There’s a certain kind of lo-fi, old tape sound that I’ve always loved. I’d almost describe it as “bubbly”? You can hear it in a lot of Burial recordings, and the below is a good example:
Is there a way to get this type of saturation through plugins (Satin, perhaps), or do you literally just need an old tape deck?
There’s a few around that’ll do it, and some that’ll get you close.
Vinyl by isotope is free
There’s the VHS rack in ableton, again free
There’s a plugin on kvr called guitar gadget, which is free
Legowelt released an ableton rack as well smackos or something similar.
In ableton there’s also the vinyl sim plugin which with a bit of knowledge and patience can get similar results.
You can also get clever and resample using a mic recording the audio from your monitor.
All the above are free and will take some time to get what you want. By doing it yourself, you’ll likely come up with something a bit more unique.
On the paid side of things there’s a few out there. I don’t know any of the top of my head I’m afraid but somone will! 
Excellent, thank you! Very thorough list which I can’t wait to go through. Checking out “vinyl” now.
Glad it’s of use.
I went through a phase of really wanting to capture ‘that sound’ and I could never quite get it right. In the end I ended up sending things to an old cassette player. Thing is, when I got the ‘authentic’ sound, I was dissapointed!
Typical really.
Good luck.
Haha, go figure. We’ll see if I net out to the same place.
its more cassette emulation but it gets close
Also look at Waves J37.
I love the J37! If they made that in hardware I would.
The “wow” and “flutter” functionality is so good!
The op could nail it and more with that plugin alone!
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/11003/
then ad a flanger effect on top
its VHS FX…but there are SO many options, I think there’d be something there that’ll werk for you.
you can adjust everything. there is a VHS glitchy slip effect…turn that off and you get a great degraded tape effect…with many levels of degradation, warble etc…
Nice! Checking this out.
Reaktor has a TON of great Tape emulations on it. They’re pretty CPU heavy and some are slightly buggy being user made, but damn do they sound phenomenal! If you use Ableton, the Crap Cassette M4L device is fantastic and free.
Thank you for every contribution, I love this thread 
If you’re using Logic the included tape delay plugin has a tape saturation element, so if you turn the delay all the way down you can just use it as a saturation effect. Not as dramatic as some others but free (if you’re using Logic), maybe worth checking out.
+1 for Smackos if you’re using Live.
Alternatively if you went the pedal route, the Zvex instant lo-fi junky absolutely nails it.
I always wondered about those pedals (I loved my Ringtone sequenced ring mod until it suddenly stopped working a few years back) but never found one at a good price.
They do a eurorack version now too, though I’ve not tried that
Back in the day I loved to use airwindows flutter for this sorta things. Its a free plugin IIRC, and nowadays there might even be a crossplatform VST for it?
Added quite a bit of latency tho
Along with others already mentioned here, you might try:
Echomelt VHS multi-fx plugin. https://www.psychicmodulation.com/index.html
RC-20 Retro Color - https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_fx/effect/rc-20_retro_color
Klevgrand makes a vinyl plugin in addition to the cassette plugin - https://klevgrand.se/products/dawlp
If you can use Reason, there is a fun rack extension made by Peff - http://www.peff.com/journal/craprenumbertwo/
I use a combination of a lot of the things mentioned on this thread. I look to Rhythm & Sound and older Tim Hecker for noisy inspiration. I love tape hiss, noise, distortion, everything. It’s also nice to make custom Ableton racks with all this stuff and your own recordings of white noise, etc. manipulated in a Simpler instrument. I like custom wavs of tape hiss, MS-20 white noise, Satin hiss, recordings of waves, rain, wind, white noise machines, all blended together and constantly modulated, shifting, changing, panning, filtering. I just like nice gritty textures. Great fun to make and very soothing to my ears.
Bump for interest
this m4l device is my favorite for this kind of thing. it’s called crap cassette. i use it all the time.