Tape

Name: Tape
Price: 79.5 USD
Author: Thenatan

by Thenatan · Saturation · Cassette lo-fi emulation

Not rated yet

Tape emulates six cassette players and adds seven effect units: noise (9 textures), reverb, delay, glitch, saturation, 8-bit and dropouts.

It has 70 presets and accepts your own noise textures by drag and drop; it was $79.50 at the time of writing (normally $89).

Best for: Keys & Synths, Drums, Vocals, Mix Bus. Genres: Lo-Fi, Hip-Hop & Trap.

Keywords: cassette, hardware emulation, lo-fi, tape, bitcrush, glitchy, samples & loops, vintage, cinematic, experimental, keys, metering, 80s, algorithmic, broadcast, bus processing, CPU-light, dark, drums, full mix, mix bus, mixing, resizable UI, single-band, tempo-synced, vocals, warm, wide.

What it does

Tape is Thenatan's vintage cassette and lo-fi multi-effect, aimed at lo-fi, chillhop, cinematic and experimental production. It combines six cassette player emulations with seven effect units for wear, space and damage.

Six cassette players: I (warm, natural and noisy), II (more low end, a little dark), III (boomy low end), IV (a telephone cassette recorder), V (a Walkman with low-end boost) and VI (radio recorded through a Walkman).
Noise: nine textures with high-pass and low-pass filters, plus drag-and-drop import of your own noise samples.
Space and Echo: an algorithmic reverb and a tempo-synced delay, each with its own high-pass and low-pass controls.
Glitch: time-stretching and repetition of the audio signal.
Drive and 8-Bit: saturation and distortion, and a bit crusher adjustable from 1 to 64 bits per sample.
Drops: emulates tape dropouts.
Global and presets: mix, input, output, stereo widening and VU meters, 70 factory presets and shareable patches through the preset browser, in a UI resizable to 200%.

The store page mentions no demo.

Source: Thenatan product page

When to use it

Tape is a cassette-damage toolbox more than a mixing saturator. Compared with TAIP, which aims for clean, musical tape saturation on mix buses, it leans into hiss, lo-fi player colour, dropouts and glitches, and it adds reverb and delay that TAIP doesn't have. It covers similar ground to RC-20 Retro Color, with noise, wear, space and bit reduction in one window, but its six player models are all cassette-flavoured. Against Ampex ATR-102, a high-end mastering tape model, it is a creative effect rather than a faithful machine emulation, at a much lower price.

Best for: cassette-style noise, dropouts and degraded tone on loops, samples, keys and beats.
Genres: lo-fi hip-hop, chillhop and experimental music, plus cinematic sound design.
Look elsewhere if: you want subtle tape saturation for mixing (TAIP).

What producers say

There is little independent coverage; the one user review on KVR is very positive.

KVR users rate it 5 out of 5 from 1 review; the reviewer praised the low CPU use and the sound, and said the price "beats all other tape plugin designers."
Caveat: with a single review and no magazine tests found, the reputation rests on very few voices.

KVR user reviews

Where to buy

Thenatan: $79.50

Tutorials and reviews

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