TRIPLE OG CASSETTE TAPE SIMULATION
Run the tape
this is not another tame tape simulator
achieve warm fuzzy enlightenment by experiencing the full range of delight that can be achieved with magnetic tape.
from adding just a touch of color/grit/flavor, to absolutely mangling your input signal to oblivion, this is a tape sim built by someone who uses tape sims the same way you use tape sims.
sometimes you want the polite and tasteful, sometimes you want to absolutely wreck things, and with this VST you can certainly do both.
TONE, HISS, DRIVE, AND AGE CONTROLS
convincing tape saturation to color your tone, control your noise floor and signal drive, and “age” your tape up to 60 years to really build character.
older is wiser after all.
TRANSPORT CONTROLS
for hands-on manipulation of the tapehead
wow/flutter/catch controls, one-touch forward and reverse throws, and a catch activation button for when you need something to take it all out on
AU · VST3 · Standalone · macOS · Windows
there will be more of these
$29 · vst3 · au · standalone · macos · windows
more info
What TRIPLE OG is
A cassette transport. Six controls for what the medium is and what it is doing, and one for your hand.
Most tape plug-ins have wow and flutter. Very few have a transport that actually loses its footing, banks the time, and then sprints to rejoin the live stream. That behaviour is the point of this one, and stacking stock plug-ins does not get to it at any setting.
The tape
- TONE is the playback system's brightness. 50 is a musically neutral cassette, not a bypass.
- HISS is a continuous broadband bed, shaped and partly decorrelated across the channels. No clicks, no crackle, no dust — that is a different medium.
- AGE is in years, nought to sixty, because that is what the quantity is. Darker, noisier, slightly more saturated, less speed-stable and less perfectly matched left to right, all on one knob.
- DRIVE is soft asymmetric saturation, oversampled. Even harmonics dominate across the whole travel, and the level stays flat inside half a decibel from one end of the knob to the other — so it gets dirtier without getting louder.
- MIX is on the face and defaults to 100%. Nothing dry is blended in behind your back to flatter the transients.
The transport
- WOW FLUT is continuous, bounded instability built from several motions at once. One sine is a chorus and everybody hears it.
- CATCH is the machine failing on its own: it drags, jams, and then recovers. It fires on its own clock, and there is a trigger on the panel for when you want one now.
- BEND is somebody doing it on purpose. Drag left and the transport falls behind; throw right and it runs ahead into the runway it has been keeping. Let go and it springs back. While your hand is on it, it wins — any catch in progress is cancelled rather than fought with.
The display
The reels, the tape, and the two heads. The outline is what you sent it, the fill is what came back, and the gap between them is the tape holding on. Above them a pair of VU meters against a 0 VU reference, so how hard you are hitting it is on the panel instead of in a manual.
Latency
About 128 ms, and it is reported to the host, so delay compensation lines your mix back up. That reserve is the runway a forward BEND spends — there is no future to run into without it. RESERVE is in the parameter tree: set it to zero for a latency-free insert, and BEND becomes a drag-only control, which is what a tape actually offers.
Formats and compatibility
On macOS, TRIPLE OG installs as an Audio Unit (AU) and a VST3 plug-in, plus a standalone application. macOS 10.13 or later, universal binary for both Apple Silicon and Intel.
On Windows it is a VST3. Windows 10 or later, 64-bit. It arrives as a zip you drop into your VST3 folder; there is no installer yet.
Any sample rate your session runs at. No internet connection required after activation.
Price
$29.
Gazillion Industries LLC