This one sounds pretty lofi and is cheap:
Airwindows has a bunch of excellent, free tape plugins:
https://www.airwindows.com/totape6/
1 Like
RC-20 is my go-to as it’s incredible bang for buck. It’s particularly good if you want noise that ducks in and out of the mix as it has a ducking option in the noise module. Never seen this anywhere else.
Wavesfactory Cassette is a recent acquisition for me and it really is very good indeed.
AberrantDSP SketchCassette is another brilliant one but I don’t have much experience with it.
I’ve been using Waves J37 Tape but that’s a copy of a professional tape machine rather than a lo-fi noise hound, though it can impart a sketchy magic to sounds.
2 Likes
Wavesfactory released this teaser about a week ago. I’m really interested to see what they release.
3 Likes
Bought Sketch Cassette 2 last night, it’s really good!!! Currently also demoing Wavesfactory’s Cassette, which is beautiful and fun as well. I can see why people like it.
I got Sketch Cassette 2 with Shapeshifter on Pluginboutique for 20€ so I thought I’d give it a shot. It’s excellent for sample degradation, I basically use it to lo-fi, wow & flutter up samples as well as for SFX on instruments (eg using it on the SWAM Clarinet almost makes the VST sound like a Mellotron with velocity sensitivity 
).
I think it sounds really good and it is quite flexible. Plus there’s hardly any overlap with my other tape simulations (mainly UAD stuff).
I find the cassette type simulations in Wavesfactory Cassette a little better/more pronounced to my ears, but Sketch Cassette 2 is no slouch either. I particularly like its “Age” slider, its compressor, and its dropout simulation for my uses.
I also tried it on the main out of Studio Drummer 3 with the “High School Mixtape” preset and it immediately gave me that warm, homey boom bap feel
All in all I couldn’t be happier with my purchase. I’ll probably add some of the Wavesfactory plugs as well at the next sale, I hear Spectre is really good as well.
1 Like