4/22/2021 0 Comments Studer A800 Mkiii
In practice, the Bias and HF Driver parameters can be used to alter the saturation characteristics.Their latest plugin takes on perhaps their most demanding challenge yet.A year in development, the Studer A800 plugin for the UAD2 DSP platform is officially sanctioned by Studer and modelled after a 24channel Studer A800 twoinch tape machine.UA say that their plugin takes tape emulation to new heights, mimicking and reproducing every nuance of analogue tape compression.
Studer A800 Mkiii Driver Parameters CanWe decided to put their claims to the test and pit the plugin against the real thing, in a classic analogueversusdigital shootout. Over the years, a lot of classic albums have been recorded on it, by artists including Metallica, Stevie Wonder, Tom Petty and Jeff Buckley, to name but a few. And although twoinch tape is increasingly scarce and expensive, and tapemachine maintenance is timeconsuming, studios around the world still rely on the performance and the sound of analogue multitrack recorders. Recording to tape yields a subtle coloration and compression that is often described as warm and cohesive, with solid low end and overall presence making instruments glue together in a musical way. No longer limited by track counts in a DAW environment, tape machines are often used purely for these sonic qualities, to record drums, bass and guitars. These are then transferred into a DAW, to combine tape sound with the freedom of editing. To make things even more complicated, they modelled the characteristics of four different tape formulations: 250, 456, 900 and GP9. The UAD Studer plugin comes complete with virtual spinning reels. You can choose to monitor either the input signal or from the sync or repro heads. A closer look reveals that the original transport buttons have been replaced with four buttons for choosing the virtual signal path: by selecting Input, Sync or Repro its possible to listen to the input signal, the signal coming from the syncrecord head or that coming from the repro head. The choice of tape formulation has a close relationship with the calibration level of the tape machine; as the formulations improved over the years, higher recording levels became possible, thus lowering the noise floor. In normal use, the calibration would correspond to the tapes output level, but some users would undercalibrate to leave more headroom. With the Cal knob, its possible to choose four different calibration levels from 3 to 9dB, with correspondingly different noise floors. The speed of the tape will also affect the noise floor, but more importantly it will alter the frequency shift, head bump (the lowfrequency boost associated with tape) and distortion characteristics, with 7.5 inches per second being the slowest setting and 30ips the fastest. For pop and rock music today, the most often-used speed is 15ips, due to its lowend response and general compression characteristics. The plugins input and output level controls allow you to drive the level to and from tape to your requirements. True to the original hardware, there are controls for adjusting the Bias, HF Driver, Sync and Repro EQ, and Emphasis EQ. A common technique is to increase the bias voltage beyond the ideal setting for the chosen tape formulation, producing a warmer and slightly saturated sound perfect for drums, bass and electric guitars. The HF Driver is used to tune the HF content of the signal prior to going to tape, to make up for the highfrequency loss due to bias optimisation.
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