Recording - October 2012 - 54

PLUG-IN OUTLET
Slate Digital Virtual Tape Machines
By Paul Vnuk Jr.

Over to the left are controls for tape machine choice and tape type, as well as a choice of tape speeds of 15 or 30 inches per second. Traditionally 15 ips offers a “head bump” that boosts the bass and low mids in a forward yet pleasing way, while 30 ips is a tad more natural and cleaner. The last front panel control is a 3-position Bias switch with high, normal or low bias settings. The higher the bias the more excitable the high end becomes and vice-versa. On the low setting it is more dull and constrained sounding. The settings window contains controls for noise reduction (0 to –40 dB), wow and flutter (0 to 100%), bass alignment (–6 dB to +3 dB) plus a unique Automate Hiss feature. You can also control VU meter ballistics and calibrate the unit’s input level from –24 dB to +6 dB globally or individually by group. As a rule, front panel controls are groupable, while the internal settings are always global. Functionally simple yet sonically complex It may surprise you that many of the VTM’s controls such as bias are made up of preset choices rather than being fully variable, while others like wow and flutter are ganged into one parameter. Also, VTM offers no deep level calibration and tweaking, and this is completely intentional. VTM’s designer Fabrice Gabriel realized early on that the precise modeling of a tape machine was a very delicate balancing act, and it was felt that offering too many deep parameter choices might compromise the sonic results. As such VTM can best be described as “having no user serviceable parts inside”! That doesn’t mean it is not capable of a wide range of high quality sonic variation, as we’ll see. Power Before we get to sound and use, a quick look at VTM’s power consumption is in order. In Steinberg Cubase 6 on a 2.7 GHz i7 Macbook Pro running OS X Lion as well as on my ADK-built quad-core 3.33 GHz i7 PC running Windows 7, both with 8 GB of RAM, I was able to achieve about 30 mono instances at an overall CPU load of 75% power with no other plug-ins loaded. Alternately I could get 16 mono instances of VTM along with 16 instances of Slate’s VCC (Virtual Console Collection) plus a stereo version of each on the master bus at 55-60%. VTM always uses 96 kHz for its upsampling, unlike VCC which can be adjusted, so of the two it is a tad more powerhungry. Again, this is for sonic reasons.

Virtual Tape Machines, VTM for short, is the latest plug-in creation from Slate Digital. Designed and coded by Steven Slate and French circuit modeling guru Fabrice Gabriel, VTM is made to add the sound, anomalies and nuance of analog tape inside your DAW. Two Studers and two tapes in one Analog tape plug-ins have become one of the new modeling trends of the past few years. VTM goes further than competitors’ offering a single virtual machine—VTM offers a choice of two completely different tape machines, with the simple flick of a switch. One is the 2" 16-track head stack on the Studer A827 owned by Jay Baumgardner at NRG studios in North Hollywood. This is the machine you would most commonly use on your individual tracks to simulate what your music would sound like coming off of a multi-track reel. The other is the 1/2" 2-track head stack on the Studer A80 RC owned by worldrenowned mastering engineer Howie Weinberg, located in the same complex as Slate Headquarters. Slate chose this deck for mixdown and mastering duties. VTM contains two tape choices called FG456 and FG9. FG456 is of course the 456 formula originally made by Ampex and later Quantegy, and known for its +6 dB headroom. This is one of the most time-tested tape formulas ever made. FG9 represents the newer GP9 formula, which was rated at +9 dB of headroom. More headroom means that the tape can be hit harder with less saturation, which yields an overall less colored and cleaner recording.

The tour VTM looks like a faux tape machine complete with spinning reels, bouncing VU meters and vintage knobs. It is a stunning photo-realistic look, but it does take up a large amount of screen real estate, making it tricky to have multiple instances open at once. It is rumored that the Slate gang are working on an optional compact GUI for a future update. VTM’s front panel is divided into three sections. The left side contains the settings button which opens a subwindow for internal tweaks, a bypass switch and a grouping meter. As with Slate’s Virtual Console Collection Delivery: Web download only plug-in (reviewed December 2011), you can group any number of Format: Windows XP/7 (32/64 bit), VST and RTAS, Mac VTMs into one of eight subgroups, allowing you to set up different OS X 10.5+ (Intel only), VST/RTAS/AU numbers of machines for different tasks in the same session. Copy Protection: iLok2 copy protection key The center section is the heart of VTM, with input and output License: multiple installs/single use via iLok2 controls with matching VU meters. Most useful is that the input and Documentation: PDF manual included with download output knobs can be ganged together, so as you turn up the input, Price: $249 the output decreases and keeps the overall signal volume at a conMore from: Slate Digital, www.slatedigital.com stant level even though the tone will change as you drive the machine and saturate the tape.
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RECORDING October 2012

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Recording - October 2012

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