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ToTape7

boxerfan88

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I have been experimenting with different VSTs on foobar over the past year, such as ReelBus, Izotope Vinyl, Chow Tape Model. Most are interesting but gets stale relatively quickly.

Recently I came across ToTape7 after watching this video:


I tried ToTape7 VST on foobar and I really really like what it does.

It makes the tracks that I play very enjoyable to my ears, and triggers foot tapping quite frequently.

Anyone got experience with ToTape7 in your playback DSP chain? Please share your impressions. :)

Link: https://www.airwindows.com/totape7/

These were my settings:

2024-09-12_2006 fooVSTHost64 VST_Effect_Configuration.png

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It sounded so good, I was wondering what the plugin was doing. So I ran a REW sweep through the VST plugin using foobar convert function, and it resulted in this:

ToTape7 SPL Phase.png


ToTape7 Distort.png


Kind of interesting to see what the VST plugin does... quite a bit of 3rd harmonic added ...

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And here are the sine wave comparisons.
  • Green is reference (original 1kHz signal generated by REW).
  • Red = TapeDrv 0.6 Flutter 0.5 Bias 0.55
  • Blue = TapeDrv 0.54 Flutter 0.3 Bias 0.55

1k-Hz-Sine.png


Wow, that's a lot of added distortion by the plugin ... yet it sounds so good :)

It reminds me of the SINAD race, whereby R2R DACs more often than not will lose to chip DACs because of harmonic distortion spikes (https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ments-of-soekris-dac1421-multibit-dac.3956/); yet R2R DAC sounds so good to the ears.


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Out of curiosity, I measured the speaker sweep, with and without ToTape7.
Quite interesting to see what is happening in-room.

SPL compare.png

  • The tape head bump & dip can be seen in the 20-200Hz region
  • The flutter phase cancellation affects the high frequency SPL

Phase compare.png

  • the flutter phase shifts are quite large in the HF region (blue)
  • bass has quite a bit of phase shift too

Distortion compare.png

  • the 20-60Hz distortion can be up to 10 times more, interesting...

One interesting observation, during the sweep, I do hear the "aliasing" in the high frequency. What I heard is, as the sweep is going higher, there is a secondary tone starting high and coming down (GIF image shows the tiny waves bouncing back from 24k area). Where or how do I see the impact of aliasing on REW?
( For the sweep without ToTape7 I don't hear such secondary tone. )

2024-09-16-1410-foobar2000-Plasma-Panel-2.gif


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Comparing several different tape plugins ... 1kHz tone results ...

1kHz tape plugins compare.png
 
If you like the low end bump followed with higher bass dip you could try to use just the EQ with similar curve, all distortion artefacts will eventually get boring when slapped on everything, subtle EQ shouldn't do it
 
If you like the low end bump followed with higher bass dip you could try to use just the EQ with similar curve, all distortion artefacts will eventually get boring when slapped on everything, subtle EQ shouldn't do it

Yeah, I might just end up there - with just the EQ :)

The plugin (ToTape7) sounded so good to me when I tried it.
This motivated me to dig deeper to see what it was doing to the signal.
Those charts that I posted earlier were interesting finds when I dug deeper.
 
EQ won't give you the compression/distortion effects of a tape though, the ToTape7 does.
If that's what one is looking for as an 'effect box'.

Most older audiophiles have listened to 'tape distortion' a big part of their lives and loved it so objectionable sounding it won't be and might even sound a bit 'familiar' to them.

The plug-in won't improve signal fidelity but might make the sound more enjoyable to some with specific settings. Nothing wrong with that.
 
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I listened to music on records then tapes then CDs and now digital files, and I've never looked back, but to each their own. I did skip 8 tracks.
 
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