The use of tape, cassette, and vinyl plugins to mimic/emulate the analogue imperfections present in yesteryears is quite common in the production sphere. A curious aspect is that digital equipment can achieve incredible levels of precision which analogue equipment often struggled to achieve. Additionally, many pieces of analogue hardware were plagued with inconsistencies, with distortion and reduced dynamic range being quite common in analogue mediums.

With this in mind, why is the demand for these types of analogue-emulation plugins so high? To start, let’s have a look at some of the features a few tape emulation plugins:

Waves/Abbey Road’s J37:

Tape Speed = varying speeds that change the way distortion, saturation, and frequencies are processed within the plugin,

Bias = adjustment of ‘signal quality’ by adjusting the linearity of the signal reproduction,

Noise = level of additive and modulated noise introduced into the signal,

Saturation = the amount of saturation applied to the input signal,

Wow = frequency modulation, a constant adjustment of the pitch,

Flutter = amplitude modulation, a constant adjustment of the volume,

iZotope Ozone9’s Vintage Tape:

Mode = a choice between analogue, tube and modern tape emulation.

Speed = tailors the frequency response and levels at which distortion is applied.

Input Drive = adjusts input gain before tape emulation, the higher the input drive the more compression and saturation will occur.

Bias = Adjusts the shape of the distortion curve and high-frequency response of the tape emulation.

Harmonics = a slider which adds even-harmonic distortion, this can be used to add complexity and richness.

Low Emphasis = controls the shape of the low-frequency resonant peak in dB.

The features of both plugins detailed above are certainly interesting, however the users of these plugins aren’t using them because they have ‘noise and saturation knobs’. There are countless amounts of plugins out there with similar features, but the unique selling point that plugins of this nature have tapped into is the mantra of analogue emulation. But hang on a second - let’s just work out what analogue means here.

In the audio engineering sphere, analogue meant that audio signals were handled as a continuous time, voltage-based signal - with digital signals being discrete time and binary based. Curiously, since plugins occupy the digital medium and don’t process audio signals through voltage-based methods, then what does ‘analogue’ imply when concerning digital processing?

Analogue emulation plugins attempt to capture some of the quirks of analogue processing, the non-linear nature of many pieces of analogue equipment, the signal-to-noise performance, or the saturation qualities – and so forth.

It seems to me that plugin manufacturers marketing analogue emulation plugins based on the semiotic and connotative links that the word analogue has acquired over the decades. Personally, analogue implies a few things: imperfect, flawed, characteristic etc. iZotope’s plugin (detailed above) even has a ‘character’ slider – further suggesting that they know exactly what the word analogue hints at. Typically, Character implies highly nuanced, or on some level endearingly flawed. Similarly, in social circles it’s not uncommon for people to refer to someone that behaves atypically as ‘quite the character’.

This is an advantage for plugin makers. The word analogue itself contains a massive web of semantic and semiotic information within it, and each word within that nests its own set of semantic and semiotic links. This web of meaning can be easily exploited in marketing, as the term analogue doesn’t even have to be properly qualified to be used. Does each individual’s interpretation of the meaning of analogue functionally ratify its use? If so; much of the weight of the term analogue in world of production might be provided by those reading it. The practice of using analogue when marketing digital products seems straightforward; analogue means many things to many people, and the lack of a centrally agreed definition creates some ambiguity.

Generally, analogue emulation plugins (vinyl, tape, cassette) attempt to replicate some of the nuance that many physical mediums possessed – that’s the intent after all, to capture some of the character of analogue equipment/mediums. But having character isn’t the only important quality that the tools of mixing engineers and producers should contain. While there are individuals which would hedge their bets on analogue being the superior world of processing – there are certainly reasons that someone who believes in superiority of analogue might choose digital plugins, even plugins without analogue emulation.

So, knowing that sometimes digital plugins might offer better properties or features for certain moments - why is it so common to hear the ‘analogue is better’ motif?

Digital audio signals are simply binary information (lots of1’s and 0’s). To me that certainly makes it feel a little less special, as there’s nothing about binary information that I can relate to - or contextualise. Binary information is processed in ways that our senses cannot perceive natively.

The magic of music and sound is that it occupies a medium that we can understand. Sound, being a property of the universe, is immemorial, ancient, primordial, but critically – physical, thus interacting with our senses and world view. However, its physicality makes it vulnerable to taint… (more on this later).

Analogue in my eyes is a property of the physical world. Voltage and vibrations aren’t that far apart to me, as they present in the physical world in ways with which we can interact with both meaningfully.

Contrastingly, digital audio signals are nothing remotely primordial – they are our creation. The unfortunate reality is that digital audio signals/processing abstracts sound beyond even the abstraction of voltage-based analogue audio signals/processing. To interact with digital information, we must access a terminal – visualised through computer screens, interacted with via keyboards and mice.

When listening to something in an analogue world, the medium matters – tape, cassette, vinyl, VHS; they all sound different. But in a digital world? All modern computers read binary information and can process and playback audio – suddenly we find ourselves in a world in which there is little-to-no idiosyncrasy in our chosen medium – digital information. The magic of reality and discernible cause-and-effect is all but lost in a digital world.

As production work is increasingly conducted in-the-box (ITB, meaning exclusively on a computer) and less so interacting with physical, voltage-based equipment – producers often hark back to the days of analogue ubiquity and its esoteric nature. For many years the debate on whether ITB mixing was inferior to mixing on physical hardware/equipment endured– and at some point during this debate, it became somewhat of an unspoken rule that while digital seems to have become the faster, more widely used archetype – analogue was seeded as the better sounding but slower specialism.

This also makes me think; why does it feel like tape machines are considered the epitome of analogue-ness? Perhaps because production processes often ended with the mixed session being recorded onto a master tape? Considering my breakdown of analogue being imperfect, flawed, characteristic –these are all qualities that tape definitely possessed. These adjectives certainly feel appropriate when placing tape onto the table – as the physical flaws of tape had to be overcome with many different methods. To illustrate this, let’s dig into a process known as pre-emphasis/de-emphasis…

Tape is inherently an imperfect medium for many reasons, but let’s cover two reasons for its imperfection specifically. Firstly, the properties of tape mean that high frequencies were subject to self-erasure effects. This in turn resulted in a loss of frequencies when recording, and then during playback of the tape, a further high-end rolloff often occurred due to tape-speed related properties. On the opposite end of the spectrum, low frequencies often experienced a boost on playback due to a what was known as head bump.

Thus, in the 1950’s and 60’s, engineers sought after a flatter frequency response, and one that didn’t subject the music encoded on tape to increased distortion. So to help remedy this, engineers created a process known as pre-emphasis, and de-emphasis. With pre-emphasis boosting the high and low frequencies of the signal when recording to tape, and then on the machine playing the tape, de-emphasis occurred – attenuating the same low and high frequencies that had previously been boosted.

This combination of boosting when recording to tape, and then attenuating when playing back the tape allowed for a mitigation of self-erasure effects and an increase in the signal-to-noise performance of tape machines.  If you want to know more about this process, feel free to read this white paper on it.

Imperfection within production is something I’ve been thinking about for some time now, with one of my main thoughts being ‘how can imperfections enhance the authenticity or quality of music’? Recently this internal question has been furthered by developments I’ve made within the stylisation of my sound.

Over the last few months, I’ve been looking back upon my previous works – and comparing them to songs that I’ve been listening to on repeat these past few weeks. Character seems to be king, e.g. “that bass is so smooth”, “those vocals are so raw”, “this section is so intimate”. All these adjectives are subjective – and that means it takes more than technical articulation to invoke those types of feelings in individuals.

As explained earlier, audio engineers spent years trying to improve the technical quality of tape. Yet now, I deliberately attempt to degrade certain elements and moments within my music with the plugins mentioned in this body of words. I add tape noise, introduce saturation, add wow – all deliberate attempts to introduce what were once considered imperfections, but now provide an opportunity to introduce character. It turns out that the soul of analogue mediums (and their eras) can be referenced by mimicking their (once) imperfections – and in so doing, we can create moments of nostalgia, relaxation, or happiness. Hearing something reminiscent of a certain moment in time makes our brains access all the relevant ‘dots’ and connections.

It’s interesting that the next stage in my production development is starting to take shape as creating character around imperfections.

Is it that imperfections make music more relatable? Is that what music must be, more relatable? Character isn’t exactly a universal truth, it’s something humans personify or impose on other entities. Is it the provision of cues for our brains that helps associate a personality or set of characteristics upon a piece of music? Or does lifeless and still music still provide a sense of character, although be it a dull and uninteresting one?

I’m sorry that this must end with more questions that it started with, but in reality – these questions will take some time for me to digest and contemplate, so it’s only fair I leave this burden with you too.