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The great part about tape machine plugins is that they offer many of the luxuries of analog recorders, with almost none of the drawbacks. For instance, one of the worst parts about working with tape (aside from editing) was dealing with all of the noise. While I’m writing this the plugin is on sale for €26.10 (which is 64% off) so feel free to check out if this offer is still available. Aberrant DSP SketchCassette SketchCassette is a VST inspired by 4-track cassette recorders.

Nexus type vst free. Although we have all the tools we need to produce extremely clean and precise music without any unwanted artefacts there’s something about the imperfections of analog recording equipment that triggers certain emotions in us.

So if you want to produce lofi music it’s important to pick the right sounds and samples from the start. You could, for example, sample old vinyl records or buy an old drum machine. It would however be easier to just get your hands on a decent LoFi House or Hip Hop sample pack.

Once you have a selection of cool sounds & samples you can further refine your music to sound like it was recorded a few decades ago. Luckily there are plenty of cool lofi plugins available so you don’t have to actually own an old tape machine. Here are some of the best options:

Free LoFi Plugins

I want to start this list with a bunch of free lofi VSTs, because I know that a lot of producers are one a budget, especially when they’re still going to school (or music is their only income lol). That said, you don’t always have to spend money to get some quality software. The freeware in this list can easily compete with some of the paid stuff I’ll mention later on.

BVKER LoFi Rack

The “LoFi Rack” is a free Ableton Rack based on Live’s stock plugins. It comes with 8 macros allowing you to decrease the band width, add vinyl crackles, detune and distort the source sound. Unfortunately it’s only available for Ableton Live users, so if you’re using another DAW you have to pick some of the other options in this list. If you’re using Ableton however, hop on my newsletter and I’ll send you a free download link.

iZotope Vinyl

As the name suggests, iZotope’s “Vinyl” is a plugin emulating the characteristic imperfections of vinyl records. Since the freeware only comes with a handful of parameters it’s easy to use and setting it up won’t take much time. What I love the most is that you can adjust the year of your “recording”. A must have for every lofi producer if you ask me.

Spitfire Audio Labs

Labs is a free software instrument made by the London based sound design company Spitfire Audio. There are several extensions available, including pianos, brass, choirs and synths. Most of these instruments are rather unique and therefore a nice addition to the basic instruments libraries you probably already own. The cool part about Labs is that it comes with only a handful of parameters so you won’t spend 10 years trying to get everything perfect. The sound either fits your production or not.

Tritik Krush

Tritik’s Krush is an effect plugin with 3 different distortion types. A bitcrusher , a downsampler and an analog drive knob. It further comes with 2 filters and an LFO that can be used to modulate every parameter. It’s available for both Windows and Mac in VST, AU and AAX format so really everyone can get their hands on this.

HY-Lofi2

This one is a free bit quantizer, waveshaper & filter plugin made by Tadashi Suginomori from HY-Plugins. It’s meant to process “audio to give it a low fidelity sound”. Just like Krush it combines different distortion modes with high and low-pass filters. More precisely it has one drive knob and a quantizer, which can run in different modes and qualities.

Legowelt Ableton Racks

Legowelt is a dutch producer known for releasing samples from analog hardware units, but you’ll also find some Ableton Racks on his website, including the Smackos Tape Station, the Smackos Lemuria Vintage Sampler Simulator, the Smackos 808 Simulator and the Smackos Amiga 909.

Sound-Base Audio Retro Boy

The Retro Boy is a Windows only VST synth. It comes with one oscillator, 7 waveforms and controls for ADSR, vibrato and decimation, which makes it perfect for Chiptune or 8-bit music. Since there isn’t much processing going on, the synth is quite CPU-friendly.

Best LoFi Plugins

Although you can definitely do some cool stuff with the freeware I mentioned so far there are some paid options no lofi producer should miss out on. A lot of them do more or less the same thing so in the end it’s up to personal preference (and budget), which ones you should get. Luckily most of these plugins aren’t that expensive compared to some of the stuff by other brands.

XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color

Probably the most hyped plugin of this list is the R-c20 Retro Color by XLN Audio. It combines 6 different effect units, including noise, wobble, distort, digital, space and magnetic. Combining these options basically allows you to recreate any lofi characteristic you could possibly think of. If I could only pick one plugin of this list I’d probably go for this one, since it comes with the most features.

Baby Audio Super VHS

Considering that Baby Audio is a rather new plugin company, their products already gained quite much attention. Super VHS again combines multiple effects, including a distortion unit, a retro sounding VST reverb and detune knob labeled “drift”. All knobs sound surprisingly good and I really dig the design.

D16 Group Decimort 2

Decimort 2 is a bitcrusher on steroids. It offers two optional anti-alias filters, adjustable jitter, two quantization methods and controllable dithering. If you’re looking for a cool bitcrusher, this is definitely the one you should get your hands on. With less than 50 bucks it’s also pretty affordable.

AudioThing Vinyl Strip

The Vinyl Strip is just like RC-20 a multi-effect plugin consisting of 6 different modules: Distortion, Compressor, Bit Crusher, Tilt EQ, Vintage Reverb, and something they call Vinylizer. In contrast to most plugins mentioned in this list, you can change the signal flow simply via drag-n-drop. On their website is stated that you can activate your license without an internet connection, which is pretty cool if you still live in a cave 😉

Devious Machines Texture

Texture is a plugin I just recently found out about watching Virtual Riot’s production workshop he did for Cymatics. It allows you to add noise to any kind of source sound. The cool part is that unlike similar effects you can even load your own noise samples and can adjust the exact frequency range, amount, ADSR and stuff like that.

Cableguys ShaperBox

When it comes to beat making, there’s one plugin every FL Studio user slaps on their melodies: Gross Beat (you’ll find plenty of memes about this). The problem is that it can’t be used in other DAWs (at least on Mac). This is where the Cableguys come into play. Their ShaperBox combines different effects that can all be modulated. The Time one is especially interesting for lofi producers, because it allows you to play back your melodies in halftime, add cool pitching effects and mix everything in with the dry signal.

Initial Audio Analog Pro

Analog Pro is once again a plugin meant to bring your digital audio tracks to live by simulating analog hardware. It comes with a variety of adjustable controls, including Noise Level, Noise Type, Impulse Type, Impulse Mix, Emphasis, Stereo, Lowcut, Highcut, Wow, Flutter and Amount. While I’m writing this the plugin is on sale for €26.10 (which is 64% off) so feel free to check out if this offer is still available.

Aberrant DSP SketchCassette

SketchCassette is a VST inspired by 4-track cassette recorders. It comes with most features the other plugins in this list have. Since it’s however available for only $20 it’s particularly interesting for producers on a tight budget.

Goodhertz Wow Control

Wow Control focuses on the weird and random modulations of analog playback devices. According to their website Goodhertz has carefully studied the essence of three different tape machines to make sure their plugin is the most comprehensive tape model they ever heard. I haven’t tried it out to be honest, but there are some videos about it on YouTube so feel free to check them out if you’d like to learn more about it.

PSPaudioware VintageWarmer2

The PSP Vintage Warmer is a tool simulating the saturation of analog compression / limiting. It comes with classic compression controls, such as knee or release time, and since it can run in multiband mode you can further control the individual bands a bit. In contrast to most usual compressors it comes with a big drive knob. Since it also comes with a mix knob you can drive the compression / saturation quite hard and mix it in just a bit to make your drums or vocals or whatever a bit fatter.

Wavesfactory Cassette

According to Wavesfactory’s website “Cassette is an audio plugin that imparts the unique character and sonic imprint of an often maligned recording medium”. You can also get your hands on their free Cassette Transport plugin, which “simulates the sound of tape speeding up and slowing down”. Or with other words: it’s a pretty cool tape stop plugin.

Psychic Modulation EchoMelt

Echomelt is “designed for adding character, texture and warmth to your sounds”. It doesn’t look that stunning, but it comes with an echo and chorus unit, which sets it apart from the other options in this list.

Aphex Vintage Exciter

The Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter by Waves is modeled on a tube-powered hardware unit. It allows you to increase high frequencies without raising the level too much.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are plenty of lofi plugins available that make your productions sound like they were recorded with a toaster (or something like that). The free offers, especially Vinyl and Labs are no brainers, since . well, they’re free, so make sure to download them straight away if you haven’t done so yet 😉

Quick question… What’s a good way to inject analog life into a cold digital mix?

Well, you could start with recording your tracks using a tape machine… But in this digital world, who’s got time for that?

So one of your best bets is a tape emulation plugin. And this post will introduce a few of them to you. Plus go over a few of their features.

So, what are the best tape emulation plugins, you say?

Quick answer: Check out the Virtual Tape Machines (VTM) by Slate Digital and Satin by u-he. Those two are our top recommends, with Satin being the cheapest.

Vst Tape Stop

But there are some other great Waves plugins here for you if you’d want to take look at those.

Now, let’s take a closer look 🙂

Table of Contents

Find more great gear here:

Tape Emulation Plugin Buying Guide

Back in the day of analog produced music, engineers used big tape machines to record tracks (Wikipedia link). In fact, within the age of the DAW you can actually see this “tape machine” metaphor in use in the way the digital audio workstation works.

Recorder Vst Free

On your arranger view, there are strips of rows that contain either your MIDI notes or waveform of your audio files. You can cut these up, splice, copy, past, move them around… These are your “tapes.”

But they won’t have that “tape sound” because, well, they are visual representations of digits on a computer screen. A great GUI to work with… but not like the real thing.

In comes the tape saturation plugin, which is used to emulate the sound of those old analog tape machines of yore, giving you that warmth that is usually limited in the digital realm.

How does Tape Saturation work?

Tape saturation introduced ‘warmth’ into the music recorded on tapes in earlier times.

When instruments or vocalists were taped and re-taped multiple times and mixed with one another at various stages producing, you would’ve gotten various stages of warmth in your mix.

Each of these tape recordings had minor noise and distortions that are not evident in each recording. But they do accumulate in the final mix to introduce a warming effect.

As time went on, analog tape recording in modern day digital technologies eliminated these distortions. But we also lost that warm sound effect that the noise introduced.

We call these noises “audio saturation.” More about what that is from this Music Radar article.

Moving forward, software developers, working with engineers, created a plugin to deliberately introduce noise into the tracks, hence emulating the effect of tape records.

This technique is referred to as Tape Emulation and is typically applied by adding plugins to your desired track, or to your entire mix. The tape saturation plugins can be applied to the output of each instrument or can be collectively applied to the master track, or even both!

One of the cool “side effects, so to speak, is that you not only get a more rich sound with grit and character, but a tape emulation plugin can really help to booth the apparent loudness off you mix if done right.

With all that said, let’s take a look at best saturation plugins to get.

Best Tape Emulation Plugins to Get

Several tape emulation plugins are available on the market today. Here are some of the most recommended online.

Virtual Tape Machines (VTM) by Slate Digital

The VTM plugin by Slate Digital provides a tape effects on music recordings by emulating two authentic tape machines, a 16-track 2-inch tape machine, and a ½ inch stereo mastering deck, and providing control of bias, tape speed, and tape type. These options give you sufficient flexibility to apply tape effects on recordings, plus control the level of warmth to hear in your tracks.

It requires a minimum Quad Core i5 processor and 4GBs of RAM and supports multiple plugin formats for both MAC and Windows computers.

Several users recommend the use of Slate’s VTM plugin although the majority of them highlight that it tends to make the sound slightly louder, so you might need some sound normalization, just as a heads up.

Since it emulates the effect of two good-sounding tape machines, it is known to appropriately mimic the tape effect, provided the controls are well adjusted. You can check out thread over at Gearslutz to see what others say.

The plugin’s interface is also super user-friendly which allow you to adjust the controls freely. It’s also quite affordable, and many producers say that it’s worth its cost. Check it out.

Demonstration

Satin by u-he

Another great plugin, the Satin plugin by u-he models the different components of a tape machine, rather than the machine as a single unit, and emulates their interaction between one another to produce the desired distortion. The key feature of this saturation plugin is its flexibility, as it gives you the ability to select the parts of the machine to be emulated… it’s as if you’re constructing your own customized tape machine!

It also allows producers to introduce the desired delay and flange, by introducing up to 4 tape head emulations and phase shifting capabilities. Also, Satin is featured with a decoder that can be used for format conversion of the recorded track. Pretty good.

As far as compatibility goes, Satin can operate on MAC, Windows and Linux operating systems with as low as 1 GB RAM, yet the higher the available RAM, the faster its operation will be.

Many users prefer Satin because of its high flexibility and a large number of parameters available for user control, which makes them able to reach a specific tone or a particular feel that they’re looking for. It’s particularly preferred on the subtle settings where it is found to provide the best output. However, although its specifications mention only 1GB RAM requirements, several users say that it consumes a lot of CPU resources if a large number of variables are included in the emulation process simultaneously. So if you have a powerful laptop or computer with recommended specs, you should be good.

Demonstration

Waves J37 Tape

Many of you may not need any introductions when it comes to Waves. As for the plugin itself, Waves J37 Tape was built by emulating the famous Abbey Road Studio tape machine together with three tape emulation models. Collectively the plugin provides accurate emulation of the tape effect with good warmth. Image having an Abbey Roads tape machine in your DAW? Anyway, it enables bias, tape speed, wow and flutter controls among others, on a machine level emulation, as well as a tape delay feature with three delay types.

Compatibility-wise, it operates on MAC and Windows operating systems and requires 8GB of RAM for smooth operation, and is supported by most audio hosts. The original price of this product is quite high for some, but Waves is known for offering big discounts from time to time, so take a look to see if you’re lucky.

Users are mostly highly satisfied with its delay implementation capabilities, a few maybe not so about its bulky interface. Also, since the recommended settings state 8GB RAM, it is quite heavy on the host CPU. Moreover, it is quite sensitive and may produce extreme effects to minor changes in the distortions applied. Good plugin overall, but take those considerations into account.

Demonstration

Waves Kramer Master Tape

Another plugin by Waves, the Kramer Master Tape is an earlier tape emulator produced before they introduce J37. Kramer Master is modeled on a vintage ¼” reel-to-reel machine and has adjustable controls for bias, wow, flutter and tape speed. Kramer Master is slightly more expensive than the J37 product of the same company although J37 was released later.

Reviews on Waves Kramer Master are quite controversial, particularly when compared to the J37 of the same company. While some users are satisfied with it, the majority of users who experienced the Kramer Master were disappointed with the output and had to purchase the J37 to get the effects they desire. It is thought that Waves released Kramer as a response to the release of Slate’s VTM and hence was rushed through and not-well-thought-of. Nevertheless, users have agreed on its desirability for some effects, but it is not recommended as a complete all-in-one product.

That said, it works on MAC and Windows operating systems and requires 8GBs of RAM. If you want to check it out, take a look.

Demonstration

TapeDesk by Overloud

Overloud TapeDesk is a tape emulator plugin that combines both a tape machine model and multiple console models to provide the desired warm analog effect. In particular, it simulates a 2” 24-track tape machine and three analog consoles while faithfully replicating the interaction between all four parts.

Perhaps one of the best reasons for getting TapeDesk is that it requires low CPU resources to simulate all the sub-components in the original units it models. So if you’re watching your computer’s power resources, this could be a good option for you.

There are generally positive reviews from users online. If you’re interested in demoing the product online, some were usually frustrated by the complicated procedure needed to get an offline demo. Once it is operational, users are satisfied with its output response, particularly with its noticeable low CPU usage.

Demonstration

Final Thoughts

That said, which one to get?

Tape Machine Vst Free

Well, the Satin plugin by u-he provides a larger number of controls when compared to Slate’s VTM. This is because it allows you to introduce the effect of each component of the tape machine on its own rather than controlling the overall tape machine response. For that reason, Satin wins as the best tape saturation plugin.

Nevertheless, Satin requires more CPU resources for the emulation process which could be quite heavy on the computer used. Slate’s VTM will be less demanding, so it wins out on Satin for that. Keep in mind the cost of both products is quite comparable to Satin being slightly cheaper.

Kramer Master and J37 are both products by Waves. Users who have experienced both tend to prefer J37 as it provides a larger number of presets and hence better control and better outputs. Nevertheless, J37 has been reported to consume higher CPU resources; yet this means that it applies deeper processes to the records which justify its more desirable output.

While Overloud’s TapeDesk may not provide the best or most desirable output when compared to the other four products, it is highly recommended for people with scarce CPU resources as its usage is significantly low. This highly-desirable feature gives this product a strong plus point when compared with all others.

Both Waves products (J37 and Kramer Master) are more expensive than the other plugins described in this article.

Satin by u-he is the cheapest whereas Slate’s VTM and TapeDesk by Overloud have almost the same price.