New Music Gear Monday: Wavesfactory Cassette Plugin

Many artists and engineers love the sound of tape, and will do anything to get that sound. Using the real thing can be a timely and expensive process, but there are so many good plugin emulators on the market now that make getting the sound much easier. One of these is Wavesfactory Cassette, an audio plugin that emulates the sound of vintage cassette tapes and decks.

Not only does Wavesfactory Cassette provide the sound and behavior of the original cassette decks, but the tape formulations as well. These include a different frequency response, frequency dependent saturation, high-frequency compression, hiss, asperity noise and much more. Reproduction systems will also induce their fingerprint, like wow, flutter, random high-frequency loss, crosstalk between channels, stereo unbalances and other, and all of these quirks and random fluctuations have been modeled into the plugin.

Multiple Cassette Types

Cassette has a selection for any of the four major cassettes types that were once available. Each one delivers different sonic characteristics.

• Type I was the standard format that featured a ferric-oxide coating (Fe2O3) and first appeared in the 1960s.
• Type II was a chromium dioxide (CrO2) formulation introduced at the dawn of the 1970s and featured an increase in high frequency response.
• Type III ferro-chrome (FeCr) was only available for a short period between the mid-70s and early 80s.
• Type IV was a high-end metal-formulation released at the end of the 70s that features firmer bass and better high frequency response.

Changing the tape type will have an effect on the frequency response of the plugin but also in the saturation, compression, static noise (hiss) and dynamic noise (asperity noise).

There’s Plenty Of Control

Surprisingly, Cassette features a lot of parameter controls. Besides the Tape Formulations, the next big one is the player type selector switches under the tape graphic. Pro emulates a high-quality audiophile player, while Micro emulates a portable Walkman type of player that everyone had back in those days.

There are also a number of front panel controls below that, including Erasures, Spread, Stability, Static and Dynamic (noise), and Artifacts that allow you to tweak the sound even more. And there are a number of under the hood parameters that control many aspects of tape emulation even further. Add those to the standard Input (which can control the amount of tape saturation and distortion depending on how hard you hit it) and Output and you have a very versatile plugin.

Wavesfactory Cassette is available for both Mac and PC in all plugin formats. It’s price is $65 after currency conversion.

Find out more here or check out the video below.

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