Warm Tape

Posted on | April 23, 2009 | 4 Comments

I recently got a very nicely refurbished 1/4″ machine off Audiogon. I don’t get that many clients with analog masters (although someone did ask recently), but I thought it would be useful for transferring final mixes for a hit of tape saturation, then back to my DAW for mastering. But then I thought of an interesting test I want to try, and I’d like you guys (and gals) to participate.

I’m going to be mastering an album soon for a musician-friend and he’s agreed to play along.

I’ll transfer his album to 1/4″, then run it back and master it.
Then I’ll take the original mix (prior to the analog transfer) and use a tape emulation plug-in and do an alternate processing.
I’ll post both masters on my blog and would like to have your give your opinion.

It will be an anonymous Version A/Version B listening, so you’ll just have to tell me which one sounds better. When all the opinions are tallied I’ll let you know which the analog transfer was and which one was the plug-in.

Category: General Information

Comments

4 Responses to “Warm Tape”

Carlos Savetman
April 23rd, 2009 @ 7:32 pm

Sounds interesting. Looking forward to it. Should be a cool sonic ear exercise.
Brendan O'Regan (Ireland)
April 23rd, 2009 @ 8:23 pm

i’m signed up!
Jackson
April 24th, 2009 @ 5:19 am

yeah, but which one will the CAT like?
Administrator
April 24th, 2009 @ 11:53 am

Well, I guess that’s the point of the experiment…