fTape - fBox Audio

Records have been made on tape for more than fifty years, and tape is not a neutral thing to record onto. It rounds the peaks, adds weight at the bottom, softens the top, and never quite holds a steady speed. Most of what people mean when they say a record sounds warm is tape.

fTape is six different machines, not one machine with six settings. A cheap reel-to-reel from a living room. A compact cassette. A semi-pro deck on narrow tape. A precision broadcast machine. A wide-format professional studio deck. And a vintage studio machine from the middle of the 1960s.

Every machine keeps its own settings, so you can try another and come back to find the first exactly as you left it.

Six Machines, One Plugin

The machine is the instrument

Home Deck

You will hear it straight away

A domestic reel-to-reel from a living room rather than a studio, and it behaves like one: a big warm lump at the bottom, a top end that gives up early, plenty of hiss and a transport that wanders. Two speeds, and the whole personality hangs off that switch.

Cassette

Hissy, watery, unmistakable

The narrowest tape here running at the slowest speed, with the most hiss and the least stability of anything in fTape. Three tape formulations, from cheap and mushy to clean and wide. Switchable noise reduction, complete with the tracking errors that came with it.

Multitrack

The home studio sound

Narrow tracks on quarter-inch tape, which means early saturation, more hiss, and audible bleed between the channels. More grip than a consumer deck and more grit than a studio one. A pitch wheel bends it a full octave either way, and the tape character follows.

Broadcast

Tight, quiet and clean

The precision machine that sat between the home studio and the professional one. It holds speed properly, the noise floor drops away, and a separate playback head softens the very top rather than dulling it. The only machine here with no bleed between channels at all.

Studio 2"

The expensive one

Wide tape, the most headroom of the six, and transformers on the way in and out that account for a good deal of the sound. Push it hard and it thickens rather than dirties. This is the machine behind a great many classic records.

Heritage

Dark, soft and alive

A studio machine from the middle of the 1960s, and the least accurate thing here by a wide margin. Heavy transformers, early solid-state electronics with an edge of their own, soft heads, and a bandwidth that runs out early. Coloured at every setting.

Every one of these is a starting point, not a fixed sound. The descriptions above are how each machine arrives, not what it is stuck as. Turn the hiss off and the cassette goes quiet. Take the wobble to zero and the transport holds rock steady. Pull the bias back and the darkest machine here brightens up. Every part of what makes a machine sound like itself is on a knob, so you can keep the character you wanted and leave behind the parts you did not.

Everything Pulls On Everything Else

The way it does on real tape

Driving the record level harder does not just add more distortion, it changes the kind of distortion you get. Low settings come through comparatively clean and quiet. Push it and the machine saturates, compresses and thickens, and the sound moves rather than simply getting dirtier.

Bias is the interactive one. On a real machine it is a calibration control, and moving it away from the middle reshapes the top end, the saturation and the magnetic behaviour all at once. Under-biased is brighter, harder and grittier with a touch more noise. Over-biased is darker, smoother and more controlled. Small moves count.

The wobble comes from a modelled transport rather than an oscillator, so the slow wander and the faster shimmer on top of it never repeat the same way twice. The hiss and the motor hum sit under everything. And the low-end bump sits where a playback head would put it, which moves as you change speed.

How Much Life This Tape Has Had

The Age knob decides whether the reel is fresh out of its box or has been round the block. Wind it up and dropouts start to appear, the top end loses a little more, the noise comes up, the channels start leaking into each other, and a faint ghost of the audio prints through from the layer of tape wound next to it.

The transport is drawn on the panel and it follows your DAW. Reels for the five reel machines, a cassette shell for the sixth. They turn while the song plays and stop when it does, run faster at the faster speeds, slow down when a machine is pitched down, and the tape pack moves from one reel to the other as the song goes on.

Shared Controls

The same toolkit, whichever mode you are in

Rec Level

The main control: how hard the record head is driven. It changes the colour and the level together, so reach for the output trim after you move it.

Bias

The calibration control, and the most interactive knob here. It moves the top end, the saturation and the magnetic character all at once.

Noise and Wow

Hiss and motor hum on one knob, transport instability on another. Take them to zero for a silent, rigid machine, or wind them up until it is openly seasick.

HF Trim

Brightness after the tape. Put back some of what the tape took off, or push it further down.

Age

How much life this tape has had. Fresh out of the box at zero, and by the top there are dropouts, print-through and channels leaking into one another.

Mix

Keeps your original signal intact and sits the tape underneath it. The way to get the weight and the warmth with the transients still in front.

Soft Bypass

Mutes the tape machine but leaves the trims and the unit's own noise floor in circuit, so the level does not jump as you compare. Use your host's bypass when you want a completely clean one.

Every parameter is automatable from your DAW, including the mode selector itself, and fTape runs anywhere the suite does: on a track in your DAW, in an insert slot in fBox Console or the standalone application, or in a slot in fBox Rack.

Your Unit

Every unit is different. Keep the one you like.

Serial No. 7C4A-19E8-B035-D6F1

Every instance is minted with its own serial number and its own character, the small manufacturing differences that make this unit sound like this unit and no other.

Every tape machine has its own voice, and so does every fTape. One is a little warmer at the bottom. Another holds the top end a fraction longer. The point where the tape starts compressing sits at its own place, and the wow and flutter have their own rhythm. It is the same model, but it is not the same machine.

Every new instance can be a different unit, or it can be the one you have chosen to keep. The Unit button beside the serial is where you decide.

Saved units live in your Documents folder, a folder per product, so you can find them, back them up and copy them between machines.

A unit is the character. A patch card is the character plus everything you set on top of it. Save a patch card and it carries the unit it was made on as well as the settings, so loading one back gives you a choice: Recall Unit brings that machine back with it, character and all, while Apply Settings Only keeps the unit you are on now and takes just the knob positions.

You cannot choose a unit's character any more than you can choose the character of a real machine. But you can learn it, and you can keep the one you love.

At A Glance

Six Machines

Home Deck, Cassette, Multitrack, Broadcast, Studio 2 inch and Heritage. Each a separate machine with its own controls, not a preset.

Starting Points, Not Presets

Each machine arrives with its own character, and every part of that character is on a knob. Keep what you wanted and turn off what you did not.

Independent Per Machine

Every machine remembers its own settings. Try another and come back to find the first exactly as you left it.

Speeds That Change Everything

Most machines have two, and the switch moves the low bump, the top end, the noise, the saturation and the stability together.

Playback Curves

Broadcast and the two studio machines offer switchable playback curves, from warm and full underneath to tighter and leaner.

Age

Dropouts, extra high-frequency loss, more noise, more bleed between channels, and a ghost of the audio printed through from the next layer of tape.

A Transport That Follows You

Reels for the five reel machines and a cassette shell for the sixth, turning with your DAW and moving the tape pack as the song plays.

Your Own Unit

Serial-seeded character throughout the tape path. Roll a new one, save the ones you like, and pin your favourite so every instance opens as that unit.

Three Quality Tiers

Eco for tracking and dense sessions. Studio for mixing. Master for final mixes and mastering.