Oddular

Please note: This product is downloaded from the Audio Thing website. After your purchase you will be sent a unique code. Download the activation guide PDF from your account for further details.

Reels is based on a vintage Japanese reel to reel, ironically marked as High Fidelity, found in a distressed state at a local flea market. Most of these consumer tape recorders, also due to their age, produce has a very rough Lo-Fi analog sound.

During recording or playback, the motor noise somehow bleeds in, along with the usual tape hiss, limiting the actual bandwidth available on the tape.

Reels recreates all the imperfection of consumer reel-to-reel vintage recorders, including:

• Harshness, harmonic distortion with loss of clarity (mid-range)
• WOW/Flutter, pitch instabilities due to recording and playback issues
• Ducking, random volume loss due to tape or rec/play head imperfections
• Crosstalk, the leak between left and right channel in a stereo signal
• Hiss, high-frequency noise caused by the magnetic particles in the tape
• Motor, mid-frequency noise caused by the reels motor

We’ve modeled three different tape types, from ruined to NOS (new old stock) state.
The tape types are named after the country of origin: JP (Japan), IT (Italy), FR (France).

• JP Used tape but with an overall better frequency response
• IT New old stock but with a limited frequency response
• FR Overused and badly stored, very bad frequency response

Each tape will affect the sound in different ways, especially at higher feedback settings when using the Echo section.

WOW/Flutter, Ducking, and other parameters will also change according to the selected tape, creating different amount of pitch and volume changes.

When pressing stop on a reel-to-reel player, the tape doesn’t stop immediately. Instead, it slows down creating a pitch down and fade out effect. You can replicate this effect with Reels, and you can also control the speed of the tape stop.