Tape Sculptor

Tape Sculptor is a next-generation tape plugin that can go far beyond typical tape emulation to enhance your productions in all-new directions. Created in partnership with brilliant engineer Jatin Chowdhury. Whether you’re looking to infuse subtle warmth and color during mastering, fatten up drum and bass parts, add lo-fi grit or extreme distortion, or explore entirely new sound design possibilities, Tape Sculptor delivers!

14 DAY FULL REFUND POLICY: We know you’ll love Tape Sculptor. If you’re not happy with it for any reason within 14 days of purchase, contact us for a full refund. Period.

$99

$99

136 in stock

Purchase Options Available:

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    World-Class Support

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    Loyalty
    Program

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    World-Class
    Support

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    Loyalty
    Program

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    Authentic and
    Realistic Sounds

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    Deep Customization
    for Power Users

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    Authentic and
    Realistic Sounds

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    Deep Customization
    for Power Users

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    Inspiring
    Presets

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    Easy-to-Use
    Interface

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    Inspiring
    Presets

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    Easy-to-Use
    Interface

Try Tape Sculptor for free by selecting the trial version from the dropdown above!

Audio Demos

  1. Fatness and Punch (Dry -> Wet) Drum Machine
  2. LoFi Girl Style (Dry -> Wet) Drums and Piano
  3. Delay Drops (Dry -> Wet) Synthesizer
  4. Chorusy Flange (Dry -> Wet) Acoustic Guitar
  5. Synth Vibrance (Dry -> Wet) Synth Pad
  6. Heavy Saturation (Dry -> Wet) Synth Bass
  7. Seriously Cinematic (Mastering) (Dry -> Wet) Liborio Conti

Product Info

Content

World-class sound quality

Add warmth, fatness, and smoothness to your productions with the true sound of magnetic tape saturation and natural compression.

10 independent modules

Toggle and control each aspect of the tape emulation: Filters, Emphasis, Compressor, Saturation, Degrade, Chew, Loss, Flutter, Wow, and Delay.

Subtle to extreme processing

Go from subtle mastering warmth or thickness on the drum bus to total harmonic destruction and alien pitch modulation.

Extensive control over degradation

Keep the sound clean and modern, or push it into intentionally vintage and lo-fi territory with 5 components specifically designed for retro vibes.

132 factory presets

Get the perfect starting point for your sound with presets organized into categories: Bus, Saturation, Mastering, Spatial & Modulation, and Extreme.

Reel to Reel Tape

Features

Beautiful, modern interface
Extremely high resolution processing
Lightweight and efficient performance
Hassle-free activation
L/R and M/S processing modes

Requirements

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100MB disk space

Tape Sculptor takes a minimal amount of disk space for the multiple plugin versions.

VST3, AU, AAX, CLAP formats

Compatible with all major DAWs.

2017 or newer CPU (Mac or PC)

A faster and more modern CPU will allow you to use more instances of Tape Sculptor with higher real-time modeling accuracy (oversampling)

MacOS Requirements

MacOS 10.12+ (Intel or Apple Silicon)

Windows Requirements

Windows 7+, support for OpenGL version 2+ recommended

Tutorials

Plugin Walkthrough

Details

Tape Sculptor’s shining feature is its versatility, allowing you to infuse subtle warmth and dynamics, add character through analog fatness and saturation, bring cohesion and polish to your mix, add a vintage vibe, create space and depth, or completely morph your sound into a creative, boundary-pushing realm.

The second entry in our Sculptor series is another collaboration with cutting-edge engineer and DSP mastermind Jatin Chowdhury. If you’re familiar with Jatin’s acclaimed ChowTape Model, we’ve significantly expanded it, adding features and completely redesigning its UI for ultimate efficiency and intuitiveness.

Tape Sculptor’s wide range of sound is evident in the generous factory bank of presets — everything from fat, analog warmth perfect for hip-hop and R&B productions to gritty lo-fi to alien space modulation to extreme destruction. Use the parameters within each module to fine-tune your sound, or build your own completely from the ground up.

Tape Sculptor has been thoughtfully designed for both ease-of-use and extensive control. With all its features on a single page and each module easily toggled, tweaking your sound is both fast and intuitive.


Processing Modules


An array of parameters in the Filter, Compressor, and Saturation modules lets you shape exactly the sound you’re looking for: slim the signal with the adjustable slopes of the analog-modeled filter, use the compressor to soften your transients or tweak its parallel compression slider to get a fuller dynamic range, and customize the saturation with the drive, bias and tone knobs as well as several hysteresis mode options.

Tape Sculptor accurately captures the details of tape machine behavior to a remarkable degree. Emulate the way tape ages and wears over time with the Degrade module. Add in the sound of a tape being wrinkled or mangled with the Chew module. Use the Loss module to mimic the unique pattern of tape machine signal loss. Dial in pitch fluctuation using the Wow and Flutter modules.

Finally, our all new 4-channel Delay module lets you add space and depth to your sound with separate time, pan, and level controls.


About Jatin Chowdhury


Jatin is a software engineer and musician whose innovative work in DSP has been widely recognized by academia, industry peers, and users of his free ChowdhuryDSP plugins. His novel research includes cutting-edge analog modeling techniques, hardware emulation, and even the use of neural networking for DSP. His goals of creating both excellent audio tools & learning resources align perfectly with our own. Jatin and Impact Soundworks previously collaborated on Bass Sculptor.

Reviews

stars
Tape Sculptor – Czar

“…while it has the features you would expect from a tape plug-in, this one goes a lot further giving you a lot more options and ability to tweak and alter your sound than really any other tape plug-in that I have seen…this ‘Degrade,’ ‘Chew,’ ‘Loss’ – not something that I would reach for a lot, obviously using a tape plug-in, but if you have this, it’s nice to have that option because some of those things that, I feel like you never know when you would need it, especially if you’re looking to create a interesting effect. So definitely this goes well past what typical tape plug-ins do, making me a fan of it.”

(Czar)

stars
Tape Sculptor – Tim Talks Audio

“But really, there’s a lot of flexibility, there’s a lot of different things you can do within Tape Sculptor, but you don’t have to; you can engage or disengage any of the different modules to get the sound you’re going for…”

(Tim Talks Audio)

stars
Tape Sculptor – Implied Music

“The harder you drive it, the more it responds and the saturation and compressor starts to act differently…it’s replacing things that I might do with EQ and compression, but in a really interesting, specific way and it’s sort of program-material specific…I like digital gear that acts analog; that you can push too hard, that you can break. That responds in a way that feels lively and animated that helps my performing.”

(Implied Music)

Studio Life
stars
Tape Sculptor – Studio Life

“I can make it sound like really high-end tape – beautiful sheen, or I could make it sound like a grungy old, 7 inches per second ruined tape, or anywhere in between, and also get some really cool effects out of it…this is, I think, possibly, the best tape emulator I’ve heard that’s useful for more than just emulating tape.”

(Studio Life)

Emlyn in the Mix
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Tape Sculptor – Emlyn in the Mix

“Is this the only tape emulation you’ll ever need? In my mind, yes…it’s light on the CPU, it’s got a beautiful GUI with graphics going so you can see what’s happening…it helps you to understand what this tape emulation is actually doing…this is a wonderful plug-in; well-developed, well-designed, fantastic to see…all of the effects on this plug-in sound really high class.”

(Emlyn in the Mix)