Thanks @illacov
When I need another tape simulator I will definitely give it a go 
fyi Iāve been following you for awhile on the Gearslutz forum @illacov. Iām really impressed by your passion for tape, and especially like how you go into detail about the technical stuff under the hood of Zulu. Full support.
I have way too little spare time to do any proper a/b comparison etc but I just ran a section from the dry Zulu loop through some ITB stuff. Hereās the original dry then 3 different settings (couple of bars each) Going for similar sounds to the lofi part in zulu demo. 5 minute session done in headphones and no graphs etc. Donāt know how it sounds in speakers but was sounding pretty nice in cans. Could get it sounding cooler if took some proper time on it. Too tired right now to think clearly on it but sounded comparable to meā¦
Listen to ITB tape by Fang Zeen #np on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/user-250852736/itb-tape
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Honestly and of course Iām biased but you just proved my point.
I understand you took a very short period of time to compose these clips but they donāt sound anything at all like the Zulu clips. Your examples are more distorted than the most distorted examples I provided and this was with Zulu being hit with +10db over 0. The snare doesnāt distort like that on any of the clips I provided, it retains its punch and stays solid. Listen to how even on your first pass of the loop (after the dry) your snare is breaking up and lacks the attack or punch of the dry. Its also missing the sustain on the tail of the snare that gives it the reverb-like tone. Your snare is destroyed in all of these examples, Iām listening on my headphones too and can plainly hear that. Maybe weāre listening for different things? The distribution of the crunch and the punch is what makes a tape deck special.
Listen to the first kick in the loop. All the low end is gone on the tail, along with the definition, note the length of the sustain and how long it takes to die in the Zulu clips versus the digital simulation youāve provided.
Imagine a show with tons of 18s and reflex bass bins, your signal is curtailed from 250hz down on that first kick which has the bass drop underneath it. The dry loop has the most dynamic range but the least impact, your clip has loads of mid mid and upper midrange distortion, but does not have the 250hz energy presence down to the bottom of the scale that the original contained so itās going to sound lighter on a bass heavy system than the dry clip or Zulu. Its not that your sub information is gone, it sounds like its been squashed by the upper midrange and treble frequencies, so by nature of broadband compression its been suppressed. Sounds more like clipping and compression than tape. As well because the mids are distorted rather than saturated or receiving tape compression, they wonāt give woofers the same kind of impact work out that the dry or Zulu or tape will. Its literally the impact and knock of the kick thatās missing.
This is just brute force distortion and digital clipping which sounds plain nasty compared to tape. Its a nasty that I like! But itās not the same as over-driving a tape machine. Its lacking the smoothing of the distortion particularly when it comes to the transients. Thereās a lack of proper distribution to the destruction (not your fault), this is what makes tape all the more complex to nail.
See its like the dry signal is divided into 3 regions.
Thereās the bass
Thereās the mids
Thereās the highs
Now letās just say that bass is at a higher amplitude and duration (very important for tape emulation) than the mid and treble regions. The bass incurs saturation first by nature of tape compression, but because the other frequencies are not as loud they donāt saturate with the bass in the same way or duration. Instead what youāll see is a dynamic overlap between bass and the other frequencies, not rocket science thatās how all compressors work right?
Keep reading on MUHUWAHWAH cough cough
In a nutshell, when bass incurs saturation and compression, the artifact generated by tape in this instance is sympathetic harmonics. Meaning that harmonics which impact the mids and highs are generated, because added harmonics increase RMS level and overall level the mids and highs actually do get compressed BECAUSE of the loud kick drum notes BUTā¦at a different time than the bass. Its temporal plus spatial distribution of saturation and compression.
Its kind of like if the kick gets hit at 0ms (initial signal) to 10ms then whatever harmonics will be generated in the other frequencies happen at say 40ms from 0 (just for the sake of conversation) and only occur for 5ms before the next Bass note which means that you have this super quick blippy and harmonically enhanced compression effect happening BETWEEN the notes that is completely connected to but reacting independently in perception to the heavier distorted kick note. Where it getās really juicy is that its all rhythmic (oh yeah because science and math!). Thatās part of whats making the Bias circuit in Zulu very useful (didnāt demonstrate that in this test its at 100% bright) but because of the type of filtering Iām using, I can technically play with the timing of how the treble is impacted by the tape circuit under stimulus.
Its very complex in this regard but basically your signal is going to divide up into 3 coexistent organisms when it gets sent to tape. No Zulu is not a multiband compressor or a filter, but the components of a signal all push and pull on each other in a tape machine.
See this is what makes the approach extremely important, tape has a temporal component thatās not really considered in most designs. The frequencies saturate at different points in time in the graph. If you simply look at frequency response and not vs time vs RMS or amplitude then youāll miss a big component of the effect. So where I think your example shows how you can get great sounding distortion ITB, its also demonstrating that what made your tape machines so great was that it happened in the all the right places if you treated the deck right and left the other spots where it wasnāt needed alone. The initial kick hit is louder than the rest of the loop, this is a very difficult thing for most digital compressors and tape saturators to handle because in order to get the rest of the loop into saturation, youāll have to distort the first hit.
BTW I didnāt spend all that much time printing the loop through Zulu either. I spent more time patching in my console and turning on my computer than I did actually using Zulu on those prints. All I did was hit the CAL switch (4 position slide switch) and set it to TK. Turned the Deck knob to LOFI and the Headroom Knob to LOFI. Done.
Ease of use is a big factor for me. Far less convenient is I have only two hands and lots of coffee to drink before the sun setsā¦mmmm coffee.
Thanks
-L.
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Itās times like this when we need that old school āknowledge droppedā emoticon reinstatedā¦
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Gotta get some sleep but will read through your post properly tomoro, thanks for the insights, you seriously know your stuff 
FWIW I went insane with input gain on those 3 settings. Didnāt pay much attention to exact numbers and was just looking quickly for sounds I liked in the āextremeā zone, but it was waaaay more than +10dbā¦and I eqādā¦ i should have been less heavy handed on it if I get some time Iāll have quick dig around and try to mimic the exact behavior from your clip, but I think that would be pretty hard even if it was possible, like you recreating exactly the same as my clip. Tho your ears/chops would probably find it much easier than vice versa
End of the day I really like the sounds on the demo you did. Like I already said And for live/tracking it will probably turn out to be a no-brainer, just not sure itās something I really need right now in the studio. Enjoying the digital sounds Iāve been getting tbh, my 488 is sat on the shelf with no plans to get it fixed. Even if they arenāt 100% legit tape to other peopleās ears. Iāve mostly been using it a lot more subtle than the clip I just posted tho
Thanks
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Appreciate the positive vibes and your passion for all of this! As far as mimicing your clips, the tape models I created were based on machines that donāt exhibit that sort of behavior unless under abnormal circumstances. I think whatās worth pointing out though is that distortion has a place in lots of different music, so its not that you came up with unusable sounds, they just arenāt a substitute for a tape deck, cassette or reel to reel when you want the sounds that they provide under some serious gain or normative gain for that matter. Thatās all Iāve been hoping to communicate in this discussion. And I hope people can see how thatās a usable sound.
Iām gonna share the Sushi Soundcloud set for extreme gain examples but on the PROFI deck setting (Tascam reel to reels) but with different Calibrations and Bias settings. This stuff is pretty intense but really really fun.
You guys should get a real kick out of these clips. From wimpy to pimpy.
The order is dry then Zulu Peak Matched, then dry again, then Zulu RMS matched. Thereās more clips on Sound cloud but these are some pretty fun clips to listen to.
Thanks
-L.
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As promised here are the files, including the dry 303 loop I made.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2zRvlWLux2ZTjBsMzBXZEhSY1k
Please feel free to download, share, make music with them etcā¦
Thanks
-L.
@illacov Interesting product. Also interested in what you said about how instantaneous tape/zulu is. After I read http://www.musictech.net/2016/10/beau-thomas-ten-eight-seven-mastering/ I was convinced that digital limiters was way faster than analogue could ever be.
Digital limiters are fast, but at the cost of distortion. This kind of renders them inefficient at doing large amounts of gain reduction even when using the look ahead feature. If you look at the wav forms that I uploaded youāll notice that the shape of the waveform has changed significantly from the original dry signal. Now the first example is extremely distorted but the others are not. When you run a signal that has very limited dynamic range into a digital limiter, youāll see that the limiter works far less than if the signal was still extremely dynamic. Since Zulu can do this without incurring massive amounts of distortion (far cleaner than any ITB limiter Iāve tried) its a great counterpart during mastering to achieve loudness. I also want to add that while the amplitude of the signal will appear limited compared to the dry, note how the sound of the signal is nowhere near as squashed if you had used a conventional compressor or limiter to accomplish the same result. This is all about the speed of tape and the robust nature of the medium. Digital has some extreme advantages over hardware when it comes to convenience but not always better results. There are some legitimate gripes with digital limiting which is why many ME still use their outboard to accomplish their louder masters. The best digital limiter I myself have used was a digital unit that was a piece of hardware by Weiss. I have not used any other super high end piece in that vein but it was a completely different planet compared to (insert digital plugin limiter here).
Thanks
-L.
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Jeez we are going into the forbidden realm of mastering now.
Thatās a very contentious topic. Stepping out of the room now
p.s. digital limiting at a mastering level reigns supreme here
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I found the article interesting in the context. A mastering engineer whose work I highly rate, that have a tapemachine he rarely uses apart from if the client wants it (because of software emulations) that prefers digital limiters. Another mastering engineer I know personally have been working with mastering in over 20 years and is using outboard to color the sound, but as a final limiter he swear by Ozone and that is what he will crank if the client wants a loud master
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The 303 Loop that has HIFI at the end is at -11RMS. Accomplishing that type of punch and RMS level without a compressor is a huge benefit to a mixing and a mastering engineer for that matter. Zulu is not a replacement for a limiter its like a marinade for it LOL Let Zulu do all the lifting but preserve the dynamics back into the body of the material. Then let the limiter bring up the level of loudness beyond where Zulu parks it.
I never said that analog limiters are better than digital limiters I said a hardware digital limiter like a Weiss MKII has yet to be beaten in my opinion by a plugin. I love digital limiting, its just that the type I like I are in the hands of the professionals. Iām a record producer, not a mastering engineer. I have Andy Krehm, Adrian Carr, Tod Levine and a few other cats I defer to on that. I seriously want the digital plugin limiters to catch up with the hardware ones but so far no dice.
Thanks
-L.
Happy New Year!
I am headed to our facilities on the west coast to do a final walk through of Zulu and get them out of QC and into the hands of you and she!
Hereās a picture of a case at the electro-mechanical facility that does our sheet metal fabrication, powder coating and silk screening.
Iāll be filling yaāll in with more details as things progress!
Thanks
-L.
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Hi Friday L.
Thanks for the update
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Interested to know more. Maybe some 808 clips? Dunno why but Iām not hearing much lowend in any of the demos posted so farā¦
The into price seems very attractive, the outro price notsomuchā¦ any reason why the preorder is so much cheaper?
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The low promotional price is exactly that a promotion. 
Much like gear makers who run a kick starter with a lower price than the full street price.
Zulu actually at full price is the lowest priced stereo tape emulator hardware on the scene at the moment. A stereo capable or dual mono setup unit from other manufacturers would be at least $1000and beyond all the way up to $5000. We are offering Zulu at $400 on promotion and $750 full retail. Its portable, needs no power and sounds amazing coupled with synths, drum machines and line level devices output like mixers and mic preamps.
Be glad to do some 808 clips! Got any source material youād prefer me to use or should I just do an 808 pattern? I have loads of 808 kick samples.
Thanks
-L.
I like the sound of this pedal in tests but feels/sounds a lot like just another interpretation/approximation/shade. No offence but when we compared files maybe yours were more scientifically accurate to tape, but I dug the sound of the Kaya plugin a little more. Dunno what to make of that, maybe tapeās overrated/Iāve developed a taste for digital gunk
Edit - hit me with science
Science? What is there to explain my friend? There is nothing wrong with liking plugins over something analog.
I am just a hold out from an era gone by.
I recently watched āI Dream of Wires.ā A must watch!
This movie is like a diary of my inner self.
I love analog tape, beautiful gorgeous analog harmonics and compression will wow some and leave others indifferent. Such is life.
My primary motive is treat electronics like an artisan. Secondarily as a business man. I am enjoying all the parts of this process, interacting with people online, in person and first and foremost seeing my gear come to life after so long!
Thanks for your input.
-L.
I hope it does well. Iād probably buy one eventually at the intro price but not sure Iāll make it after price rises. Does have a nice/useful sound tho. Good luck dude