Eddie Kramer Master Tape Plug-In User Guide

Mode Sw
itch or Input/Reproduce
In place of t
he classic record light you will find an illuminated yellow or amber lamp. The
label above it will be in t
he default mode of Repro, which means the outp
ut of the
Kramer
Master Tape is after the model of recording on tape. (i.e., in Repro mode, you
are hearing the sound of the playback head reproducing the signal previously recorded
by the record head.) In the Input mode, you will only be hearing the sound of the tube
input and output electronic stages (or directly through the machine without any tape
running). This is not a pure bypass and this sound is, in and of itself, valuable for many
applications. Other than the audio monitor transfer and the light being on for Reproduce
and off for Input, when in Reproduce the transport reels will also be turning to insure you
that you are hearing the result of recording on analogue tape. Should you choose not to
have the reels turning, simply clicking on them will turn their motion off.
What Should You Expect to Hear
The sound o
f analogue magnetic tape recording may be new or un-familiar to some born
in the digital age. The goal of the de
sign of all analogue tape recorders was the same -
to provide a transparent, colorless method of media storage. The machine we modeled
was quite successful in its day, at accomplishing this goal. But because of the state of
the art at the time of this machine’s development, it still had a wide variety of limitations:
Tape saturation, tape noise, harmonic distortion, modulation noise, phase shift and
limitations in frequency response to name but a few.
Although many think that analogue
tape will improve the sonic quality of their signal, by
today’s standards and measurements it does quite the opposite. Measured by modern
technology it lowers the overall resolution of a signal. In fact the signal to noise ratio of
an analogue tape recording is not good by today’s standards. It fails to accurately
reproduce both high and low frequencies. Its THD (Total Harmonic Distortion)
measurements are not good by current standards (more than 1% THD) and yet listeners
still find its sound pleasing.
So just why is this
sound so desirable? Well for a number of reasons, but firstly, contrary
to measurements and the theoretical loss o
f hig
h frequency response, b
ecause of the
non-linearity of the NAB standard, coupled with the third harmonic distortion created by
the analogue recording process, the ultimate subjective result is a slight increase in the
quantity and clarity of the higher frequencies.
Even as digital recording
has come of age, and with hindsight 20/20, what many
considered t
o be a limita
tion of analo
gue tape recording, has in fact become desirable.
Digital has been criticized by many as being clinical and cold sounding, while analogue
technology has been touted as sounding warm, clear and musical. Therein lies the big
difference in what you should hear in the plugin. Granted, if you want to play with the
settings (and please feel free to do so) you can create some very dramatic tape effects
of saturation, noise, etc. But by using the Kramer Master Tape with its default setting, it
will provide you with an extremely accurate model of, not only tube analogue tape
recording, but of analogue tape recording on what many considered to be the premier
tube analogue tape recorder of its era.
Waves Kramer Master Tape
User Guide
21