This post focuses on the use of analog tape’s warm, unique compression as an effect.
When engineers and producers started to make the switch from analog to digital, they found that digital was not only cleaner sound, but it was also somewhat unforgiving. Most producers were quite fond of ‘driving’ the tape a bit by sending it slightly higher levels than the tape was normalized for. Turns out that the sound produced by this overdriving was a subtle compression resulting from the saturation of the magnetic medium. If you try to throw signal at digital above and beyond what it is normalized for, you’ll end up with brick-wall distortion. This is one of the reasons why tape is considered by many to be warmer and ‘fatter’ sounding. Drums, in particular, work extremely well with tape because the compression allows for a rounding of the transients and a certain punch not typically found in the digital domain. I know some engineers who still track drums to 2 inch tape.
Digital captures exactly what it’s given, whether good or bad. As a result, piping in warm, punchy signal from an analog tape machine will be captured warm and punchy. So, if you have access to a high quality tape machine, why not take advantage of it?
