Denise Audio – Bad Tape 2

“Bad Tape 2 is an ingenious plugin that does much more than your average tape enhancement. I love that you can achieve a spacey Lo-Fi sound in just a matter of seconds all in one plugin.”

Skyler Gibbons. Audio Engineer

Did It Get Even Worse?

The Bad Tape plugin by denise was bad. It remains one of denise’s most popular plugins to date. Bad Tape focuses on recreating tape artefacts in a controlled way: tape stops, slight slow-downs and speed-ups, and multiple ways to go out of tune and off the grid. Now, three years after the initial release, denise wanted to take the Bad Tape to the next level, giving you more FX and a new level of flexibility to shape the tape degradation of your sound. With the Bad Tape 2, it gets even worse!

Detune

The detune is perhaps the most beloved feature of the Bad Tape – and for this new release, denise wanted to take it to the next level. denise added the ability to control the rewind and recover times of the detune individually. Work off the grid or sync it to the host BPM if you like. Recreate the sound of a (slightly) broken tape recorder, a cassette player or the nostalgic vibe of your old walkman. But it doesn’t end there…

Sidechain

With the newly added advanced side-chains, you can trigger your tape malfunctions via external audio sources: for instance, create detuned synth grooves from your kicks, resulting in an elegant touch – or complete madness. Use the side-chain to add interesting rhythmic noise textures with “Hiss” and “Harm” or finally control that damned squeaking tape reel to only play when desired, resulting in a very organic sound and a whole new level of fun and depth.

Push-Pull

The beloved push-pull feature of the Bite Harder, Dragon Fire & God Mode is now coming to the Bad Tape. Push-pull is the ability to saturate different frequency ranges without changing the fundamental characteristics of your sound. When saturating a drum bus, you can push the snare into the saturator for that warm tape sound and pull the sub out to keep the whole thing under control, all while retaining the tonal balance of the sound. With the Bad Tape 2, you can now pick the frequency ranges you want to saturate instead of having to saturate them all at once… see what that means for your sound in our video example:

In addition to the next level detune, side-chain and push-pull graph, denise also added host syncing, oversampling and four new effects: phaser, doubler, resonator & magnet. Slow down, freeze & wobble your sound like never before.

Denise Bad Tape 2 – Side Chain

Denise Bad Tape 2 – Detune Wow Shake

Features

• Next level Detune – Slow down the tape in real-time, as if you would press your finger on the tape reel.
• Sidechain – The side-chain allows you to trigger the effects via an external audio source. The amount can be set individually for each of the effects for endless combinations and sounds.
• Push-Pull Graph – The push-pull graph lets you have complete control over the frequencies that are going to be saturated. Automate it to create organically changing tape-saturation and create steep curves for screaming resonances.
• Harm – Introduce failing tape artefacts from subtle to extreme tape degradation.
• Four Effects – Phaser, Doubler, Resonator & Magnet.
• Squeal & Noize – Add old tape machine noises for character and vibe.
• Colour – Adjust the overall colour of the sound analog to different tape materials.
• Speed – Adjust the speed of the wow and shake effects to easily create interesting variations.
• Saturation – Saturate your tracks for that good old vintage tape sound. Warm and smooth character due to hysteresis emulation.
• Presets – Comes with presets for synth, drums, bass and classic tape-style effects.
• More Benefits – Low CPU usage, works offline, has oversampling, host syncing, native M1 support and works without dongles or complex licence managers. As always with denise plugins, the philosophy is: buy once, own forever. No subscription, no ongoing payments.

System Requirements

Mac

• Mac OSX 10.7 or newer (Intel / M1 Apple Silicon supported) (64-bit only)
• VST, VST3, AU, AAX

​Windows

• Windows 7 or newer (64-bit only)
• VST, VST3, AAX

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