Waves J37 Tape
Paulette Dzurilla
This is my tribute to the sound that shaped my childhood. I discovered the passion for music between quirks and random fluctuations. Watching the meters move as I sang into an old microphone. Red peaks and analog saturation.
Rewind, listen again.
Magnetic tape is not a sterile media. It will impart its own sound signature to signals recorded into it. These include different frequency response, frequency dependent saturation, high-frequency compression, hiss, asperity noise and much more.
I can tell you though that on H-Delay Analog 3 & 4 settings are tape emulations, while 1 & 2 are loosely based on early classic analogue style delays. You might be a able to conjure up something similar sounding.
I setup a mock delay version by using Studio rack and parallel split, Invert the phase on 2nd copy and adjust levels until you have mostly a null and then add the delay. I cant get a very good null though due to the W&F
I already asked for a wet/dry of th just the tape but worked out they would never do it because it seems a lot of work waves might not be interested
However creating a phase inverse to simply get the delay out should be quite simple
The tape delay feature is pretty cool, especially when you take out the hissy highs with the lowpass filter. If you use it as an aux channel for delay, go ahead and drive it into some distortion and adjust to taste. Or ear.
Waves and play parks may be owned by the municipality or by the state. Non-profit organizations, private donors, or voter-approved bond packages may fund their construction and maintenance. And urban redevelopment groups or paddlesports clubs may initiate their development, or they may be part of a larger plan for ecological restoration in altered river systems.
Last summer, I was lucky enough to drive around the West with my sweetheart Nate in our truck packed with bikes and playboats. Our itinerary took us from southern Colorado to the coast of California, back up through Oregon and Idaho, and eventually toward our home in Missoula, Montana, visiting friends, seeing live music, and stopping at whitewater parks along the way.
Four days later, we broke down our camp, totally throttled by a powerful festival-borne G.I. funk. We limped northward and slept in Crescent City, where someone cut the cable lock off the top of the truck in an unsuccessful attempt to repossess our bikes. The next morning, we drove to Bend, Oregon, in a feeble effort to resume our tour of whitewater parks and wash away the post-festival sickness.
Inspired by the success of the Boise River Park 300 miles away, in 2012 the residents of Bend, Oregon, voted for a $29 million dollar bond package that included funding for their own whitewater park. The Bend Whitewater Park replaced a 1915-era dam on the Deschutes River. It features a whitewater channel with four separate standing waves controlled by pneumatic bladders, a more docile channel for tubers and floaters, and a third channel with slow-moving water, intended as habitat for wildlife.
There are too many pizza joints to list within walking or biking distance of the whitewater park. We recommend you just ask a local for their favorite spot. Bend is a haven for people who love good beer and food.
This luxury set includes 2 Hinoki decorative tapes featuring UV oil printing for crisp details and a brand new holographic shell effect for an added luxurious sparkle. Cut your desired design without wastage with the backing paper so you can save the rest of the tape. The illustration loops are extra long (1m and 50cm) meaning more designs per roll, more options for creativity!
When trying to find a great tape plugin, Waves audio has been a go-to for many engineers. They offer 2 affordably priced and widely used plugins - the J37 tape emulation and the Kramer tape emulation.
Starting from the left of the plugin we notice 3 tape formulas, the 888, 811, and 815. The 888 is the most aggressive in its distortion - with the 811 and 815 progressively becoming less distorted. Use the 888 from more lo-fi projects, and the 815 for a more subtle effect.
The speed can be switched between 7.5 inches per second and 15 inches per second. 7.5 is better for a warmer sound with attenuated highs, whereas 15 is better suited for a cleaner full-spectrum sound.
In the middle of the plugin are the input and output levels, which can be linked or controlled independently. Waves Audio recommends that your signal peaks around 0dBVU to get the best effect, so keep an eye on the meter below to achieve that.
Bias is to the right and ranges from +1.5dB, +3dB, and +5dB , which is an ultrasonic frequency used to reduce tape hysteresis. When it comes to a plugin, this function will subtly increase your high frequencies and can lead to some distortion at higher levels.
In the bottom left-hand corner, we have the modeled tracks section, which can be switched between the 2nd, 2nd plus 3rd, and the 3rd. Think of this kind of like a crossover effect in which the left and right channels bleed into one another.
Wow Rate and Depth control the amount of frequency modulation to the signal, in conjunction with the tape speed. Depth will control the amount of modulation and the rate will control the frequency range of the modulation.
Flux is an interesting feature, as it allows you to control how much of the signal is imparted onto the tape. If we were to compare this feature to the j37, this would be a lot like the Saturation rotary.
Like the J37, Kramer tape can introduce delay, but with simpler controls. The delay type can be switched between slap and feedback, and the delay time is affected in milliseconds without the option to sync the time to your BPM.
As the Marketing Director for Hy-Tape I have witnessed the many ways that our unique brand of tape has helped patients, casual users, and parents. I can get into examples of how those with ostomies, ileostomies, long term care patients, neonates, and the list goes on, but what I would like to present is a real world trial of the tape that I use regularly on myself, my kids, and push to those who I believe it may benefit.
My girls are 6 and 10. Both in good health and very active. Like most, we are staying home and making the best of things. They take online karate classes, play in the yard, swim in my parents pool, and run around like normal kids. My goal was to see how well our tape stuck to them on an above average temperature weekend. We began Friday afternoon, a couple of hours before karate class. They ran outside with our new puppy, then ate dinner before doing 45 minutes of karate. The next day the temperatures rose to 90 degrees and most of the day was spent in the pool. I made sure to position the tape in areas where there would be friction, and to leave it untouched. Sunscreen was applied over the top of the tape. Hy-Tape is UPF50+ so there was no need to apply sun protection under the tape and reapply. After a day in the pool both girls showered and went to bed with the tape intact. Sunday was a total scorcher. Temperatures soared into the 90s and the humidity was very high. Again we spent most of the day swimming and at the end of the day after toweling off we saw the corners starting to peel.
At AES, we met with Waves, and they asked us why Tape Op never reviews their plug-ins. "Good question," I said. Then, a bit later at the show, Geoff Stanfield and I started talking about how we had both purchased and were using Waves ADT. "Hey, wait a minute," I said, "This is a review if we do an email dialog." So here it is. -JB
JB: Hey Geoff, you have the Abbey Road Studios Reel ADT plug-in from Waves, the one that simulates automatic double-tracking the way The Beatles did with two tape machines. I bought it when it went on sale, and I have to say, I've been digging it. It's a bit more subtle than I expected, actually, but it can really beef up a vocal track. What have you been using it for?
Geoff Stanfield: Oddly enough, the first time I used it was on drums. I was looking to add some vibe to a sort of static drum part. It has a cool "drive" feature on both the source and the ADT effect, which saturates in a great way, so I cranked that up and set the Varispeed knob to taste, and it gave me a sound that was reminiscent of the flanged-out cymbals on "Kashmir." On drums, it is pretty subtle - without a melodic instrument to showcase the modulation of pitch - but it presents itself in a much more noticeable way when the cymbals are played. I tried it directly on the overheads and on an aux track, and both results had their pluses and minuses.
On vocals, I found many of the presets to be very useable starting points, and I liked the watery quality of the wow-and- flutter effect this plug-in provides. Often, I will set up an aux track with a pitch plug-in at 11 cents or so, and send my vocal to it to add some extra width and presence. Reel ADT performs a similar task, but unlike the fixed pitch setting in my previously mentioned technique, Reel ADT lets the LFO move either with a fixed shape or randomly, which provides a bit more interest in my opinion. In addition to the wave shape, you can also adjust the rate of the LFO or use the Sync option. It can be subtle, but turned up, I can really hear it if I want to. Have you ever set up two tape machines and done ADT the real way? How does this compare?
JB: No, despite having two tape machines, I've never tried this. I dug out my Recording The Beatles book [Tape Op #53] and looked into how they did ADT back then. First, ADT stands for Artificial Double Tracking, not Automatic Double Tracking as I'd thought. With John Lennon apparently complaining about how long it took to double vocals, engineer Ken Townsend came up with a process to do it using two of Abbey Road's tape machines, the 4-track Studer J37 and the mono EMI BTR2. The key to making the ADT effect work was that the main multitrack, the J37, unlike most tape decks, had separate playback amplifiers for both the record/sync head and the reproduce head. When they were mixing from the repro head, they would send a simultaneous signal from the sync head of the J37 to the BTR2, which was in record mode. This signal was "ahead" of the repro head on the J37. Also important to note is that the head gap between the BTR2's record and play heads was approximately twice that of the J37. By running the BTR2 at 30 IPS, twice as fast as the J37 at 15 IPS, Mr. Townsend realized that the delayed signal coming off the repro head of the BTR2 was almost in sync with the signal on the J37's repro head. By slightly varying the tape speed of the BTR2, he was able to move the ADT signal slightly ahead or behind the unaffected signal from the J37. Whew! You really had to work hard back in those days! I'm pretty stoked that Waves has this plug-in now. Obviously, it is much easier to use, takes up less space, and weighs less too!
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