Anyone have any good tips for emulating tape/cassette wow and flutter on the Octatrack? The closest I’ve gotten is putting a fully wet delay on the master with the shortest delay time possible, and then modulating delay time with LFOs. I can whip up something that sounds decent using the LFO designer, but even with really subtle settings I’m not quite able to pull off the sounds I can get using VSTs like Sketch Cassette and RC-20.
I’d love to find a hardware solution, if possible. Am I asking too much of the Octatrack? Should I just fork over the cash for a pedal like the Shallow Water or Snazzy FX Wow and Flutter?
For the LFO itself, I’ve had good luck using a slow sine or triangle LFO with its speed being modulated by a second LFO set to a different (but also slow) speed, and a third log or inverse log LFO in parallel to that. The first stack of two emulates belt and pinch roller irregularities and the thrid emulates the tape catching on the head or guides, more or less. All of the modulation depths low enough that you don’t really hear them, between 1 and 3.
So on a delay (which is where I do this, but it would apply to any of the other approaches people described) LFO 1 could be a slow sine modulating elay time, set to 1 or 2, LFO 2 could be a slow triangle modulating the rate of LFO 1 with a depth of 2 or 3, and LFO 3 could be a reverse log modulating delay time with the depth set to 2 or 3, maybe even 4, and an even slower rather than the other two, to emulate the splice in a tape echo loop.
You can go further with resampling, lfos on sample playback. Some examples are far from subtle and of topic, but they can be used for that purpose. The principle is to use 2 recorders recording their playback alternatively.
From technique below (with much more subtle settings ), I think you can get lots of tape artifacts…adding very slight lfo on pitch too…
Ive had interesting results with LFO designer, making very subtle shapes, then applying to pitch and rate at different speeds and depths. Resample then do the same again with the filter. Then resample and run it through the same again etc. Also adding some compression with lfos on the envelope can give nice results.
Also, that was over a year ago. Do you have any idea how many recordings Ive made since then? Most of them get thrown in the 'random shit that isnt very good ’ pile
On the off chance anyone reading this is unaware, the Roland MV8000/8800 will pass live audio through its effects so it can be used on your aux bus. The wow/flutter/crackle emulation is good too.
…as u see, many ways to get there, as always on the ot…
but let’s keep in mind, when the ot was concepted, digital processing was hot and no one would have thought of the fact that good old tape magic with all it’s charming flaws and imperfection would become a thing again…
so, u can try a lot of tricks to get near, but u will never get some kind of perfect simulation of that, since all dsp tech was just not there back then and therefor remains what it is…
even today, all tape simulation is still a cpu heavy trickery…
while first level tape effect, slowing down or speeding up is also first trick of all oldschool sampling…adress slider to sample read speed and turn stretch mode off and ur audio will follow…
), I think you can get lots of tape artifacts…adding very slight lfo on pitch too…
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