This Swiss machine, available from 1970 to 1988, was a popular workhorse for multitrack recording, and many classic albums were made on them.
More familiar to many will be Tape Machine 80, an emulation of the popular Studer 24-track, two-inch A80 MkII. (The brochure for the original machines suggests that stereo recording was possible on quarter-inch tape but some of these machines could also take half-inch tape and be used for four-track recording.) It lends a subtle but distinctive coloration to the sound. Tape Machine 440 (shown above) is based on the US-built Ampex 440B machine that dates back to the late 1960s. All four plug-in emulations offer control over tape speed, head selection, record bias, drive and EQ as well as a true stereo feature that aims to reproduce the small but important differences between channels. The user can tweak drive, bias and record/play EQ controls to fine-tune the sonic character where the presets don't do the trick - turn the bias down a little to warm up the sound, turn it up a touch higher to add presence, or overdrive the input for more saturation. All four emulations have similar controls and suitable level metering so operation is straightforward. The applications for these plug-ins encompass both individual track processing and overall mix processing. IK Multimedia have tried to satisfy both the visual and auditory senses with detailed modelling of the sound of four classic tape machines, each complemented by photo-realistic graphics with rotating reels. The machines' designers would be shocked, but for some reason most of us just love the way all that sounds! And wear in the mechanical parts gives rise to frequency modulation effects known as wow (slow modulation) and flutter (higher frequency modulation). Also, the tape itself is non-linear, introducing distortion that gets more severe at higher signal levels. Most tape machines, for example, have a far less than ideal phase response (square wave in, mangled blob out). The attraction of a tape machine today lies in its imperfections - as with vinyl (also far from perfect), we've come to appreciate the sound character of those imperfections. There's a certain romantic attachment to tape, rooted in both its physicality and its sound.