Can I apply the "True Tape" effect on imported tracks in Cubase too ?

[Headbanger]

Or just on tracks I record with Cubase ?

 

 

Thanks.

[greendoor]

TrueTape disappeared from Cubase SX after version 1 (now at Cubase 4). It wasn't a good idea. People are still searching for the holy grail of tape sound.

 

It's not a good idea to commit to any digital effect while tracking. If you want to commit to a 'tape sound' you can use hardware boxes (like the Rupert Neve Portico unit) that are more realistic. But if you use plugins, it makes far more sense to apply it at mix time - where you can turn it off if it doesn't sound any good.

 

Steinberg supplied Magneto with other versions, but frankly I think that sucked. Voxengo AnalogFlux TapeBus does a better job - but the search is still on. I like the PSP plugins - they have fairly good saturation effects. The Amp simulator in Cubase 4 is rather tasty too.

 

Tape sound means different things to different people - it's a complex mixture of saturation, compression, phase shifting, eq, noise, modulation. I think that's why it hasn't been modelled perfectly yet - because very few vendors cover all these obvious effects which simply happen all at once with real tape.

 

If you know exactly what you want, you can model most of the sound with a collection of various plugins. I believe it's very possible to fake tape sound that could fool mastering engineers. The real high end tape machines were actually very hifi, and they weren't always operated in their non-linear range for overt saturation anyway. High end analog is very close to high end digital (I mean really high end 192kHz ultra expensive converters). With plenty of euphonic analog gear in the chain, when rendered to CD or MP3, the differences become vanishingly small. It just takes different approaches, and a conscious attention to the effect that you actually want to hear. A tape purist who holds a grudge against digital can always make a crap mix and blame it on digital.

[Headbanger]

 

I'm always some years behind the latest stuff, I didn't know it died.

 

 

 

Thanks, but can I or not ?