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OK, I'm getting tired of having to repeat this over and over every time some noob doesn't bother to use the search function, but
No matter ho much the state of the technology improves, no saturation plugin is EVER going to sound like tape. Ain't gonna happen, for a variety of reasons.
First, tape saturation is someting that happens during the recording process, and any effect simulating it would need to be applied BEFORE digital conversion in order to behave like the real thing. You can't hit a digital converter hard the way you can tape. Therefore the behavior of the system won't be the same.
Second, magnetic systems are the single most difficult thing to model accurately in electronics, especially when they go non-linear, which is what is happening with saturation. We don't even have tools that can come close to accurately analyzing this - and we can't model what can't be analyzed. It's not likely that these tools will exist any time soon. We have tools that can analyze what goes on in the linear portion of the operation of a magnetic device, but that's not really what we're interested in here.
Third, it would be necessary to model the various different formulations of tape, being operated at different speeds, over different types of heads. This is a LOT of complexity. Different models of tape machine use heads and support electronics that have different frequency response characteristics which affect the way they saturate, both the head's magnetic core and the tape. Different formulations of tape have vastly different magnetic characteristics, which is why tape machines must be calibrated to the actual tape being used. There are even magnetic differences between different batches of the same formulation, which is why you have to print tones on every single reel of tape.
For these reasons, and more, companies that make "tape saturation plugins" don't usually even try to actually model tape; they come up with some sort of "saturation algorithm" that they feel is "good enough" and leave it at that.
Now I'm not saying that some of these plugins might not be useful - obviously a lot of people are using them, so they must be good for something - they just don't sound like tape. It's like trying to get a real tube guitar amp sound out of a solid state amp. You can get kinda close, but no cigar, and for very similar reasons, except that tape simulation is even more complicated than amp simulation. (Maybe you think a Line 6 can sound like a '57 Bassman or a '68 Marshall - I don't and neither does anyone with much experience with the real thing.....)(Or like using "Mic Modeler" to turn your SM57 into a Telefunken U-47.....<snicker>)
The closest thing to real tape emulation is a hardware box made by Rupert Neve that incorporates real magnetic elements - but it still doesn't have the tape itself so it's not 100%; however it is better than anything else. Expensive, too, especially if you need multiple channels.
So go ahead, play with your plugins, you may like the results. Just don't kid yourself that it sounds like tape, because it doesn't.
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