Slate Digital Virtual Tape Machines

Slate VTM is an alaogue tape emulation plugin. The concept is very simple; you get a few different tape types, speed, biases.. basically everything you would find on a real tape machine, except with all the flexibility of a digital audio plugin.
Like the VCC, VTM is a specific and simple sonic tool. It will prove invaluable when sculpting your sounds and finding places for your sounds in the soundscape. It is however an 'end-game' plugin, meaning that it can do wonders for your well-recorded and mixed material, but it won't magically turn all of your recordings into gold.
The saturation and natural compression on this plugin is exquisite. It is very natural and musical indeed. I usually find that it's at its best when used on a bus, especially for drums. It likes to 'chew' on dynamic and well produced audio. This is also when you really hear all the differences between the tape types, biases, drive amounts, and speeds.
The GUI is clear, simple, and intuitive. Highly recommended if you're in the market for a natural tape emulation plugin.

This is a superlative product. The effect of instantiating VTM across a batch of mixer channels, plus the main buss, is subtle but thoroughly discernible: the mix coheres immediately, and depending on your setting of the virtual tape speed you can take advantage of "head bump" at 15ips to get a nice bass boost. Saturation and harmonic content can be dialled in across the whole mix extremely easily, and the instances of the plug-in can be grouped and linked so that everything can be controlled with one set of knobs.

I have this running alongside the Slate Virtual Console Collection, to give the combined effect of multitrack tape running through an old valve-style console into a master 2-track. The results are gorgeous. The warmth feels far more "real" than plug-ins were managing even a few years ago; it's not an in-your-face effect, more of a gentle glue and firming up of the soundstage. Really impressive. It's not CPU light, though; you'll want to run instances across all of your DAW channels, and that means an up-to-date computer spec. But if you can run it, it's worth every penny.

When I first started working with audio, I was a complete digital audio lover. Don't get me wrong - I still am! - but at some point in time I began to wonder if there was something missing in my recordings wholly produced in the digital realm.

Most likely anyone can tell tape machines have their own wacky kind of EQ and hiss but that's not close to all there is to it; in short, the way tape saturates the audio is what gives it its character. That is what I love about the Slate Digital VTM: I can achieve that lovely saturation without ever taking my project out of the box.

There are multiple combinations of choices and each provides you with a beautiful but individual sound. There are other controls for making the sound even "more analog," and really the only complaint I have with the product is you can't fully remove the hiss the plugin generates; you can only take it down by 40 dB, which means the noise will stack with multiple instances of the plugin and when compressing or limiting tracks. Thus, I've found the best way to use the plugin is to use it the same way tape was used back in the old days: use it on auxes and last in your signal chain.

The noise isn't really an issue if you know what you're doing and the audio enhancement the VTM gives is something you - or at least I - can't simply gain with simple processing. The VTM in conjunction with the Slate Digital VCC is the best value for the money I've ever spent.