Tape Simulator, without tape or DSP?

[inverseroom]

I recently programmed a synth patch on the Alesis Micron that is supposed to mimic the sound of a Mellotron flute--I added a bit of pink noise, let the S&H fluctuate pitch up and down a bit at random intervals, and compressed the result.  It sounds pretty good.

It got me thinking, though, that I'd like a tape-simulator pedal effect for guitar.  Random subtle pitch shifting, compression, and perhaps a bit of very mild phasing.  Does any such thing exist, either in commercial or project form?

[Peter Snowberg]

A platform will exist soon, but it doesn't conform to your no DSP part.

[inverseroom]

A platform will exist soon, but it doesn't conform to your no DSP part.

Peter, I'm new here...are you an, um, industry insider?  :wink:

I know that Alesis was going to release a box called the Fidelity X--part of their line of 24-bit DSP ModFx boxes which they killed before they finished the line.  The Bitrman, which did get released, is my favorite noise box ever.  Anyway the Fidelity X was going to have various kinds of tape simulation organized by decade.  I'm sure it wouldn't have satisfied purists, but the mockups looked cool as all hell.

That said, this concept seems quite executable using simple technology, eh?

[Peter Snowberg]

Peter, I'm new here...are you an, um, industry insider?  :wink:

I know that Alesis was going to release a box called the Fidelity X--part of their line of 24-bit DSP ModFx boxes which they killed before they finished the line.
....
That said, this concept seems quite executable using simple technology, eh?

Insider..... nah.... at least not yet. Soon..... :lol:

There have been multiple insiders involved in the last 15 years+ of R&D though.

I'm getting within days of the (re)announcement of a project I've talked a little around here about before. It's a processor family that uses the same Alesis Semiconductor designed DSPs that the ModFX series ran on. I'm really sorry to hear they killed the line. Alesis-Semi is now Wavefront Semiconductor and the chips are still pretty cool.

The magic thing about these chips is that they're really not DSPs in the classic sense. They're more like MAC (Multiply-ACcumulate) cores with an instruction sequencer added on the side. That makes them blindingly fast and cheap too. As another side effect, they're easier to code for in some cases and some guys in Belgium may have solved the requirement of having to know DSP assembly language programming to build complex effects.  

Details to follow....

[inverseroom]

I only understood about 30% of that, but it sounds like good news!  I think the ModFx stuff fell into a marketing crack--looked like a stompbox, but you couldn't stomp it, and it was priced very high for such a small casing.  But several of them are fantastic, esp. the Bitrman and filter.

Let us know what becomes of the technology!

[Mike Burgundy]

I think the main points of tape-delay are:
(tape-induced) signal degradation
tape saturation
frequency response
wow-and-flutter

If wow-and-flutter are audible, I usually don't like it. Tape degradation and distortion however....
The trick is that tape saturation starts out as compression (so *soft* clipping) and is frequency-dependant (I think it's somewhere around the sibilance range - 2.5-4k? Not sure though). Don't go above 5-8kHz with your signalchain for nice and warm response, and introduce perhaps an extra non-frequency dependant clipper (asymmetric? Dunno where that came from, but it's what I'd try) after the tape saturation thing. Pull every repeat through the clippers and filters again, so the more echoes you have, the more changed they become.
hih

[mojotron]

I got a Danelectro "Reel Delay" a few months ago. I haven't opened it up yet, but it does a fair job of mimicing an echoplex with a lot of options. For $60, I think it meets what I need for 'plex type stuff...

[puretube]

I just want a topic reply notification ( :lol: )

[lovekraft0]

Has anybody tried LXH2's analog tape simulator? Seems like it would warm up a digital delay nicely.