Personally volume matching the tracks with a small loop and quick switching through the A/Bs would make the effects more transparent. I kinda left this video not hearing the actual difference.
20:09 my perspective probably isn't enlightening but as a kid who grew up in the 2010s when analog recording had pretty much died, the appeal of this sound isnt rooted in any kind of nostalgia or accustomation, I just love how natural it sounds. I'm sure theres a better way to describe it if I knew more music-y words. Warm? Idk. Like you said, I think it just has a pleasing sound to the human ear (Obv I can't speak for all gen z people, some have a weird pseudo nostalgia thing going on with lofi sonics but thats almost an entirely different genre of music)
First of all thanks for watching and saying nice stuff! Second, I think it's cool you are attracted to these sounds. As someone likely 20-30 years older than you I have a love after l affair with these sounds.
@@SycamoreWillow Also wanted to say thanks for making these videos!!! I always love it when people go out of their way to share the stuff they've learned and all the cool shit they do, it makes niche info accessable to noobs like me. Can't wait to see what you put out next 👌👌
Although the tape saturator comes close, the Tascam is still better. That part 13:51 where the high frequency string pad comes in and then a deep bass comes in, is what defined it for me. Also the constant sine like pad, played throughout piece. took another sonic dimension through real tape. It became more prominent. Then all ties in one sound with the "glue" that tape imparts. There wasn't much "glue" with the saturator, but did have some warmness to it. The bass was also less deep, and there it was not the same prominence of the constant sine pad. Of course the original dry version was the least interesting. Thanks for this test. I enjoyed it.
This is great - I came across one of those Nagra speed controls which is superb for making spacey tape delay effects but I think my machine has the speed socket as well - I’d never thought of using it to CV pitch a loop!
…just double checked and it’s just the 1/4” socket but it occurs to me I could mod my speed regulator box to include a CV in - that way I could potentially “tune” the tape speed ie pitch of the loop with the knobs and then play CV pitches in! Game changer!
I suppose my comments would make MUCH more sense if they were on the right video. Just by luck I was wittering on about Nagra and tape speed on a video about tape saturation - it probably nearly made sense. 😅
Lol I admit I was wondering! But honestly just glad to hear your thoughts. I suspect you meant these comments on a Hainbach video, right? If so that's a flattering confusion.
@@SycamoreWillow yes your interesting clip followed his one about the discovery that you can turn your Nagra into a pitchable looper with the Speed input. I love the idea of those modular tape saturation things BTW - I’ve forward them to a mate of mine who runs a studio. He’s currently struggling to restore an 8 track reel to reel. He’d be better off buying one of those racks!
Great video. I've been tempted by these colour format things after building (and loving) DIYRE's OLA5 and EQP5 500 series units. Id love to see these tape saturation units compared to Sound Skulptor's TS 500 units as well. Curious if you've had the chance to give those a spin.
Hi there, thank you! I have not tried the Sound Skulptor TS500. I'm sure it is very useful so if it speaks to you I just suggest trying it and see what you think. That said for me I like the colors platform because in addition to the tape saturation color there's so many other colors that are interesting and you can chain them and per color they're pretty cheap.
LOL, are you referring to the fact that my intro is blurry? If so, I'm sorry! I worked so long on this video that I was too lazy to reshoot that intro :|
I think it's easy to understand odd harmonics coming from saturation because the saturation is symmetric on both sides of the waveform. Even harmonics are asymmetric, so if the distortion is symmetrical, the added harmonics will be odd.
Note also that you can add even harmonics by adding DC offset before going into your saturating processor. This is easy in modular, but not necessarily otherwise.
Interesting, I'm actually not sure I totally follow the thinking here, but I will go do some reading and see if I can completely grok this. Would love to hear more explanation of this as well! For example, why does symmetry lead to odd order harmonics? I think I'm missing the relationship between odd numbers and symmetric distortion.
@@SycamoreWillow I shouldn't say it's easy. If you already know that odd harmonics are always symmetrical, then it's easy. With an odd harmonic, the part of the wave from 0 to 90 is the mirror image of 90 to 180. With even harmonics, these segments are the same, not mirrored but repeated. So, if you have a wave where the first quarter of its phase is the mirror of the second quarter (0°-90° vs 90°-180°), and the second half is the inversion of the first (0°-180° vs 180°-360°), that wave only has odd harmonics. For example, triangle and square waves. Sawtooth doesn't behave like that, so it must have even harmonics. So far so good. Now, if your distortion will tend to "square off" the positive and negative portions of the input equally, I'm pretty sure that means it's emphasizing odd harmonics. If it acts differently on the positive than the negative, it will add more even harmonics (for example, full wave rectification is like one octave up).
Hey, I just found your channel. Your videos are really inspirational, well explained and nicely produced. Great work! Thanks a lot for making these.
Ahhh! Thanks for your nice words!
Personally volume matching the tracks with a small loop and quick switching through the A/Bs would make the effects more transparent. I kinda left this video not hearing the actual difference.
Fair enough, the difference was less subtle before RUclips compression, but after RUclips compression the difference is even more subtle
20:09 my perspective probably isn't enlightening but as a kid who grew up in the 2010s when analog recording had pretty much died, the appeal of this sound isnt rooted in any kind of nostalgia or accustomation, I just love how natural it sounds. I'm sure theres a better way to describe it if I knew more music-y words. Warm? Idk. Like you said, I think it just has a pleasing sound to the human ear
(Obv I can't speak for all gen z people, some have a weird pseudo nostalgia thing going on with lofi sonics but thats almost an entirely different genre of music)
First of all thanks for watching and saying nice stuff! Second, I think it's cool you are attracted to these sounds. As someone likely 20-30 years older than you I have a love after l affair with these sounds.
@@SycamoreWillow Also wanted to say thanks for making these videos!!! I always love it when people go out of their way to share the stuff they've learned and all the cool shit they do, it makes niche info accessable to noobs like me. Can't wait to see what you put out next 👌👌
fantastic video, I record to cassette tape a bunch and I really appreciate the in depth explanation!
I'm so flattered! Thanks!
Great video, Jason. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, man.
Although the tape saturator comes close, the Tascam is still better. That part 13:51 where the high frequency string pad comes in and then a deep bass comes in, is what defined it for me. Also the constant sine like pad, played throughout piece. took another sonic dimension through real tape. It became more prominent. Then all ties in one sound with the "glue" that tape imparts. There wasn't much "glue" with the saturator, but did have some warmness to it. The bass was also less deep, and there it was not the same prominence of the constant sine pad. Of course the original dry version was the least interesting. Thanks for this test. I enjoyed it.
Hey there, what a thoughtful comment, thank you for that. Of course, our assessments were basically the same :)
Great video Jason! Super informative and interesting 👌
Thanks mate. Your comments always make me extra happy.
This is great - I came across one of those Nagra speed controls which is superb for making spacey tape delay effects but I think my machine has the speed socket as well - I’d never thought of using it to CV pitch a loop!
…just double checked and it’s just the 1/4” socket but it occurs to me I could mod my speed regulator box to include a CV in - that way I could potentially “tune” the tape speed ie pitch of the loop with the knobs and then play CV pitches in! Game changer!
I suppose my comments would make MUCH more sense if they were on the right video. Just by luck I was wittering on about Nagra and tape speed on a video about tape saturation - it probably nearly made sense. 😅
Lol I admit I was wondering! But honestly just glad to hear your thoughts. I suspect you meant these comments on a Hainbach video, right? If so that's a flattering confusion.
@@SycamoreWillow yes your interesting clip followed his one about the discovery that you can turn your Nagra into a pitchable looper with the Speed input. I love the idea of those modular tape saturation things BTW - I’ve forward them to a mate of mine who runs a studio. He’s currently struggling to restore an 8 track reel to reel. He’d be better off buying one of those racks!
I'm here from the super secret Facebook group, haha! Anyway, nice vid. It gave me a lot to think about.
Hey, thanks!
Great video. I've been tempted by these colour format things after building (and loving) DIYRE's OLA5 and EQP5 500 series units. Id love to see these tape saturation units compared to Sound Skulptor's TS 500 units as well. Curious if you've had the chance to give those a spin.
Hi there, thank you! I have not tried the Sound Skulptor TS500. I'm sure it is very useful so if it speaks to you I just suggest trying it and see what you think. That said for me I like the colors platform because in addition to the tape saturation color there's so many other colors that are interesting and you can chain them and per color they're pretty cheap.
i need to get my eye glass prescription updated
LOL, are you referring to the fact that my intro is blurry? If so, I'm sorry! I worked so long on this video that I was too lazy to reshoot that intro :|
@@SycamoreWillow yeah but im just messing w you man. great vid!
@@travisraab No worries dude, I can take it :)
I think it's easy to understand odd harmonics coming from saturation because the saturation is symmetric on both sides of the waveform. Even harmonics are asymmetric, so if the distortion is symmetrical, the added harmonics will be odd.
Note also that you can add even harmonics by adding DC offset before going into your saturating processor. This is easy in modular, but not necessarily otherwise.
Interesting, I'm actually not sure I totally follow the thinking here, but I will go do some reading and see if I can completely grok this. Would love to hear more explanation of this as well! For example, why does symmetry lead to odd order harmonics? I think I'm missing the relationship between odd numbers and symmetric distortion.
@@SycamoreWillow I shouldn't say it's easy. If you already know that odd harmonics are always symmetrical, then it's easy.
With an odd harmonic, the part of the wave from 0 to 90 is the mirror image of 90 to 180. With even harmonics, these segments are the same, not mirrored but repeated. So, if you have a wave where the first quarter of its phase is the mirror of the second quarter (0°-90° vs 90°-180°), and the second half is the inversion of the first (0°-180° vs 180°-360°), that wave only has odd harmonics. For example, triangle and square waves. Sawtooth doesn't behave like that, so it must have even harmonics.
So far so good.
Now, if your distortion will tend to "square off" the positive and negative portions of the input equally, I'm pretty sure that means it's emphasizing odd harmonics. If it acts differently on the positive than the negative, it will add more even harmonics (for example, full wave rectification is like one octave up).
Was this the 15IPS Mkii or MKI?
Great question! Mk II. I much prefer this version. I've had both.