Tapewave
Introducing Tapewave – a versatile tape plugin that effortlessly blends the crisp tones of analog tape with the nostalgic charm of aged, lo-fi cassettes.
With authentic wow and flutter modulation, rich tape saturation, vibey analog compression, and six unique tape styles with adjustable tape age control, achieve the perfect balance of warmth and grit to take your mix on a journey through time.
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Cassette Character
Cassette tape has a unique character that distinguishes it from high-fidelity studio machines made famous by Studer and Ampex. For decades, countless records – many still today – have used cassettes for their distinct saturation, modulation, compression, and EQ effects.
In Tapewave, we meticulously analyzed our favorite cassette machines to faithfully replicate their unique sound and character. Instead of relying on simple saturation and basic pitch modulation like many other plugins, we delved deeper to capture the true, intricate nuances of real cassette tape.
With just a few intuitive controls, you can effortlessly dial in everything from subtle warmth to the textured sound of lo-fi, degraded tape, providing an authentic cassette experience inside your DAW.
Watch
Press play on fun
Tapewave makes getting the authentic sound of cassette tape simple, fast, and fun. Each of its six distinct tape styles comes with a matching visual aesthetic, complete with animation.
Its clean, streamlined interface ensures that shaping your signature sound is effortless, letting you dive into creativity without distraction.
Six tape styles
Switching tapes is one of the simplest ways to achieve a different sound when recording to cassette – some tapes are darker, grittier, cleaner, or purely lo-fi.
Tapewave brings this experience to life by offering six distinct tape styles, each with its own instantly recognizable character. Plus, with the Age control, you can push each tape style even further, transforming the sound from brand new to the brink of total breakdown, capturing the full range of cassette degradation.
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Crush it like cassette
Many cassette recorders featured built-in compressors that were unapologetically aggressive and effortlessly crushed transients. Tapewave takes inspiration from this by offering two powerful compression modes. One of these is Loc Mode, a detailed emulation of the legendary Shure Level Loc.
Whether you’re looking to smash your drums with heavy compression or subtly tame transients, you can easily dial in the perfect amount. Plus, you can instantly audition the compression either before or after the tape processing for maximum flexibility.
Wow & Flutter
Anyone who’s used real cassette tapes knows the magic of those unpredictable and charming pitch fluctuations known as wow & flutter. In the past, manufacturers worked hard to eliminate these irregularities, or you’d experience the best pitch modulation just before the machine broke down and needed repairs—making it a real challenge to work with.
Most plugins that claim to emulate wow & flutter rely on a simple LFO, but we’ve gone further by recreating random fluctuations that mimic the true behavior of analog tape. Best of all, unlike real tape decks, you can control exactly how much wow & flutter you want, without the risk of your machine suddenly giving out on you!
Dial in the drive
One of the best parts of using a cassette recorder is overdriving it for unique, character-filled saturation.
Our advanced saturation circuit captures the warm, analog drive you love while eliminating digital artifacts like aliasing. With 16x oversampling, Tapewave ensures a smooth, analog-like sound in your final mix. Plus, you can easily switch to standard or efficient modes to save CPU without sacrificing quality.
Unlike other plugins that rely on basic waveshaping or soft clipping, Tapewave’s tape saturation is meticulously modeled after real tape machines for an authentic sound experience.
Listen
Take a listen to some examples of Tapewave effecting a variety of different sound sources. Each audio demo plays the dry performance first, followed by the effected signal, processed only with Tapewave.
Acoustic Drums
Dusty Synth
Electric Guitar
Wavy Mini
Drum Break
Synthwave Jam
Cassette Synths
Nostalgic Piano
Sitar
Cassette Drums
Synth Stack
Tape Bass
Lofi Jam
Distorted Vocal
Juno Chords
Mello & Vox
Screenshots
Main page
Preset Browser
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- Experience the authentic sound of cassette tape in a streamlined, easy-to-use plugin
- Add life, soul and warmth to digital mixes
- Six unique tape styles, each delivering its own distinct character – from clean and punchy to dark, gritty, and lo-fi
- Take things further with Tape Age, a seamless control that transforms each tape style from pristine to worn-out – capturing a wide range of cassette degradation
- Painstakingly modelled analog tape saturation circuit
- Two analog-style compression modes, including a vibey Shure Level Loc emulation, let you crush transients or tame dynamics effortlessly
- Authentically recreate the unstable pitch movement inherent of old analog tape
- Creative Wow & Flutter engine for realistic pitch fluctuations, featuring both stable cosine curve modulation and a custom-tuned Perlin noise generator for authentic pitch warble
- Make Wow & Flutter even more unstable with the creative Drift control
- Switchable tape hiss circuit
- Punchy output maximizer for extra loudness
- Up to 16x oversampling for smooth, alias-free operation
- Internal preset browser with searching, tags and favorites
- 100 production-ready presets
- Resizable high-definition UI
- Undo and Redo parameter changes
- Available as VST3, AU and AAX on macOS and Windows
- Apple Silicon native on macOS
- Platforms supported: Mac OS and Windows
- Plugin formats: VST3, AU, AAX
- Native support for Apple Silicon chips
Any third-party audio manufacturers’ product names used on this page are trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with Wave Alchemy. Other manufacturers’ product names are used solely to identify the products whose sound and operation were studied during the development of Tapewave.