Plugins, Pedals, or the REAL Thing?? Comparing tape delay expressions | Secret Weapons

If you are someone looking to get into tape delay, level up your delay game, or find a new way to work it into your writing and playing then there are a LOT of options out there. Today I want to give a brief overview of the three ways you can use tape delay in your workflow, the pros and cons of each, and some standout offerings from each category.
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Signal Path:
Music Man St Vincent Goldie
NeuralDSP Quad Cortex & Archetype: Mateus Asato
Strymon Volante
Echofix EF-X3
Timecodes:
00:00 What are we doing today?
02:25 Pros and Cons of Analog Tape
08:16 Real Tape - EF-X3 Sound Samples
10:46 Pros and Cons of Tape Delay Pedals
17:35 Tape Delay Pedal - Strymon Volante Sound Samples
20:09 Pros and Cons of Tape Delay Plugins
26:46 Tape Delay Plugin - Mateus Asato Sound Samples
32:05 Final Thoughts
Recorded in Universal Audio LUNA
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[@ToolHead44]

Love this new format. I’ll always watch your longer form stuff but it’s nice to have something I can get through in one go instead of waiting til the end of the day or weekend

[@chrija03]

Yes! Love it! If the topic, format, technique, gear, whatever is inspiring you, then the video is all that much more enjoyable to watch.

[@rogerloydmccoy]

Love this format, please do more 💯

[@buzzm526]

What I like about your videos is that we got lot of infos + great music and videos 🔥

[@itsanthonybest]

Fantastic video. Super informative, and great to see options across the entire spectrum.

[@Justin-bm7zn]

Sending posi feedback your way. Really appreciate this format and great topic. Glad you put the volante in the spotlight. I still watch your couple mins with the volante video you posted a bit ago. I just took it off the board a few nights ago because I felt it was always missing something. You inspired me to get it back in the chain. Thank you.

[@jaredparsons4761]

I have been considering a Volante. You are my go-to for pedal info. So I was bummed a couple weeks ago when I searched for a deep dive Volante video from you and found it doesn’t exist. But this is still a nice video ;) much love from across the country.

[@nathankellstadt412]

I really enjoyed this one and would absolutely like to see more like it.

[@TrevorrNourse]

Mark, this was so well done. You put year heart into your work, greatly appreciate all you do. THANK YOU

[@TrevorrNourse]

I use the Mateus Asato mostly, find it to be better than any of my pedals. However not out playing live anymore, all home studio work. Love what DSP is doing. Would like to see DSP release effect plugins outside of amp offer.

[@TonyBlackNYC]

this guy works hard. kudos.

[@kevinmusso2397]

YOU are my new favorite YT guitar content creator. Thank you.

[@markjohnstonofficial]

Ahhh thank you. Thats really rad to hear, especially on a “non demo” which is so much of the channel but not the stuff that’s always the most fun to make and present.

[@13aphomet]

Love this form of video Mark.. I would love to see some shootout style vids like this in the future too. Real analog delay vs digital analog plz. Spring vs digi-spring etc.. I watched a vid recently of the Meraki vs the LVX doing analog and it was AMAZINGLY close!! Thanks for the great content as always.. 🤘🏼

[@chrislink73]

For what it's worth, the Strymon Volante held its own remarkably well against the far more expensive real tape unit; and it won't ever need repairs like its analog counterpart. Plus having stereo in/out and MIDI functionality -- and being able to put it also on your pedal board? For 95% of people that will be a good enough value proposition to prefer the pedal. I will say for the 5% of people who love that sound of real tape and don't mind spending the money, there IS a difference in the sound, the tape blends more smoothly into your playing and doesn't seem to get in the way as much as the Volante does on occasion, the real tape is warmer and smoother -- is it worth the headaches to get that? Up to the end user. I have a Fulltone Tube Tape Echo unit that I love for the warmth and character of its tube preamp section, and the tape echo is also wonderful on it, but I also only use it in the studio and would never take it to a show -- I might take the pedal tho. Just my 2 cents.

[@markjohnstonofficial]

Totally agree on the volante. It’s an excellent piece of gear and there’s a reason it’s had so much longevity in my workflow since I got it like four years ago. In terms of my own work; I am about 90% a studio player these days so the echofix is kind of the perfect thing for me but I can’t really fathom any gig where I would feel compelled to bring it with me vs the timeline, volante, or el cap depending on the rig I was running.

[@LoVeAmBiEnT]

I love the el cap. it’s going to get the Volante but I can’t justify it when I already have the el Capistan.

[@chrislink73]

​@@LoVeAmBiEnT The El Cap is a great pedal, they just do different things. The repeats on the Volante are a bit brighter (unless you roll off the tone of the repeats), it also has Sound on Sound and some panning features that are cool for individual heads, plus a reverb built-in. If you just want a straight ahead tape delay though, I do think the tones on the El Cap are excellent to my ear, of course it depends on how you dial things in and what your setup looks like, they're both great though.

[@markjohnstonofficial]

To be fair the el cap has a sound on sound looper, you just can’t use it with the normal delay heads. And el cap does also have spring reverb built in. Honestly the ways in which the volante really excels are in the delay head panning, the looper, and the alternate repeat subdivision options.

[@phladjki]

if the tape delay sounds warmer, you can always roll off the highs on the volante; no reason they can’t be a little warmer, even warmer than real tape.

[@matthewmcclure3181]

I think your perspective is a fair and balanced overview of the pros/cons of each option. Topics like this can be a bit of mine field in the realm of public perception: risk of being labelled a gear snob, risk of UNDERstating the gap in tonal quality between real analog tape and a pedal, risk of minimizing the painful/frustrating aspects of using real tape, etc. Like you, I use all three formats (Multivox MX-201, Belle Epoch Deluxe, many plugins). Emphasis on "use all three", for many of the same reasons you mentioned (right tool for the job). I'll end with saying your demo of the Neural DSP plugin sounds fantastic. I don't own it but it piqued my interest.

[@MrCowfood]

I just purchased the ef-x3. It’s a nostalgia thing. Not to mention, a real thing. I see so much potential with it, dirty, tape compressed potential. I came from the OG 201 and echoplex machines of yor. Lost in moves and finances and time. Here’s my two cents: the real thing introduces wobbles degradation etc in random areas. Sometimes steady, sometimes not. This is not found in the pedals and itb variants (yet). Feedback/compression/harmonics also are more “alive”. Lastly, the itb vst stuff loves to throw pops and digital cuts in which I find not so alive even though random. Long live entropy, long live tape :)

[@gdski]

Watched the whole thing. Would watch more.

[@CorNigrum]

I was looking for tape delay comparison videos and lo and behold, a fresh new video in my feed. I totally agree with the Volante and UAFX stuff: I wish the Volante would sound like the UAFX stuff, or that UA would implement proper MIDI and/or expression pedal support. I like the UA pedals, but it's just so frustrating to have all those sounds and not being able to access them in live gig or jam situations. Stymon makes great effects, but I'm one of those that can't unhear the "Strymon sheen". Especially the Volante, which to me would be like that one pedal I'd need to do a gig, but I don't think it lives up to the Boonar and UA Galaxy and Starlight. The JAM pedals Delay Llama Extreme has nice analog and quasi-tape sounds, but again, not enough live control. As to plugins, well, as someone into extreme sports and extreme metal to get away from a day job sitting behind computers, when it comes to guitar, the less buttons and menus it has, the better. I like your long-form content stuff, keep it up!

[@alphanuevo]

I like the idea of a real Roland RE-201 but not so much the cost and maintenance cost. I have the plugin from Arturia. I also have the boss re-20 which I should learn how to use the expression pedal with. Echo Fix looks nice too... Cheers.

[@seanmcdoodlenoodle]

Great vid, as always! When you are using the plugin are you going straight into your interface? With input switched to an instrument in? Or something else in between? The tone is impressive for digital, so just wondering!

[@markjohnstonofficial]

Yeah that’s guitar into the hiZ input on my interface. I’m running the neural plugin as a standalone and routing the output audio straight to my daw so any changes I make to settings get printed in real time.

[@thomasfokas]

I have never used this Neural DSP plugin, however Other Desert Cities and Timeless 3 are the two best (tape) delay plugins.

[@brandongullion6353]

Have you tried the Dawner Prince Boonar? I have one and love it for an echorec emulation. Definitely not as much going on as the Volante but a solid and straight forward option!

[@Kuztomshop]

I have the El Cap. I have the Galaxy. I have the Volante. I love all three. BUT, I have the Keely Caverns on my board. To me, it is the most practical, not only in size, but also function.

[@BobGuido]

Because you mentioned reamping, I would love to hear about your method of dealing with round trip latency when reamping a DI guitar track through your pedals and amps and back into your DAW. This is a major issue that isn't discussed in detail as much as it really should be, considering how much of an impact that latency can make on recorded music if you don't find a solution to manage it. If you're going to talk about reamping in future videos, it could be very helpful to link to your own official video on reamping. Not just the gear you use, but more importantly how you deal with the round trip latency. There are many ways to solve the problem as you are probably well aware of. There are plugins that calculate round trip latency. There are different ways to calculate the latency and slide the reamped track(s) back in time, the number of samples late it is. Which method works the best in your experience Mark? The best reamps on the market are made by the Little Labs, so if you need a product/company to sponsor a video in order to be able to make one on this super important topic, maybe reach out to Little Labs and see if they're interested. The Little Labs reamps are like straight wire. 100% transparent. Exactly what comes out of our guitar's output jack is what goes to your track in your DAW. The fidelity is as high as you will ever hear right off the guitar pickups without any EQ or transient enhancement/coloration/degradation. Radial Reamps & DI's are not close to the level of performance of Little Labs solutions and they greatly color the sound of the instrument in ways that are negative. Even the JCR Cuniberti (great invention John!) licensed one colors the sound of the instrument hugely. Joe Satriani uses Little Labs and Millenia Reamps. Jonathan Little took JC's idea and perfected the circuitry. So did John LaGrou at Millenia. The Three Johns of Reamp. Volante is my favorite tape echo that isn't a tape echo. It's not exactly a Roland RE-201 but it's modulation is gorgeous and it's a lot less noisy! It is unfortunate that the delay lines fold into the center of the stereo field so rapidly. I'm not sure why Pete decided to implement them that way, but on the upside, if you feed the Volante into the Timeline, they combine beautifully with the Timeline's digital delay modes having a super wide stereo image. I think Strymon leads the way in tape echo emulation no matter what the format is and I look forward to their delay plugin when it arrives. I think that could be the only delay plugin that will bump Echo Boy for me. Volante and El Capistan are the top products on the market in this category for sure. I don't like the way the UA Galaxy pedal's repeats do that really strange random jump to stereo suddenly and then back to a rather narrow sound in the repeats. That is really odd. Lack of MIDI and presets are nothing compared to the blundering idea to make the echo repeats suddenly shoot out to the edges of the stereo field for a split second and then jump back towards the center. Was this Tor's idea? I prefer to use Volante over my original Roland RE-201 Space Echo when combining a tape echo sound with other pedals in a multi-pedal setup because other pedals don't always behave their best with the Roland Space Echo in the signal path. I can't seem to find a VST Plugin Tape Echo model that sounds better than the Space Echo mode in the Soundtoys Echo Boy. I've combed the desert and tried them all. I find that Echo Boy works better than UA's Galaxy Tape Echo plugin, Arturia's Delay Tape-201 or Audio Thing's Outer Space emulation of the Roland Space Echo. Valhalla's emulation of tape echo is my second favorite. I haven't tried the Asato plugin. Thanks for the video on tape echo Mark!

[@embersandash]

IK space delay.

[@forestchild3261]

Mark, how do you feel about the tape sounds coming from the LVX, compared to Volante?

[@markjohnstonofficial]

the flexibility of the LVX is wild but the effort required to get the sound right is kind of rough VS a plug n play like the Volante. I also think in terms of pure sound quality in tape pedals I'd say El Cap beats both, I just dont love the features

[@crag_]

Ive never had the el cap but i have rebought the volante, something about the as it is face value interface is too useful when recording stuff, and I havent been able to recreate the sounds anywhere else. I have also tried to get it to sound like the elcap sound samples but Ill take it for what it is, its great.

[@Gerhard468]

Have you checked out Audio Thing Outer Space 2? Sounds great.

[@benjaminhixson3918]

Something that helped my Volante sound a lot more like a real tape machine is the epoch preamp/boost. One of the things I hate about the Volante is its preamp doesn’t hit the dry signal, which I think is where a lot of the glue of tape echos exists. I run the epoch preamp full up with no boost on as an always on pedal right before my Volante, and turn the preamp on the strymon to 9 o’clock or lower. Really helped me on my road of chasing space echo tones

[@Dungeon_of_Regret]

would the EP boost provide a similar outcome? I have an EP Boost and volante, but never thought to do this...

[@benjaminhixson3918]

@@Dungeon_of_Regret I would assume so? The biggest thing is I’m not really trying to push volume onto it, I’m just using it for color. So, provided you can do that with the ep boost, it should work. Give it a shot!

[@mikemorrisonmusic]

I love my Volante for its sound and versatility. To your point, though, no one pedal or effect can be everything to everyone.

[@markjohnstonofficial]

Volante is great. I hear SO many stories about “I sold it and then bought it again” with that pedal. People get it, find that they miss the idea of their el cap or whatever and then ditch it only to realize it sounds excellent and has an awesome feature set

[@ShinyShinyBlack]

Who is the “we” you keep referring to?

[@embersandash]

IK Space Delay is by far the best 201 emulation. Surreal Machines Modetic comes second. The black rooster one is not bad. All others are pretty bad.

[@Gerhard468]

I'm not opposed to using a laptop or, in my case, iPad live. I have do so for 3 years. I don't get why guitarist are resistant to using laptops live. Maybe it is just up to confirmation bias, it definitely doesn't have anything to do with how things sound as it video proves.

[@jelnet]

I bought an el cap, but was disappointed with the stereo spread and there seemed to be only about one setting I liked, I found tweaking the sound fiddly and the sos feature woefully confusing. So maybe the Volante would be a better bet (I do like a bit of ping pong). The real tape echo was lush, easy on the ear. The plugin, hmm, good but somehow a bit too pristine. I try not to be swayed by the idea that analogue is better, and maybe it's just psychological, and I am after all listening to everything digitally, but I dunno... 🤔

[@markjohnstonofficial]

Haas effects is something that can either be super useful or very annoying. I often find a lot of annoyance with the off balance sense of space that strymons haas uses. Sometimes it’s great in the context of a mix but it’s not my jam for guitar by itself. Volante’s ability to do that OR to pan delay heads out is so incredible useful.

[@jelnet]

Thanks that's useful to know!

[@josephestes7076]

I love my volante, but it doesn't work live for me. I use stereo modulations, but if i put them in front of the volante, they sum to mono first, and its sad because i adore the sound of the pedal.

[@markjohnstonofficial]

That’s interesting that you’d run into a problem with that given that basically 99% of stereo pedals sum to mono to create their stereo image. Volante as well as basically every other mainstream stereo delay and reverb will have an analog stereo through path but in the wet channel sum to mono to generate the stereo image.

[@josephestes7076]

@markjohnstonofficial lvx doesn't seem to do it, but maybe I'm crazy 🤷‍♂️

[@josephestes7076]

@markjohnstonofficial also, not sure about the Meraki but I imagine it wouldn't have that issue based on my limited understanding of the signal path.

[@markjohnstonofficial]

Meraki is two independent signal paths, yeah. But all strymon, all the Meris stuff, the chase bliss CXM, all the neunaber stuff, it all stereo sums. I would hazard a guess that it might be an issue somewhere else in your signal chain unless you can swap volante for el cap and it fixes it. Or I wonder if there’s a submenu issue present. Weird nonetheless

[@josephestes7076]

@@markjohnstonofficial I'll check again, but yes, odd indeed.

[@hoover728]

Can we please not pretend that using a real tape echo echo vs a pedal is far more a financial decision than an artistic one? $400 vs $3000 isn’t really a choice for most musicians and to think otherwise is pretty classist.

[@markjohnstonofficial]

lol I point out the buy in cost on a real unit in the video AND point out that pedals and plugins both have a strong “pro” of affordability and accessibility. But sure, to compare things that cost different amounts in the same category = classist I guess.

[@persywho5863]

hahaha Mark you classist with your million dollar studio room😂

[@markjohnstonofficial]

I’m so classist I put a washer and dryer in my studio to flex on the haters.

[@ng9647]

@@markjohnstonofficialgreat response Mark 😂. As a Volante owner who has always been curious I appreciate the hell out of this comparison. Thanks for putting this together dude. Most of us can’t compare this stuff side by side so it’s cool to see. Stellar content as always.

[@hoover728]

To simply compare them is not classist, but to not recognize that for most musicians real tape is simply not an economic possibility reeks of privilege. It should be listed as the #1 con, not as a sideline acknowledgment that ‘yeah kinda pricey’.