Description
Two tape machines, slightly out of step
Olden thickens a sound from the inside out. Two short delay voices run beneath the source, each drifting in time with its own wow and flutter, then pass through tape-age filtering, a low-body boost and soft saturation. Keep it low for doubling and width you feel more than hear; push it into a seasick, lo-fi chorus. We use it on vocals, guitars and synth pads.
Olden is a Modifier effect in Studies Effects. It's in the free tier, no card and no sign-in, and we don't sell it as a separate plugin.
Left to right, as on the faceplate
Your input feeds the voice pair, then the wet voices run through the tape stages before the blend.
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Wow & flutter
- FLUTTER
- Depth of the tape wobble on both voices: slow, random wow plus a faster flutter. Low adds gentle movement; high gives an unsteady, seasick pitch.
- WEAR
- Speeds up the wow and flutter, as if the transport were more worn.
-
Dual voice delay
- DRIFT
- Detunes the two voices against each other, one slightly ahead, one slightly behind. Higher values widen the doubling.
- PAIR
- Base delay of the pair, 8 to 30 ms. Short times thicken; longer times read as a distinct double.
-
Tape age · Body
- AGE
- Rolls off the top of the voices, from bright and open down to a dull, worn tone around 400 Hz.
- BODY
- Boosts the voices around 200 Hz for low-mid weight.
-
Saturation · Spread
- HEAT
- Drives the voices into soft tape saturation. Wet signal only.
- SPREAD
- At zero both voices come from a mono sum; turn it up to feed each voice more of its own side of the input.
-
Master
- BLEND
- Dry against doubled, on an equal-loudness curve.
- TRIM
- Output level, −12 to +12 dB, limited just below full scale.
-
Try this
- DOUBLE
- Classic double tracking: FLUTTER low, PAIR in the middle, raise DRIFT and SPREAD.
- CASSETTE
- A broken cassette: FLUTTER and WEAR at maximum, AGE up.
Download Studies, load Studies Effects on an audio track, and pick Olden under Modifier in the device browser.
Olden is one of the ten free devices. A subscription opens the other fifty in the same install.
Sold separately?
We built Olden for Studies, and it lives only there. Your project saves the device and its settings and reopens them the way you left them.
- Formats
- VST2, VST3, Audio Units · Apple silicon native
- Systems
- Current macOS and Windows 10/11 x64
- Hosts
- Any AU or VST/VST3 host