Tape saturation vs. Exciter

[David Lee Hasselhoff]

Hi! Just been thinkin' about tape saturation and sonic exciters. So... both happen to add harmonic content to your recording. Am I right in supposing that the overall effect of both are pretty much the same then? Especially considering plug-ins: Do you use both together in a mix or is it "either or" for that stuff?

 

[Plec]

I think it's pretty fair to say that Tape Saturation algorithms can be categorized as Sonic Exciters. But there are very different types of exciters out there and many that does not try to emulate tape saturation at all. Using it or not is just a matter of taste. IME TS emulation is not very much used for metal production unless you're going for something more D.Bergstrand/In Flames type of a production which is radically more smeared overall than a lot of other stuff if you know what I mean.

 

[Erlend_]

I have tried different kinds of tape saturation plugins but I almost always opt not to use it.
There seems to be alot of excitement about the upcoming UAD Fatso and I guess I will
demo it when it lands (if its UAD-1 compatible that is).

 

[paladin shredder]

i usually put massey tapehead on each rhythm guitar track with very modest saturation just to smooth out the high end and add some fullness/warmth. with distorted guitar, little to no saturation is needed, but sometimes it can add a little bit of color that makes it pop out of the mix a little better, being careful not to go overboard. drums, however, can take lots of saturation.

i find tape saturation plugins much better on individual tracks that need it, rather that saturating the whole mix (however, analog console saturation i find to work in opposite way).

 

[Taurean]

Tape saturation possesses a behavior that can be seen as a type of transient distortion (remember distortion simply means 'change'). The result is a taming of the high's and also the disortion may introduce a lower order harmonic.

Exciters on the hand are known more for adding odd or even harmonics without much dynamic impact, physically speaking. What may be perceived is a change in dynamics, but all in all that's how it differs from tape s.

 

[RiF]

Universal Audio has a nice little article about sound enhancement processors online.