deriva tape machine vs SL Tymra

deriva is a tape machine plugin that is meant to give a polished and warm silky sound on your mix or master bus. built on published research papers¹ and my own experience recording with analog tape in studio, the sound is true to how real tape actually sounds. although the engine under the hood is advanced and complex, the controls are meant to be simple and easy, so you can set and forget and focus on your music. a fun feature is that you can pull the tape while the audio is running, causing the pitch to go up or down. the controls are pretty much self-explanatory: input and drive control how hard the signal and saturation will be. also sounds great on drums! bias simulates everything from a badly aligned machine to a brand new and serviced one, together with wear. a common misconception is that there is a lot of wow and flutter on tape machines. most professional tape machines do not have much flutter and wow, but in deriva you can push the machine a bit if you like - now with separate controls. tape speed affects the sound of the tape, where the lowest is dark and the highest is studio clean. if you want to bring back some of the high frequencies lost in tape speed, you may use the tone knob next to it. if you're bored with the UI you also have the possibility to change the colors and invert them. ON THE IPAD deriva is an Audio Unit (AUv3) and works with Logic Pro, GarageBand, AUM, Cubasis, Loopy Pro, Drambo and the rest. the standalone version either works as a live effect for your instrument, but also as a tape machine player: load in your own song and listen to it "on tape". you may also record live, or export the whole song with your current settings. Requires iPadOS 15 or later. also available for Mac, Windows and Linux at eikremaudio.com. ¹ Jatin Chowdhury, "Real-Time Physical Modelling for Analog Tape Machines", Proc. DAFx-19, Birmingham, 2019 (CC-BY 3.0). Otto Mikkonen, Alec Wright, Eloi Moliner and Vesa Välimäki, "Neural Modeling of Magnetic Tape Recorders", Proc. DAFx-23, Copenhagen, 2023. deriva is an independent implementation written from the published papers.

SL Tymra combines sampled instruments and synthesis in a two-layer keyboard instrument. The included library has 448 sounds in 15 categories, including pianos, organs, basses, leads, pads, strings, winds, mallets, plucks and textures. Set the source, octave and level of each layer, then blend them. Adjust attack, release, cutoff and resonance. Add chorus, delay and reverb. Mono and Legato support connected lead and bass lines. Glide controls the pitch transition between notes, from 0 to 500 ms. Browse by name or category, mark favourites and save edited sounds. AI Match searches the included bank locally using the sound character you select. It works offline. Play the on-screen keyboard or connect MIDI. Use Tymra on its own or as an AUv3 instrument in a compatible host. iPhone and iPad support portrait and landscape layouts. The library is included. No subscription, additional sound-pack purchase or account is required. The Mac edition is sold separately.