Black Friday may be over for another year, but there's still plenty of deals to be had for those that missed out, with discounts across both hardware and software. What's better than a cheap plugin, though? A free plugin, that's what.
AIR Music Tech is giving away its $99 Tape Double Track plugin for Black Friday, and while Cyber Weekend is now in the rear view, you've got three more days to download this little gem completely free of charge.
Tape Double Track emulates a classic studio technique developed in the '60s at Abbey Road for none other than The Beatles themselves. While recording their 1966 album Revolver, engineer Ken Townsend was asked by John Lennon to come up with a workaround that would save the group from having to manually double-track recordings during sessions.
The Beatles, Les Paul, or Larry Levine? Who really discovered flanging?
Townsend did exactly that, inventing a system called ADT (Artificial Double Tracking) that used tape delay and subtle pitch modulation to mimic the effect of double tracking on a single recording. The Beatles loved it, and ADT was used heavily across Revolver on both vocals and guitars, before becoming a commonly used technique in studio recording throughout the '70s, '80s and beyond.
Today, of course, we don't need two tape machines to achieve ADT. AIR Music Tech's Tape Double Track recreates the effect digitally, applying subtle delay and pitch variation to a copy of its input signal to introduce that lush, rich doubling effect we all know and love.
The plugin gives you fine-grained control over its mechanics via its tape machine-style interface, with a central dial controlling the offset between its two virtual tapeheads. This is joined by independent controls for pan, drive, mute, phase and level for each track, and a randomization control to introduce organic tape-style variation to the effect.
Tape Double Track's modulation can be adjusted via the Warp control, and you get a choice of three waveshapes: sine, triangle and random. There's also a handy Bass Mono control onboard to preserve low-end clarity.
Tape Double Track is available in VST/VST3/AU/AAX formats and can be used with standalone instruments in the Akai MPC series. If you're interested, don't hang about: it's only available free until December 8.
Head over to the AIR Music Tech website to download Tape Double Track and find out more.
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