Black Rooster Audio announces availability of TD-201 plug-in as virtual take on vintage tape echo

ERFURT, THURINGIA, GERMANY: 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 — as of October 14…
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 ¼-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

 

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