PTF 350 STUDIO TAPE RECORDER
New
Real Analog Tape Sound
- Three Captures of the Record Amplifier: Soft, Hard and Harder, taken from the real electronics, with the RECORD LEVEL dial running smoothly between them from clean to driven.
- A Real Tape: 87 seconds of it, kept for the session. What the record head writes stays on the tape with its own hiss, and plays back once RECORD is switched off.
- Built From the Manual: The record equalisation traced from its figures to within 0.4 dB, flutter of 0.2% at 15 in/s, 1% distortion at the operating level and 3% at 6 dB above it.
- A Transport That Follows the DAW: PLAY, STOP, FAST FORWARD and REWIND, two tape speeds, and a STOP that slows the music to a halt over a second.
- The Bottom Panel: What the original kept inside, from drive, bias and tape drive to wow and flutter, hiss and low end, a phase-true blend with the dry signal and 17 factory presets.
PTF 350 STUDIO TAPE RECORDER
Windows and macOS
PTF 350 is not a tape effect laid over a track. The signal goes through the machine the way the schematic draws it: Into the record amplifier, onto the tape, and back off it through the playback head and its amplifier. The tape follows the DAW. It starts when the DAW plays, holds when it stops, and STOP slows it to a halt over a second, with the music under the head heard slowing down.
The 1950s studio recorder, rebuilt from its manual.
PTF 350 brings back a studio workhorse of the 1950s: A quarter-inch tape recorder running at 7-1/2 and 15 inches a second, with its record and playback electronics in a case of their own. It is rebuilt from the original operation and maintenance manual and its schematics, and it wears the machine's own face. Every knob, switch, key and lamp, and the reels at every turn, is rendered from a 3D model built part by part.
Three captures of the record amplifier
The record electronics are three captures of the real amplifier, at three settings of RECORD LEVEL: Soft, Hard and Harder. Between them the dial runs smoothly from clean to driven. The INPUT TRANSFER SWITCH feeds them as on the original, through the bridging pad and the input transformer, or straight to the level control. After them come the record equalisation of the manual's own curves, traced to within 0.4 dB, and a tape that saturates the way oxide does. The meter reads peaks the way a DAW does, with the weight of a real needle.
A real tape, on a real transport
What the record head writes stays on the tape, 87 seconds of it, with its own hiss fixed to it. Switch RECORD off and the playback head reads it back. FAST FORWARD and REWIND wind the tape at the machine's speed, and with RECORD on they play the incoming track sped up or backwards. LOW plays the tape at half the speed it was recorded at, an octave down with its treble and its hiss. Below the transport, a third unit holds what the original kept inside: Input and output, drive, tape drive, bias, wow and flutter, hiss and low end, a blend with the dry signal that stays in step with the tape, and the preset row.
| Systems | Windows 10 and later, macOS 10.11 and later |
|---|---|
| Architecture | Apple silicon and Intel |
| Trial | Seven days, everything unlocked |
| Licence | 2 computers |
| Updates | Included. New versions appear in your account. |
| Refund | Seven days, no reasons needed |
| Formats | VST3 and Audio Unit on macOS. VST3 on Windows, 64-bit. |
| macOS | 10.11 or later on Intel, 11 or later on Apple Silicon. Universal. |
| Windows | Windows 10 or later, 64-bit. |
| Tape speeds | 15 and 7-1/2 inches a second, quarter-inch tape. |
| Record amplifier | Three captures of the real electronics, Soft, Hard and Harder. |
| Tape | 87 seconds, recorded and kept for the session. Saturation at twice the sample rate. |
| Flutter | 0.2% at 15 in/s and 0.25% at 7-1/2 in/s, as the manual gives it. |
| Distortion | 1% at the operating level and 3% at 6 dB above it. |
| Hiss | 55 dB under the level of 3% distortion. |
| Equalisation | The record curves of the manual, traced to within 0.4 dB. |
| Meter | Peak, 0 at 0 dBFS, falling 20 dB in 1.7 seconds. |
| Latency | 270 samples at 48 kHz, reported to the host. |
| Presets | 17 factory presets, plus saved presets as files. |
| Licence | One serial key for two computers, seven-day trial. |
PTF 350 STUDIO TAPE RECORDER
One payment. Yours to keep.
