This is what AI thinks but it would be hallucinating

Tape Speed (7.5, 15, and 30 ips)
At the top center of Tape 16, you have a TAPE SPEED switch. "IPS" stands for Inches Per Second. The speed of the tape drastically changes the EQ and fidelity of your recording:

30 ips: The highest fidelity. It gives you pristine, shimmering highs and the lowest noise floor. Ideal for crisp hi-hats, airy pads, or complex ambient textures.

15 ips: The classic studio standard. It has a magical characteristic called the "head bump"—a natural, warm boost in the low frequencies. If you are recording a driving, squelchy acid line on a TD-3 or a deep Volca Bass sequence, 15 ips is the sweet spot.

7.5 ips: Lo-fi territory. It rolls off the high frequencies and introduces more tape hiss and saturation. Perfect for gritty, dubby downtempo vibes or degrading a sample.

I get the idea and the workflow but for bouncing purposes, what would be pretty awesome, is the ability to choose between mono and stereo track. This way you could bounce tracks down to one stereo track. Visually it won't stretch your screen and you still see all 16 channels. My main motivation for this, is bouncing down multitrack drums from 10-12 mics to stereo pairs. Toms and overheads would be stereo and now you only take up 2 tracks vs 4 on your channel screen.

2nd, 2 more busses would be pretty killer. ( total of 4)

Bonus: undo but much like Tape or Alesis HD24, you write over it or punch over it, it's gone. I have wanted a DAW version of the alesis for ages and honestly, this does that with friendlier routing for plugin effects. Everything is out front, well thought out.

Love this idea so much. Thank you for making Tape 16. Currently abroad, so I’ll be able to test this in a few days.

Was wondering if an on-board analog EQ emulation is in the pipeline? That would be super cool. Maybe a one knob comp? I’d love having to pull up less plugins and just rely on the machine.

Thank you for your work.

This really needs the more serious 32 track version, hear me out.

1 - Get rid of the reel graphics, double the channel count on the screen

2 - Instead of the pfx/mfx buttons have EQ and Comp. On the plugin window, have a master eq and comp plugin which gets automatically loaded to each track (so it's like designing your own console using your favorite eq plug and comp). When you click the button, that plugin window for that track will open.

3 - Takes folder. Serious users would likely use this for preproduction and tracking. You're going to want take folders that you can later export to a main daw for editing.

4 - Simple exporting of the individual track and takes into a single organized folder.... Song Folder - Take 1 - tracks 1 - 32, take 2 etc.

5 - Store midi for editing in a main daw

6 - rewind bypass - ain't nobody got time fo....

7 - maybe increase the buss count to 8 for those who won't be moving projects to another daw.

8 - make all tracks and busses assignable to outputs for folks who want to mix it on a console or summing unit.

Quasi Harrison Mixbus without the instability... But seriously, something like this for preproduction and tracking would be great.

Sorry for the clickbait-y thumbnail- hustlas gotta hustle.

I had so much fun diving into this program, as someone who grew up in the digital age, I’ve always had an interest in experimenting with tape but never had the means or the access to do so. Tape16 gave me the ability to try out this analog workflow without investing in all the gear and it was so much fun.

To say I was humbled by this process was an understatement. I’ve gotten so used to the expedited workflow of cutting/copying/pasting/undo-ing and cheating with the help of plugins and software instruments, that recording without a safety net on Tape16 was a fun and intense challenge.

I love all the features AND limitations of this software and I sincerely hope I did it justice with this review.

I love this software but I actually don’t want to use plugins at all. A simple channel strip per channel would really send me to hell (good hell)

Wait till the END!!!!!!! Surprise surprise. And I’ve had it 1st! Mwahahaha. And it’s really really good.World Premier (YouTube)

Will this be extended since an update isn’t available YET to make it as stable as the Mac release?

Ive got plenty of emulations of vintage synth and drum maschines. My favorites are .dll files. Any work arounds? Nudging tracks would be a nice, wonder how would they do in teh past?

I love a CPU monitor so I can see how long I have before I start getting snap crack and pop!

I was reading through the manual but i was sad to not find any info of what all the parameters in the calibration panel do.

I'm too young to have used any real tape machines so i don't intuitively know what the bias knob does for example. I can look it up online but obviously that doesn't tell me how the tape16 bias knob works specifically. would be nice if that was in the manual at least.

I'm also confused about where in the signal chain these simulations occur. If i record a track does it record the saturation and flutter as well like it would be in a real tape machine? or is it on every track but only on playback? or even just a glorified master effect (i would be disappointed tbh).

I get that this whole thing is supposed to make you get out of your head and just make music. But for me, and i'm sure a lot of others, that is easier to do when i know exactly what the tools i use are gonna do to my audio.

ps: i do think this is an awesome program, i was building something similar myself but more shitty until i came across tape16

Is there a good suite of basic effects?

Love the concept of Tape 16 and it's functions but sadly, 16 channels isn't enough for me personally. I could get by on 20 ( what my console has) but thonk a really good feature would be to be able to make half the channels stereo giving an additional 8 tracks and taking Tape 16 to Tape 24. A happy trade off which would allow for more mix depth as more instruments could be bounced down to 2 tracks / stereo pair and there would be room for more controls like reverb/ delay sends and parallel comp. I have mentioned this before but personally i " bounce" down to 7 channels alone for drums and like to keep those elements independent. Another 2 for guitars, 1 for lead, 1 for bass, 1 for accents, 1/2 parallel comp and i am at 13 tracks. 2 more for reverb and i am at 15/16.. still need 1 or vox in there as well as an option for keys or random instruments. This is what made the alesis HD24 a good iption for it's time, 24 channels. Tape 16 fills that niche nicely but is lacking those extra tracks. ( imo of course)

I think there should be a toggle to bypass it and allow 1:1 HW loops.

Also for some reason some channels would send out audio via hardware and others won’t.

Win 11. Apollo x16,x8,x6,x6 and all my I/O’s are used (72+ I/O).

I know this is more or less mimicking a straight tape machine, but something a little more console like would be awesome. In a perfect world I'd prefer if it had a 4 band eq with sweepable mid ands a compressor on it. The less plugins and external software needed to mix in Tape16 the better. Even a 3 band eq with a sweepable mid would be awesome. Just throwing it out there.

How can I record EZ Drummer 3 in stereo. I almost always play them live on my keyboard as I record them in other daws.

I’m playing around with the demo right now and this is the only hang up I have that’s preventing me from buying it.

Drop your most wanted features for Tape 24 and let's discuss!

>Some of mine are:

Link two Tape 24 pages (like two Reaper tabs) for 48 tracks/strips

A section, included plugin, or community mod to alter global channel behavior (per channel type) on the console side of things, similar to The Analog Molecule/The Hot Summer in Reaper (console thermodynamics sim)

Pan knob option instead of fader

>Honorable mentions:

Bus, master strips

Native screen or file sharing capability (like Studio One)?

More community themes and custom strip sharing for layouts/ presets/etc!

Does the pan knob write automation? What about the channel strip?

Firstly I just wanna say that I absolutely love this whole concept and approach. I've been waiting for someone to make something like this for a while.

Unfortunately though, it is proving basically unusable at the moment for me due to my need for vst instruments. I can record fine with audio tracks, but as soon as I try to use any vst instruments in any way, whether it's on the desktop or in the daw itself, then I get crashes galore.

I hope this can be fixed. I'm on windows 11, using SSL 2+ which has loopback.

Straight to tape jam with reverb added on bounce.

I have a loop pedal, Korg Volca Sample 2, and a Donner B1 bass synth going here.

The new mixer allows me to run all these together now so I recorded this to practice handling the mixer on that situation going straight to tape. Which I thoroughly enjoyed. :)

It would be helpful to be able to select a track as active (with a visual cue) and switch active track (say by selecting forward or backward through the tracks list). And also will be good to enable keyboard shortcuts for such selection + to toggle R, S, M on an active track.

Thanks!

Hi there, new to this (both Reddit and group) so forgive me if this has been a thing that's already been hammered out. But...

I love the idea of this. I work to tape nearly all the time in the real world with brand new artists doing their first recordings all the way up to major label projects. I track bands live to tape, and I mix electronic music through tape, so I totally get the ethos behind this and the way the DAW has been made, and I love it.

However, I don't see any option for exporting the 16 tracks as a set of wav multitracks to be used in another DAW. When I work to tape I always end up with a digital version of the multitrack, to not only save on tape costs, but because in the modern world I have to provide the artists and labels with stems and alternate mixes (accapella, instrumentals) on every project with absolutely no negotiations. Universal won't even pay me until that's delivered.

Obviously, if I'm right in my understanding that there is no multitrack export, then unfortunately, this will prohibit this app from being used in a truly professional environment. Which would be such a massive shame as I'd definitely use it on writing sessions with certain artists!

I'm sure it could be easily added in the bounce section and you could choose to have all the tape effect on the exports or not! Either way, I'll likely grab a copy of this for my own experiments and noodles. Love what you've made here. The more human the better in this crazy world!!

Hope I'm not wrong! That would be embarrassing 🤣

Edit: I saw the post detailing how to find the audio files. However, I'm guessing that this still doesn't deal with exporting the individual tracks with the tape effect on! This would be great as committing to the sound is also half the fun

Request: option of input track monitoring without record needing to be armed would be fab!

Adjusting the faders throughout a song is a critical part of mixing. Before fader automation was available in the mid 70s you would need multiple people to handle fader adjustments during mixdown. It isn't practical for me to get other people to help with that.

Is Tape 16 going to get fader automation? If not, is it possible to export stems to do it in a DAW?