Most of us aren’t actually recording to tape these days. DAWs reign supreme for their low cost, instant recall, and their powerful editing features. But there is still something about the analog sound of recording to tape that seems to be missing. This is especially true on transient heavy elements like drums.
Warm Up Your Drum Tracks A Bit
Although not the same as recording to tape, using a tape saturation plugin (even a free one) can go a long way to bringing some warmth and character to your tracks. The subtle compression and EQ that happens in one of these plugins brings an edginess and bottom end to your drums in a nice way. Take a look at today’s mixing video and see what you think!
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
You did this on drums boot camp, but I couldn’t hear a difference. Now I can. with the tape sat, it seems warmer and fuller. That’s a great drum sound by the way.
You tend to think you can get the same tape saturation effect with a nice compressor, but it’s totally different.
Where else do you find yourself using tape saturation in mixes?
Do you come up with the backing trckas (beats and riffs) for your songs? Or do you bring the melodies/lyrics to someone who then comes up with them? or something completely different maybe?
Hi
Variety Of Sound got some nice Tape Simulation plug in’s for free.
http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/ check it out!!
Just demoed MellowMuse’s SATV saturator. It has tape, tube, transistor, and transformer. I really liked it, but it was only slightly better than the TAL-Tube that I found for free. At 100 dollars, it is just pass my tipping point for affordable. Another cool free tape saturator I found was 1 Time.
Is it just me or did it seem to cut off the reverb tail? That’s probably because of it’s natural compression sound.
Hi, Graham. If you add saturation to your drum group, should you then not add it to the master bus?
Hi there , Graham , i just wanted to thank you for your videos and for sharing your knowledge with everyone.
Keep it up and thanks again.