I know that these three tape types have intentional noise added to give them their individual flavors, but it seems like when I’m recording a synth or drum part to tape the noise level is boosted a lot more than what I hear on playback. Is this normal, or am I missing something silly on the OP-1F?
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It depends on how hot your signal is.
It’s adding some kind of saturation/texture and probably ends up raising a bit your overall signal.
There is some gain staging to be done on every tape.
And you can only hear the tape effect while recording or after recording.
Although, at times, I only arm the track to monitor the signal prior to recording.
Dunno if this helps.
so you are saying while recording you hear a certain noise level but listening back to the take you don’t hear the same noise level? if i captured this right, i don’t think that should be the case and my guess is just that the various mixer and level settings for playback might be lower?
i’m not too sure though i’ll try this today to see if i experience anything similar
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Yes that is correct, but that applies for everything that is being recorded. The playback will always be lower in volume than what it was while recording, some people find this to be a tedious thing to deal with I personally don’t see a big issue. I’ll just make up the gain in the master compressor once I’m done with my loop or track in the tape section. The master compressor as the manual states “drive” levels the differences between low and high volumes, and “release” sets how quick it will apply the “drive” which could be a little confusing when a conventional compressor’s release means it’ll maintain the compressed level’s longer and attack meaning it’ll compressor the incoming signal quicker. It seems though that TE’s release setting on master compressor is both what could be attack and release settings on a conventional compressor.
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