ValhallaExistentialCrisis

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valhallasound wrote:
dangayle wrote:Nah, I figured it out.

Valhalla missed out on the year of Tape emulations and Sean is feeling sad and lonely and confused, went out and bought a canary yellow 1977 Honda Accord with only an 8-track player in it and drove all around the Puget Sound wondering “what have I done with my life, I missed my big chance to release a tape emulation and now everyone is going to think I’m a bandwagoner if I do that, and anyway, I missed my chance.”

So the truth is, he’s selling the business and going into the banana stand business. There’s always money in the banana stand.
That was pretty much my plan after college. Except instead of a canary yellow 1977 Accord, it was going to be an early 80s Datsun truck. Me and my friend were going to drive up and down the coast, eat deli sandwiches, and talk about the deli sandwiches.
Also, if there was a "year of Tape emulations," I TOTALLY missed out on it. To the point that I didn't even know that there was a year of tape emulations. To be fair, the last few years were pretty chaotic, so I may not have been tracking all of the developments in the plugin world that closely.

The tape emulations I have heard are all really polite. Probably because they are emulating Studers, or Revoxes, or something nice. Very different than some 8-track tape made into a loop, popped into an RE-201, and played for several hundred hours straight.

The tape in all of my tape echoes is NASTY, to the point where I wonder if they are typical of how these sound. Every other tape echo I have heard is pretty nasty as well. It took several years for me to track down an RE-201 in decent shape. Several of the 201s that I have seen were working on the edge of stability, and would stick on a certain part of the tape, shutting everything down.

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Image

OK, that is all sorts of beautiful.

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valhallasound wrote:Image

OK, that is all sorts of beautiful.
I actually had that car. Sheepskin seat covers, carpeted dash board, plaid rear seats, AM/8-track player and all :) got it for $900 at some shady dealership. Loved that car.

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valhallasound wrote:I vasty prefer the Echoboy Jr. interface. I feel like Soundtoys nailed it with that one.
Yup! The interface is much better. They've gotta be thinking of redesigns for the others, surely :pray:

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valhallasound wrote: The tape emulations I have heard are all really polite.

The tape in all of my tape echoes is NASTY...
Exactly. I have been waiting years for a plugin that accurately models the crunchiness of old tape. Strymon El Capistan has some of that magic, but I'm not interested in using external effects.

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If I need a virtual tape, I just use Satin. It can do heeeeeeeaps of things and sound absolutely stellar at it.

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Pedal-wise, I had the Catalinbread Belle Epoch (Echoplex emulation). I REALLY liked it. I liked the random wow and flutter, and the different sound of balancing the Echo Sustain and Rec Level in different ways. I used to plug a microphone in and just make noises and talk weird into it and dick around with the knobs making self-oscillating nonsense.

Eventually, when I was bored but poor, I did a straight swap on a guitar forum - the Belle Epoch for the Catalinbread Echorec, which I still have, and which is also great fun in a slightly different way. It's not quite as nuts as the Belle Epoch, though, and I wish I still had both.

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EdGrip wrote:Pedal-wise, I had the Catalinbread Belle Epoch (Echoplex emulation). I REALLY liked it. I liked the random wow and flutter, and the different sound of balancing the Echo Sustain and Rec Level in different ways. I used to plug a microphone in and just make noises and talk weird into it and dick around with the knobs making self-oscillating nonsense.

Eventually, when I was bored but poor, I did a straight swap on a guitar forum - the Belle Epoch for the Catalinbread Echorec, which I still have, and which is also great fun in a slightly different way. It's not quite as nuts as the Belle Epoch, though, and I wish I still had both.
I feel like the Echorec might be easier to emulate than the Echoplex, at least on the FV-1 DSP used by Catalinbread.

The modulation of the real Echorec would be based on the echo drum wobbling slightly off axis, which would add a slight "wow" to the signal that is mainly periodic. In other words, a sine wave. The FV-1 DSP can do periodic modulation with no problem.

An Echoplex will have a TON of random modulation. The randomness happens on different time scales. This is hard to do on the FV-1, as there is no built in random function, and creating low frequency random signals is very difficult on that chip.

The Catalinbread pedals appear to use analog circuitry for the loop filtering and tape saturation. This is just a great idea. The Echoplex preamp is AMAZING for slamming the input of a tube amp (Neil Young and Eddie Van Halen both use an EP-3 for this purpose). This is the sort of thing that a plugin just won't emulate - it is about impedances between the guitar and pedal, and the interaction between the pedal and the first input tube in the amp.

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EvilDragon wrote:If I need a virtual tape, I just use Satin. It can do heeeeeeeaps of things and sound absolutely stellar at it.
Between Satin and Goodhertz Wow Control, you can get pretty much any tape sound you can imagine, EXCEPT for hard/dirty echos. The delays in Satin are too polite, very smooth and buttery. Wow Control doesn’t have delay, which is a shame.

Combine Wow Control with a quality delay system? Now we’re cooking.

Modnetic is pretty dang close, but I’d rather have traditional delay effect controls rather than emulated tape delay controls.

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dangayle wrote:
EvilDragon wrote:If I need a virtual tape, I just use Satin. It can do heeeeeeeaps of things and sound absolutely stellar at it.
Between Satin and Goodhertz Wow Control, you can get pretty much any tape sound you can imagine, EXCEPT for hard/dirty echos. The delays in Satin are too polite, very smooth and buttery. Wow Control doesn’t have delay, which is a shame.

Combine Wow Control with a quality delay system? Now we’re cooking.

Modnetic is pretty dang close, but I’d rather have traditional delay effect controls rather than emulated tape delay controls.
I'm hoping Sean can provide some healthy competetion to Wow Control. Great plugin, but I can't quite stomach the price point. And I missed that lovely sale they had for Pi Day.

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dangayle wrote:I want a delay that is as easy to set as Ableton’s ping pong delay, but with better sound. I have a bunch of great sounding delays (Tekturon, Relayer, Echoboy, Modnetic), but I never feel that getting a simple delay out of them is as easy and good sounding as my DD3/DD5/Flashback/Echo Park delay pedals.
I just realized that FreqEcho fits the bill better than any other plugin I have. How did I overlook it?

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Any updates?

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dangayle wrote:Any updates?
Still driving the orange Element w/pop top. No progress on getting the 1977 yellow Accord.

Personally, I'd probably prefer the 1980s 4WD Tercel. But that's just me.

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I hate to be an internet-corrector-guy, but the pic is of a 77 civic.

Only slightly related:

My sister drove a blue 77 accord hatchback.

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ontol wrote:I hate to be an internet-corrector-guy, but the pic is of a 77 civic.
I know. After I saw the picture again, I saw that CVCC in there. My bad.
Only slightly related:

My sister drove a blue 77 accord hatchback.
Our family drove a 1977 Toyota Corona station wagon. Not a Honda, I know. My cars since 1995 or so have been Hondas, though.

It's weird to see so many 80s Toyotas in the "This Is America" video, BTW.

ExistentialCrisis progress: yes, but nothing worth announcing in the next few months. Honestly, launching a product in the summer isn't a great idea. Folks are out doing other stuff. I won't announce the release until it is actually available for demo/purchase, but I'll probably be blogging about related content this summer.

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