WEAR¶
WEAR adds tape wear to the processed signal, after the mode. It is the WEAR knob on the face (default 25%) with four trim paddles on the back panel. At WEAR 0 the whole stage is bypassed and the signal is untouched.
WEAR affects only the processed signal. The dry signal that MIX blends back in is never worn. WEAR does not respond to the CHAOS knob.
What it does¶
The WEAR stage is a chain: tape motion, tape saturation, head response, bit and sample-rate crush, then noise and dropouts. As you raise the knob, the ingredients come in one after another, each one starting at its own point on the knob and then growing:
| Ingredient | Starts at about | Trim paddle |
|---|---|---|
| Wow and flutter | 10% | WOW |
| Magnetic tape saturation | 20% | none |
| Head frequency response | 35% | HEAD |
| Noise (hiss) | 50% | HISS |
| Digital crush | 65% | CRUSH |
| Dropouts | 75% | HISS |
Those start points are for the paddles at their default 50% position.
The paddles¶
Each paddle runs 0 to 100% and defaults to 50%. A paddle at 50% leaves its ingredient arriving at the points above. Above 50% it arrives sooner and goes further. At 0 it turns that ingredient off.
- WOW. Wobble in the tape speed: slow wow (0.31, 0.47 and 0.68 Hz) with faster flutter (about 5 to 8 Hz) and a slow drift, as a delay that moves around 6 ms by up to 2.5 ms either way at full. Its personality depends on the seed.
- HEAD. Head response: a boost of about 6 dB around 80 Hz and a treble roll-off that sweeps down from 18 kHz to about 2.6 kHz at the extreme.
- HISS. Tape hiss in the 2 to 14 kHz band, around -34 dBFS at full, turning down slightly when the signal is loud. The same paddle also sets dropouts: brief dips of 20 to 60 ms to 5% gain, which start once the knob passes about 75%.
- CRUSH. A mu-law companding crush fading in, and, further along, a lower sample rate that sweeps from the host rate down toward 8 kHz.
Saturation has no paddle. It follows the WEAR knob alone.
Paddle labels
The paddles are labeled WOW, HEAD, HISS and CRUSH on the panel. In a host's parameter list they appear as Dirt Trim Wow, Dirt Trim Bandwidth, Dirt Trim Noise and Dirt Trim Crush.