The Oxide Tape LUNA Extension provides UA’s revolutionary tape emulation technology in a simple package — with all of the essential tape sound — for free. By harnessing the musical, mixable sound of tape, Oxide Tape LUNA Extension imparts essential “sounds like a record” clarity, punch, and warmth to input tracks.
Groundbreaking Tape Emulation Technology
The Oxide Tape LUNA Extension was designed by the same team behind the industry-leading UAD Ampex ATR-102 Mastering Tape Machine and Studer A800 Multichannel Tape Machine plug-ins. Designed in conjunction with AES magnetic recording expert Jay McKnight, Oxide gives your tracks and mixes the warmth, presence, and vibe of professional analog tape.
Easy to Use
Oxide’s intuitive control deliver musical results for beginners and pros alike. By emulating fat tape compression and colorful circuit behaviors, Oxide gives your LUNA tracks a cohesive glue that only analog tape can.
Oxide provides all of a magnetic tape recorder’s desirable analog sweetness. As with magnetic tape, a clean sound, or just the right amount of harmonic saturation, with the simple Saturation control. Oxide operates at a tape/fluxivity calibration level of +6 dB.
The main point to understand about Oxide operation is that the Saturation control adjusts the signal level recorded to tape, and is therefore a color parameter. As with hardware tape recorders, lower VU levels result in a cleaner, warmer sound with more headroom, while increasing VU levels results in more tape saturation, compression, and bite.
Oxide Tape machine
Oxide Tape as it appears on an input track
Using Oxide Tape
Oxide Tape can be enabled on any instrument or audio track. Oxide Tape is applied only during playback on audio tracks. Oxide Tape is applied on instrument tracks that are playing back, record-enabled, and input-enabled, with or without ARM enabled. Oxide Tape has simple one-knob tape emulation.
Oxide Tape includes a global bypass control for the tape machine that applies for all instances in the LUNA session, and per-track settings for on/off and saturation. In this way, the tape machine emulation is similar to a true recording and mixing tape signal path.
To configure Oxide Tape machine in a tape deck slot:
-
On an audio or instrument track in Mixer view, or on a Focus track in Timeline view, click the Tape slot. The Tape browser opens.
-
Double-click a tape slot (A-D) in which you want to configure the tape machine.
-
From the Machine list, select Oxide Tape. Studer A800 is only available if you have the Studer A800 LUNA Extension licensed and installed.
Once you have configured the Oxide Tape machine in a machines slot, you can assign that tape machine to any number of audio or instrument tracks.
To assign Oxide Tape machine to a track:
- Click the Tape insert on a track. The Tape Machine selector opens on the left of the screen.
- Choose the Oxide Tape machine from the list in the Tape Machine browser. A tape machine Saturation knob appears on the track, along with a VU meter and a Power button.
- Use the Saturation knob to increase or decrease the amount of tape saturation applied to the track.
- Click the power button to enable or disable tape emulation on the track.
To configure the global sound of an Oxide tape machine:
- Click the Tape insert on a track. The Tape Machine selector opens on the left of the screen.
- Choose an Oxide tape machine from the list.
- Choose a preset to configure the global sound of the Oxide tape machine in the session.
Tip: If you have the UAD Oxide Tape plug-in, you can use presets you have created in the plug-in with LUNA tape tracks.
To adjust a tape control, you can click and drag on the control to rotate it to the desired position, or you can double-click the control to choose from a list of values.
To adjust controls on multiple tracks, select multiple tracks, then change the controls on one track. Selection Grouping (Mixing > Selection Grouping, or Command+G) must be enabled to adjust tape settings on multiple tracks at one time.