.)
"ntsc-rs is written in Rust, and is multithreaded and SIMD-accelerated."
This made me lol. I know so few video editor types that would use a plugin like this that would know what Rust was to be "impressed" by this bit of PR.
Half of wow and flutter. The tape speed wasn't perfectly constant, so the pitch wobbled.
Wow was slow speed variations (under 4Hz). Flutter was quicker warbles.
Both were caused mechanically. The rubber wheel - pinch roller - that moved the tape might not be perfectly circular, the motor that pulled the reels might be uneven, and the tape case sometimes pressed on the tape reels causing variable friction.
Analog media really were a bit crap. I get the creative distortion idea, but even so - ewww. I'm so happy these kinds of imperfections are optional now, and not baked into music distribution systems as an expected flaw.
Off topic, but only a couple of years ago the 3d printer community re-discovered these same kinds of flaws in the extruder gears that result in visible ripples in prints. When you put a gear on a stepper motor, and set it with a set screw, you’re pretty much always off center slightly.
I wouldn't call the pro reel-to-reels crap. The imperfections were barely noticeable. Besides, there were other pros to the analogue days, like records having their actual own sound with human imperfections in-tact (unless you had a tonne of money and could afford to spend hours slicing tape). I despise how perfect and same-y everything sounds over the past 20 years. Of course I understand that this is all very subjective, but there just isn't as much access to more raw sounding records as, even very talented musicians who are probably capable of getting great takes which still quantize everything.
But ya ya, old man yells at clouds, I know.
I still record to tape, it's a lot of fun (cassette tape)! There are a bunch of problems to solve that take away from "just being creative" but I don't mind it. Part of that is that it's a forcing factor to improve musicianship because punching in on those consumer four-track machines doesn't really work (even though they have the capability).
Basically, on analog media, playback speed isn't perfect. There's constant speedups and slowdowns. This creates a "waa waa" or "wow wow" effect that's noticeable when playing a constant pure tone.
Of course ! By the way, I'd love to see more HN posts about NAM. I've been following the project since day one, and it's been an absolute game changer for guitar amp modeling. It's genuinely exciting to see an open-source project have such a profound impact on the entire industry,not just modelers but software plugins and hardware solutions
> CHOW Tape is an analog tape machine physical model, originally based on the Sony TC-260. The current version can be used to emulate a wide variety of reel-to-reel tape machines. Feel free to build and use for your own enjoyment.
> CHOW Tape is currently available in the following formats: VST, VST3, AU, AAX, AUv3, CLAP, LV2, Standalone plugin
That's like all of the DAW/DSP plugin formats.
Hopefully BespokeSynth VST3/LV2/CLAP plug-in hosting on Linux w/ Pipewire will be stable for it.
I found ToobAmp, which has a Neural Amp Modeler plug-in and also "TooB ML Amplifier" Artificial-Intelligence/Machine-Learning-based emulation of a number of different guitar amps and overdrive/distortion pedals based on Jatin Chowdhury's ML Amplifier library"https://github.com/rerdavies/ToobAmp
LiveSPICE : A real-time SPICE circuit simulator that lets you play audio through virtual analog circuits, making it possible to prototype and audition pedals and amplifiers interactively.
https://github.com/dsharlet/LiveSPICE
I read that audio engineers actually use specialized and very expensive ripoff hardware in their signal processing chain to replicate the effect of the electromagnetics (hysteresis?) of tape systems on the audio.
To me, this seems like wasted effort. Any such filter can be implemented using DSP.
i don’t think any dynamic range manipulation is being done, beyond the slight variations as a consequence of the other processing.
generally 0dBVU is mapped to -18dBFS with VU style RMS metering being used on the digital side as well. but that isn’t some kind of physical translation, it’s rather arbitrary and more a convention.
Again knowing nothing about tape, if I were tasked with this I would probably try to record the same audio to each of the tapes and then compare it with the original.
By now, the audiophiles have lots of profiles of what the various tape formats would sound like. It's been ages since I've looked at audio plugins, but I would be shocked if there's not presets to make your pristine audio sound like a Maxell cassette that's been played hundreds of times.
https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_fx/effect/rc-20_...
I've been wanting to experiment with quantizing Dolby (or similar) encoded audio to 8 bits, and then unencoding to see how well it can sound.
[1] https://github.com/AARomanov1985/Audio-Cassette-Simulation/b...
Of course it differed by brand.
It's also worth considering that a lot of tapes were recorded with Dolby B noise reduction, which boosted high frequencies on the recorded tape, to increase the signal to noise ratio. (You had to use Dolby B at the playback end, too, or it would sound too bright.)
> highpass=f=50,lowpass=f=13000
> equalizer=f=500:width_type=q:width=0.8:g=-1.2,equalizer=f=6000:width_type=q:width=0.7:g=-4
This made me lol. I know so few video editor types that would use a plugin like this that would know what Rust was to be "impressed" by this bit of PR.
Wow was slow speed variations (under 4Hz). Flutter was quicker warbles.
Both were caused mechanically. The rubber wheel - pinch roller - that moved the tape might not be perfectly circular, the motor that pulled the reels might be uneven, and the tape case sometimes pressed on the tape reels causing variable friction.
Analog media really were a bit crap. I get the creative distortion idea, but even so - ewww. I'm so happy these kinds of imperfections are optional now, and not baked into music distribution systems as an expected flaw.
But ya ya, old man yells at clouds, I know.
I still record to tape, it's a lot of fun (cassette tape)! There are a bunch of problems to solve that take away from "just being creative" but I don't mind it. Part of that is that it's a forcing factor to improve musicianship because punching in on those consumer four-track machines doesn't really work (even though they have the capability).
Available as a (free) DSP: https://chowdsp.com/products.html#tape
> CHOW Tape is an analog tape machine physical model, originally based on the Sony TC-260. The current version can be used to emulate a wide variety of reel-to-reel tape machines. Feel free to build and use for your own enjoyment.
> CHOW Tape is currently available in the following formats: VST, VST3, AU, AAX, AUv3, CLAP, LV2, Standalone plugin
That's like all of the DAW/DSP plugin formats.
Hopefully BespokeSynth VST3/LV2/CLAP plug-in hosting on Linux w/ Pipewire will be stable for it.
I found ToobAmp, which has a Neural Amp Modeler plug-in and also "TooB ML Amplifier" Artificial-Intelligence/Machine-Learning-based emulation of a number of different guitar amps and overdrive/distortion pedals based on Jatin Chowdhury's ML Amplifier library" https://github.com/rerdavies/ToobAmp
LTSpice Guitar Pedals : A collection of LTspice simulations of classic guitar pedals, useful for studying, modifying, and experimenting with analog circuits. https://github.com/cushychicken/ltspice-guitar-pedals
spiceAmp : An analog guitar amplifier simulator based on SPICE, designed to model tube amp circuits with high fidelity. https://github.com/olegkapitonov/spiceAmp
LiveSPICE : A real-time SPICE circuit simulator that lets you play audio through virtual analog circuits, making it possible to prototype and audition pedals and amplifiers interactively. https://github.com/dsharlet/LiveSPICE
guitarix2-0.46.0 released - LinuxMusicians: https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=26855
brummer10/guitarix.vst: guitarix vst3 wrapper for linux: https://github.com/brummer10/guitarix.vst
"Using Artificial Intelligence to set a guitar sound" Fedora Magazine; https://fedoramagazine.org/using-artificial-intelligence-to-...
Re: building a solid USB Pedal [set] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45409295
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44120903 :
> A board of guitar pedals with IDK one USB-A and a USB-C adapter with OSC and MIDI support; USB MIDI trololo pedals
Re: JUCE on embeded, Rust DSP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48910657
Bluetooth pedal config probably works 99% of the time, reconfigurably
To me, this seems like wasted effort. Any such filter can be implemented using DSP.
There's also a thriving 3rd party plugin market for similar effects.
generally 0dBVU is mapped to -18dBFS with VU style RMS metering being used on the digital side as well. but that isn’t some kind of physical translation, it’s rather arbitrary and more a convention.