so let's just hear how this sounds right off the bat and you'll notice i've disabled
all the other effects that are on my master track here so all you're hearing is the waves j37
i'm zane welcome to audio tech tv where it's my goal to help you conquer the tech so you can
unleash your creative beast and today i'm looking at some of the ways that i mainly use tape
saturation in my mixes and the tape saturation plugin that i'm going to be using today is the
waves j37 tape this is an emulation of the classic abbey road j37 hardware tape machine
and this isn't an overly expensive plug-in you can typically find it on sale for around 35
and like all waves plugins it's available on mac and windows having said all that you don't need
to have this particular tape saturation plugin there's other tape saturation plugins out there
that will have similar features but this is the one that i'm using today the cool thing about
the waves j37 tape is that it's more than just a simple tape saturation tool it can also be used
as a creative effect like a tape delay and also there's some tremolo and vibrato effects in there
and i'll get into those uses a little later but as we go along i'm going to show you how i use
this plugin and i'll show you what the different settings do so by the end of this you should be
comfortable with using either this tape saturation plugin or maybe even another one so the number
one way that i use tape saturation is on my mix bus or master track or 2-bus whatever you want
to call it that's where you'll find the waves j37 tape on my tracks all the time and what i'll
typically do is choose a preset to start with and it's usually one of these two the mastering fat
tight and open or the mastering mid freak enhancer so let's start with the fat titan open and you can
hear it's added a little bit of a hiss and that's this noise level here it adds that white noise
so i always turn that right down so it's off we don't want that noise in our track unless you're
working on a lo-fi project or something like that you may want that noise i don't for this so let's
just hear how this sounds right off the bat and you'll notice i've disabled all the other effects
that are on my master track here so all you're hearing is the waves j37
so that's what that one sounds like now we can listen to the other one here's that
and you can hear it's a very subtle effect so if you aren't listening to this on headphones
or maybe through some studio monitors you may miss what it's doing but it is it's smoothing
it out and making it sound less digital which is exactly what i want on my master track that's why
i use it there all the time so using one of these presets we could probably just leave it at that
and it's going to be fine but let's test out some of the settings and like i said the first setting
i always change is that noise level make sure it's off now the next setting is the input and the
output and you'll see that by clicking this it locks them together so if i turn this
up so this makes sure that you have an even volume level going out no matter
what you set the input to and by turning it up you're increasing the amount of saturation
by turning it down you're allowing for some more airiness in the mix typically i like to have it
turned down but there's sometimes where you want to have some of that saturation on your mix bus
or master track whatever you call it and if you want you can turn this off and then you would
control these individually but let's hear what it sounds like using the in and out controls here
so you could hear as i turned the input up it really saturated the sound and then the next thing
you might want to test out and it's super easy to do this is these formula buttons here so the
first one is the 888 and this is the type of tape that you're using so it's based on the actual tape
formulas that were used with this machine so the 888 is based on the older emi tape from the 60s
and this one's likely going to add some distortion to your track and i'm not talking about the
heavy metal guitar distortion this is more of an analog imperfection kind of distortion
that can be desirable not that heavy metal guitar distortion isn't desirable it's just not desirable
on this mix and then the next one you have is the 811 and this is based on the emi tape from the 70s
and it's a little more clean but it still might add a little bit of that analog distortion and the
next model is the 815 and this is the newest and cleanest tape so if you want a more clean sound
then go with this model so what i normally do is switch between the tapes and see which one sounds
best on my track and i'll also test out the tape speeds of each formula as that's also going to
affect the sound so i'm just going to press play and i'm going to toggle between the different
formulas and i'll test out some of the speeds and you can hear what the difference is like
again you probably should be wearing headphones to really hear the differences but let's go
so the differences are kind of subtle but even these subtle little differences they all add
up into a mix and it could be the difference maker for your tracks now sometimes i'll also
play around with these bias settings as that also affects the track as well so let's just give that
a listen right now i'm going to put it on the 888 and we'll hear what these different bias settings
so i don't mind that one right there the plus three bias
usually i leave it on the nominal setting but i'll put it to plus three for this then once you
have the settings in here that you like you may wanna go back in and adjust the input and output
just in case there was some added saturation with whatever formula and speed and bias you choose but
again that's not necessary it just might be something you want to do and then finally on the
mix bus i'll go down here to these modeled tracks so two and three represent the edge of the tape
and then the two and three in the middle would be on the center of the tape and likely cleaner
sound and remember clean might not be necessarily what you want so test these out and see what works
best on your track so let's just go through and we'll test out the different settings here
again they're just subtle differences but those subtle differences
make a huge difference on your overall track and then once i'm done with these model tracks
that's it for my settings on the mixbus or master track so that would be done right there
now the next place that i typically put tape saturation is on my kick drum so let's go to
drum bus up here here's the kick drum and there's the j37 on there i'm just going to
solo the drums and there's actually a really nice preset in here it's the kick drum warmth preset
so you just put that on again i'm going to lower the noise level so we don't have that hiss so i'm
going to mute all of the other drums and now let's hear what it sounds like on the kick drum here
just kind of livens up the kick drum a little bit and that's going to help it to stand out in the
mix and again if i wanted i would just go through these settings here up until the modeled tracks
see what works and what doesn't work and then i would be done with the kick drum but i'm just
going to leave it at that setting for now then we'll go to the next place that i use the j37
which is on the actual drum buss up here i'm just going to turn the reverb off so we can
hear this a little bit better so let's just hear what this sounds like on the drum buss right now
and i have all of these set to the most clean setting so it is a very subtle effect again but
it does liven up the drums a bit so from that more subtle setting let's look at the next place that
i'll use this and this time it's going to be used as a saturation and creative effect so i have this
instance of the j37 on a vocal send and i want to use this as a tape delay and there are some great
vocal presets in here let's just hear the manual settings that i have put in right now so you can
hear what this sounds like and then i'll go through some of the vocal presets
alright so that was my manual settings i put in so right here is a cool lennon style slop delay
and it also adds some saturation as well so this is a really cool effect let's give this a listen
to hear what it sounds like on vocals
so i really like that preset there and there's some other
presets in here that might sound good as well
now let's look at the delay settings here so you can have an idea of how it works and you'll see
down here in mode it's on send return mode right now because i have this on a send track if i had
it directly on my vocal track i would switch this to insert mode and that's the difference with the
insert and send mode it's all in how you're going to be using it and then for delay type you have
slap feedback and ping pong you also have high pass and low pass filters here that you can use
to adjust your sound even more and then up here these left and right knobs adjust how much of
the delay you want on your track and then in here you have the delay timing and you can lock these
together so when you adjust it they adjust together or you can adjust them individually
however you want you can also sync this to your daw settings and then you can switch it between
things like quarter note eighth note dotted you can just play around with the timing and the
amount as you play back your audio and you can find what's best for your track and by using it
as a delay you're still getting all of that tape saturation goodness but you're also getting this
creative tape delay effect as well so now from the vocals let's go up to lead guitar which is another
place that i tend to use the j37 and this time i'm going to use the wow and flutter section over here
and these act as a tremolo and vibrato kind of effect along with the delay that we have over
here so i like to have a little bit of delay on my lead guitar and then you can just add some of
this vibrato and tremolo effect over here to get a really cool analog effect on there all right i'm
just going to switch over to a different guitar sound just one that's going to highlight the wow
and flutter a little bit more so let's load up a guitar preset here and hear how this sounds
all right so that doesn't sound too bad now i'm just going to
play around with the wow and flutter settings here
and you can hear those different vibrato and tremolo settings from each of these effects
which can be really nice on a lead guitar and then another thing that you might want to do is
add some saturation and this is extra saturation on top of any saturation that you might have
up here so let's just add some up here and then i'm going to add more saturation down here so we
can hear what that sounds like as this is a very clean guitar signal so let's dirty it up a bit
and it may not seem like a lot on some of these tracks right there i showed you kind of a more
over the top example but some of the tracks weren't as noticeable right away but all of
these little things add up in the final mix and they can be that thing that makes your
music stand apart from the rest of the pack if you want to check out more waves plugin reviews
click up here or click down here to see what youtube recommends if you liked this video please
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thank you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon