Cassette Tape Bouncer

Cassette Tape Bouncer is a digital approximation of a good quality three-head cassette tape deck from the mid-80’s. As such, it is an emulator which attempts to mimic the audio characteristics of cassette tape through modeling different parameters considered influental on the audio.

Tape types:

• Type I (normal)

• Type II (chrome, CrO2)

• Type IV (metal)

There are no user settings, other than tape type selection. 

Full transparency:
Tape bouncing is degradation of the original signal. There is no objective improvement of the audio in fidelity or accuracy.

Why use tape bouncing:
Tape bouncing introduces characteristics like high-frequency roll-off, non-linear distortion, transient softening and many more. Such characteristics can be perceived as pleasent sounding, removing harshness, introduce warmth and noise can mask quantization noise for a less sterile sounding mix.
Some users of tape bouncing states that it adds musicality. This is somewhat suspect, but it might be better explained like this: We do not add bounce because it is better, we add it because we want certain artifacts.

I tape bounce all music and sound effects I create.

List of some of the parameters used:

• LF High-Pass Cutoff 

• Head-Bump Frequency 

• Head-Bump Gain

• Presence Center Frequency

• Presence Gain 

• HF Roll-Off Cutoff

• HF Tilt Gain

• Saturation Drive

• Saturation Curve Strength

• Wow Depth 

• Wow Rate 

• Flutter Depth 

• Flutter Rate 

• Hiss Level 

• Hiss Modulation Amount

• Hiss Spectral Tilt

• Stereo HF Offset Range 

• Stereo HF Offset L/R

• Output Gain

….and others.