bad tape

Detune
‍Slow down your audio in real time as if you were pressing the stop button on a reel-to-reel machine. Release the button and hear the “tape” speed back up before settling back into the proper tempo.

Wow and Shake
‍Embrace imperfection and randomly detune the pitch of your track as if it was being played by a tape machine with an inconsistent playback speed.

Harm 
‍Inflict your audio with artifacts and bitcrushing for an additional layer of crunch.

Squeal and Hiss 
‍Introduce sounds into your mix that emulate the mechanical and electrical noises made by a poorly maintained tape player.

For decades, producers and engineers have relied on the characteristics of analog tape for everything from enveloping stereo busses with cohesive warmth to imparting smeary, seasick modulation on synth pads and leads. Years ago, these results demanded feet of tape and high-maintenance reel-to-reel machines. Bad Tape puts the tone shaping power of this legendary medium into a single plugin that focuses on the distinctive, unpredictable imperfections that make it feel so alive.

With Bad Tape, you can oversaturate vocal tracks to accentuate harmonics and add pleasant thickness to otherwise bland or lackluster performances. Introduce Wow and Shake to your synthesizer tracks to dreamily undulate their pitch and transport your listeners back to a time when crafting personalized mixtapes was an artform unto itself. Use the plugin’s Harm, Squeal, and Hiss parameters to sprinkle minute glitches and noise into your productions or turn them all up to bake your audio into an unlistenable, crunched-up catastrophe. 

Whether you want to gently bathe your production in a subtle nostalgic glow or absolutely ruin your tracks as if they were recorded onto a cassette tape excavated from the sun bleached dashboard of a 1989 Honda Accord, Bad Tape puts all of the quirks, faults, and idiosyncrasies of analog media within easy reach.