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Comments
On Realbuss, it is the compact cassette preset with hiss lowered all the way down.
On tape cassette 2, saturation is boosted to +7db
Wow. Quote the difference in those spectrograms.
If you look at the two spectrograms, you can see that the Reelbus is adding a lot more harmonic distortion. Those are the lines parallel to the sweep. You can see that Reelbus adds more harmonics (ignoring the aliasing) than the other. You can see 7 distinct higher order harmonics in it compared to three higher order harmonics in the other. Harmonic distortion isn't hiss it is one of the things that saturation adds. You should try turning down the saturation. And if there are different saturation/distortion options those might impact both the THD (total harmonic distortion) and the aliasing.
But look at what happens with “spectrum” boosted all the way up
@jolico : so, it looks like with the settings adjusted to do more comparable processing, the TB is not introducing a lot of aliasing. It looks like its model has some distortion built in without boosting the saturation.
What does tap pro look like with its saturation cranked high?'
Sometimes comparing similar-seeming apps, the knobs can be calibrated very differently. (This is particularly true of EQs where one finds that the numbers use for Q are idiosyncratic).
Even if it produces aliasing with its own presets, default settings and also with everything turned all the way down?
Simply comparing presets -- if the presets created different results -- isn't all that meaningful. It tells you about the presets and no the engine. Reel Busters with saturation turned all the way down appears to be doing similar distortion to what Tape Pro does with its saturation set as shown in the example you posted.
I think that if one is going to be the "aliasing police" you need to explore whether the issue is the presets (or your signal levels) or the actual engine.
People can test these out for themselves if they really want to find the best apps or settings for their work.
They should also be honest with themselves and accept the fact that their previous recordings may have been contaminated by their favorite apps.
This was interesting! Thanks @jolico and @espiegel123. I don't use the presets in Reelbus so it's nice to see what saturate and spectrum actually do to the signal.
Interesting pictures!
But please be very careful when you try to interpret the pictures for ReelBus. ReelBus is extremely carefully modelled after real tape, which also means we have accurately modelled the use of ultrasonic bias signals (remember that bias setting on your tape deck?)
ReelBus applies oversampling internally (it is always on!) and adds the high-frequency bias signal in the oversampled domain. When you do a sine sweep, followed by some (tape) non-linearity, you will get intermodulation distortion as a result of the interaction between the bias signal and the sine sweep. And yes, that intermodulation distortion happens with real tape as well, and it looks like aliasing, but it is not aliasing.
In fact I'd argue that any accurate tape model plugin should show intermodulation distortion. If it doesn't, one of the major features of tape is missing.
And for those who wonder: ReelBus internally runs at 192kHz or higher (depending on the incoming sample rate).
Back on topic. This does look awesome.
Please read my previous reply. This really isn't aliasing but intermodulation distortion, which should happen in any tape simulator that claims to be accurate.
If I understood correctly, this only happens with a sine sweep and NOT with normal sounds ?
Thanks for the detailed information!
Intermodulation happens with any signal that has more than one sine wave (or a more complex signal) in combination with a non-linearity. Basically you'll get extra peaks at all the difference frequencies. This also happens in the analog world (think guitar amplifiers, loudspeakers driven hard, magnetic tape, and alike).
Perhaps we should add a new tape mode that doesn't use any bias signal so that people concerned about the interaction with that bias signal can use it without....
And perhaps worth knowing that I think the color mapping of the spectrograms can be a bit misleading. See picture below. The components we are talking about are about 130 decibels down. No one can ever hear those. Even if you would play audio so loud that it hurts (120 dB SPL), the intermodulation components would be 10 dB below the softest sound you can hear....
And this sounds like aliasing?
I have never heard anything that sounds like aliasing from my analog machines (eg. SH-101 self-oscillation full rez filter sweeps overdriven through a mixer with the gain cranked all the way) , so this is news to me, but I’ve never owned an expensive tape machine.
Oh yes it is very real. Ampex already published about this phenomenon in the 1960s :-)
https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=784
Maybe in this example you can hardly hear it, but in most of the presets it really does sound like aliasing and some people do use presets.
Is there a better way to test apps and presets other than sine-sweeps?
High passed white noise?
Indeed it sounds like aliasing!
Fun fact: When we were developing ReelBus we had an automated system to sweep the tape decks we used to model after automatically, at many levels and settings to get our ground truth data. We captured attributes such as the tape spectrum, the amount of harmonic distortion, the noise properties, hysteresis properties and alike - all automatically. Initially we would swear there was some aliasing happening in our measurement setup, but it turned out to be the intermodulation distortion of the deck!
👍
Will there ever be an update with a less accurate (cleaner) sound?
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. There's probably approximately one person who really cares about this to any real extent here.
🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂
@DJB thanks for the participation and information. Also: love all the TB apps + plugins to death.
Me listening to the pros on this thread discussing heady, technical info when I only go off of “sounds good to me” method:
The “sounds good to me” method is the only true pro method.
🤣 I think it’s the nature of humanity to not know or care about anything until someone says “well, it’s this way”!
Ha! I’m the opposite. It seems as soon as I start to care about something, all it takes is being around one fanatic to convince me I don’t care any more.
Excellent approach! 😆