Hello guys! I own the Steven Slate VTM and always use it in my mixbuss, but I'm curious about the CDsound Master R2R (I believe work without the Nebula) and Yamaha Vintage Open Deck. These two plugins have a simulation of the Studer A-820, that caught my attention.

Has anyone here ever used them all? Could you tell me a little more?

Cheers!

yes used them all, they are all very different.

Slate has that nice warm bump to it, but it doesn't compress when pushed.
CDsound Master, sounds a lot like tape when pushed, it compresses and gets a bit crunchy, not something i would use on everything or the bus like Slate.
It also has a fiddly control but it does sound good.
Yamaha Vintage is just ok, its more like an eq, makes things bright and dark, shave the edges off high end, can warm up the low mids. It doesn't crunch or compress very well at all though.

I would say get TB reelbus, use on Swiss mode, which is an emu of a Revox A77. If you drive the input you can get that tape compression sound, there is a drive for crunch (use very low), and spectrum is like the bright and dull eq knob, lots of control. It can really soften up transients perfectly.
It doesn't quite have the low end bumb that slate or Satin has though.

Satin has tons of control also, but it doesn't do that blown out smashed hot to tape compression, its much cleaner and uses much more cpu.
Waves are very coloured and effected, good for somethings (rarely) but are one trick pony's and not usable on everything.
The crunch sounds amazing on the Kramer one. Good for slap delay as well.

I really liked the Slate and its very much like good tape. I use Reelbus though becouse it sounds almost the same, can do clean and hot tape sounds, has lots more control and is zero latency, something that is vital to me. Hope that helps

I own most of them and have also used them in my productions.
R2R sounds good and like a tape but the handling with Nebula is crap and I gave up with the complete Nebula thing.

Slate VTM is excellent, not so colorful as Waves but more usable. I use it all the time on groups and the mixbus.

No idea with Yamaha.

Satin is more like a tape toolbox and doesn't sound like a specific tape brand.
It needs a lot of tweaking and fiddling with the different parameters. At the end of the day I've used only sometimes the tape delay but never put it on a group or mixbus. I would not buy it again.

I own also Waves Kramer Tape which is IMO very colorful. For me it's a bit too much so I've used it not so often. But the time it was released it was a good option.

Anyway, VTM is the best option.

Hello guys! Thank you for the answers. I ended up giving up the Yamaha, since I have to buy a new dongle. Cheers!

I must say CDSM tapes (not the nebula ones but acqua) are some real great sounding plugs. I love them all.

Ive tried VTM (im a subscription owner), R2R (Nebula), satin & reelbus.

Ive found similar results as @ aaronsmith above.


VTM - Nice for modern sounding rock but doesnt compress the way pushed tape does.

R2R - Great tone but i dont like it driven.

Satin - A little too subtle, although the ATR102 preset lives on my master buss for most mixes.

Reelbus - my favourite of them all. Tone, compression and saturation are spot on.

CDSM tapes are great

There aren't any Acqua CDSM tapes. Do you mean the CDS plugin versions?

Tape Booster+ is the key, you need to place that after the RTR (or even by itself.)
I use the Nebula versions of RTR, TB+ followed by VTM-M2 for mastering. The others for tracking, VTM mostly.

I prefer TB Reelbus over VTM most of the time. I haven't tried R2R or the Yamaha. I recently got UAD Oxide, it's a good option if you have UAD.

Yes. The plugin version. But I got the nebula version and they sound really really great.

CD Soundmaster R2R is definitely one of my secret weapons, it tames the extremes of the frequency spectrum top and bottom, adds saturation and makes anything digitally recorded sound a bit more natural and not so precise.

It is not transparent, but you can adjust this saturation with the drive knob, and pushing the input levels, then cutting output level to compensate.

Not cpu intensive - 0.1% CPU+ per instance, on an Intel Core I5 laptop, although I run at 96Khz, which means you can place this on every channel.

Increasing the drive cuts more of the bass and low mids out, and muddies up teh highs a bit.

Adjust drive to taste.

Increases the presence of the track or mix - yes I use it on mix buss for acoustic recordings to give them an old world tone.

Is CDSoundmaster still around?