Black Rooster Audio announces TD-201 vintage tape echo
Beautifully-designed vintage gear emulation plug-ins producer Black Rooster Audio is proud to announce availability of its TD-201 plug-in as a virtual take on vintage tape echo — effectively bringing the unmistakable sound of an analog classic into the 21st century as an in-the-box tape delay, delivering the sought- after vintage character of the increasingly-inaccessible hardware concerned in an easy-to-use reimagining that offers countless customization options for maximum usability.
History has it that the fertile Fifties’ revolution in music production — personified by engineers, musicians, and producers busying themselves with laying the foundations for modern-day workflow with countless technical innovations introduced, including guitar amps and electric organs, as well as an abundance of studio effects — brought with it the advent of electronic reverberation and delay units. Unsurprisingly, early-day tape delays such as the US-designed Echoplex or its British-built Watkins/WEM Copicat counterpart — effectively setting the Sixties standard for the effect between them — had a history of being technically unreliable and prone to damage when transported, yet their sound was so captivating that further attempts inevitably ensued. Enter Japanese engineer Ikutaro Kakehashi and major organ manufacturer Hammond — the former having already struck up a lucrative partnership with the latter by manufacturing a small rhythm box called the Ace Tone Rhythm Ace (itself intended to fit neatly atop a Hammond organ) — who had started experimenting with multi-head tape echoes. It is no surprise, therefore, that one such design — featuring a free-floating 1⁄4-inch tape and spring reverb housed in a rock-solid tape chamber — proved to be better suited to touring, more stable and reliable than anything on the market at the time. The resulting Roland RE-201 Space Echo became a best-seller for the Japanese company that became a household name in the industry, further evolving into a range of delay effects that are still extensively used in music productions and sound design today. That distinctive delay sound has remained sought after since the RE-201’s revolutionary arrival on the scene in 1974.
Needless to say, there is nothing like the sound of a legendary vintage unit as far as many tape delay aficionados are concerned, yet many still struggle with their unpredictability — not to mention that they can be time-consuming to use and are increasingly inaccessible as the years roll by. But press fast- forward to today, as it were, and this is exactly why Black Rooster Audio has designed its TD-201 plug-in as a virtual take on vintage tape echo — effectively bringing the unmistakable sound of an analog classic into the 21st century as an in-the-box tape delay, delivering the sought-after vintage character of the increasingly-inaccessible hardware concerned in an easy-to-use reimagining that offers countless customization options for maximum usability. Unpredictability inherent in — and time-consuming usage of — such vintage hardware has, however, been banished to the history books by TD-201!
Countless customization options on offer to TD-201 users ultimately comes down to the flexible feature set, starting with its implementation of a complex multi-head MODE SELECTOR that allows for seamless transitioning between the playback heads so that they can quickly dial in their perfect room setup, effortlessly mixing reverberation and delay — just like when working with the vintage original. Further fine-tuning the perfect echo is perfectly possible by adjusting the depth (POS), volume (VOL), and stereo position (PAN) per playback head in the lower panel — nine parameters allowing for surgical-level precision in the workflow. Speedily synchronize TD-201’s tape speed to the track tempo with the SYNC control; when using this feature, the echo will also follow the impulse initiated by the TAP button. Those that wish to go ‘full-vintage’ are encouraged to play around with a range of fine-tuning parameters providing control over NOISE, DROPOUTS, HEADROOM, FLUTTER, and MOTOR — all of which are hardware machine attributes — to dial in some randomness to make the echo sound even more authentic. Adjustable gain-staging provides TD-201 users with an ability to control both the pre- processing input gain level and the post-processing output gain level.
DSP (Digital Signal Processing) operations are pipelined using the latest Apple Silicon and SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2) instruction sets to ensure that the TD-201 vintage tape echo plug-in benefits from a high-performance operation — despite its very complex computations. Clearly, the GUI (Graphical User Interface) supports high-pixel density on both macOS and Windows systems, providing users of whatever persuasion with the most enjoyable experience, visually, on high DPI (Dots Per Inch) displays.
Duly delivering the character of an increasingly-inaccessible hardware device that continues to make musical history but bypasses its inherent unpredictability and time-consuming usage in favor of countless customization options for maximum usability in an easy-to-use reimagining that effortlessly switches between old-school ping-pong to a deep space odyssey and everything in between, Black Rooster Audio’s TD-201 is surely a must- have for anyone seeking that distinctive delay sound that has remained so sought after since Roland’s revolutionary RE-201 arrived on the scene back in 1974 — albeit available from the comfort of their desktop (or laptop) as a virtual take on vintage tape echo, effectively bringing the unmistakable sound of an analog classic into the 21st century as an in-the-box tape delay. Indeed, it is all anyone ever wanted from a tape delay!
TD-201 is available to purchase for a time-limited introductory promo price of only $29.00 USD — rising thereafter to its regular price of $99.00 USD — as a 64-bit AAX-, AU-, and VST-compatible plug-in for macOS (10.9 or later) and AAX- and VST-compatible plug-ins for Windows (7 or later) directly from Black Rooster Audio via its dedicated webpage, which also includes in-depth information (including some superb-sounding audio demos), here: https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/landing/td-201
