Denise Audio

Did It Get Even Worse?

The Bad Tape plugin by denise was bad. It remains one of denise’s most popular plugins to date. Bad Tape focuses on recreating tape artefacts in a controlled way: tape stops, slight slow-downs and speed-ups, and multiple ways to go out of tune and off the grid. Now, three years after the initial release, denise wanted to take the Bad Tape to the next level, giving you more FX and a new level of flexibility to shape the tape degradation of your sound. With the Bad Tape 2, it gets even worse!

Detune

The detune is perhaps the most beloved feature of the Bad Tape – and for this new release, denise wanted to take it to the next level. denise added the ability to control the rewind and recover times of the detune individually. Work off the grid or sync it to the host BPM if you like. Recreate the sound of a (slightly) broken tape recorder, a cassette player or the nostalgic vibe of your old walkman. But it doesn’t end there…

Sidechain

With the newly added advanced side-chains, you can trigger your tape malfunctions via external audio sources: for instance, create detuned synth grooves from your kicks, resulting in an elegant touch – or complete madness. Use the side-chain to add interesting rhythmic noise textures with “Hiss” and “Harm” or finally control that damned squeaking tape reel to only play when desired, resulting in a very organic sound and a whole new level of fun and depth.

Push-Pull

The beloved push-pull feature of the Bite Harder, Dragon Fire & God Mode is now coming to the Bad Tape. Push-pull is the ability to saturate different frequency ranges without changing the fundamental characteristics of your sound. When saturating a drum bus, you can push the snare into the saturator for that warm tape sound and pull the sub out to keep the whole thing under control, all while retaining the tonal balance of the sound. With the Bad Tape 2, you can now pick the frequency ranges you want to saturate instead of having to saturate them all at once… see what that means for your sound in our video example:

In addition to the next level detune, side-chain and push-pull graph, denise also added host syncing, oversampling and four new effects: phaser, doubler, resonator & magnet. Slow down, freeze & wobble your sound like never before.

Features

• Next level Detune – Slow down the tape in real-time, as if you would press your finger on the tape reel.
• Sidechain – The side-chain allows you to trigger the effects via an external audio source. The amount can be set individually for each of the effects for endless combinations and sounds.
• Push-Pull Graph – The push-pull graph lets you have complete control over the frequencies that are going to be saturated. Automate it to create organically changing tape-saturation and create steep curves for screaming resonances.
• Harm – Introduce failing tape artefacts from subtle to extreme tape degradation.
• Four Effects – Phaser, Doubler, Resonator & Magnet.
• Squeal & Noize – Add old tape machine noises for character and vibe.
• Colour – Adjust the overall colour of the sound analog to different tape materials.
• Speed – Adjust the speed of the wow and shake effects to easily create interesting variations.
• Saturation – Saturate your tracks for that good old vintage tape sound. Warm and smooth character due to hysteresis emulation.
• Presets – Comes with presets for synth, drums, bass and classic tape-style effects.
• More Benefits – Low CPU usage, works offline, has oversampling, host syncing, native M1 support and works without dongles or complex licence managers. As always with denise plugins, the philosophy is: buy once, own forever. No subscription, no ongoing payments.

The First Tonal Compressor with Shape Technology

Dragon Fire introduces a monstrous new and easy way to tame and colour the dynamics of your tracks called tonal compression and on top adds Shape™ technology to finely shape the sound and behaviour of your compressor. The Dragon Fire offers the ease of use of an equalizer with its push-pull graph, but more freedom, power and simplicity than a multi-band compressor. Speed up your workflow and add creativity and fun to your production process keeping your ears fresh, creative and healthy.

Crafting the Unique ‘denise Style’

When denise started to conceptualize a ‘denise style’ compressor, they wanted to go beyond emulating a classic compressor. It’s after all denise’s mission to take inspiration from the analogue world, but create plugins with their own unique soul, craziness and character. denise wanted their compressor to give you the freedom to tune the sound of the compressor itself – imagine fine-tuning the compressor’s saturation amount based on the gain reduction, or tweaking the envelope follower to sound more analog or vintage.

Secondly, they wanted to make compressing multiple bands easy, controlled and more flexible than with a traditional multiband compressor. To achieve this, denise integrated the push-pull technology from denise’s popular God Mode, so you can target the compression towards specific elements in your mix, like the snare in a full beat. These new features and technology made us rethink the mixing process entirely.

Features

Dragon Fire with its Shape™ technology offers multiple creative features to tune the sound of the compressor, from vintage to transparent and anything in between. Create that original and vintage sound, for example with the:

• RMS and Knee functions to soften the compression sound.
• Interpolate between a fast and slow release curve for an ‘optic’ style response.
• Adaptive saturation: This lets you control the amount of saturation based on the gain reduction.

Besides its Shape™ features it offers a:

• Push-pull graph: an easy-to-use, eq-style graph to control how the compressor reacts to different frequency ranges.
• Transparent clipper function at the end of the signal chain.
• Easy switch to use the compressor in classic mode as a single band compressor.
• Comes with various presets including instruments like guitars, bass, vocals & drums.

You decide which frequency ranges to target with the push-pull graph.

The push-pull graph lets you have complete control over the frequencies that are going to be crushed, giving you endless possibilities and new sounds. Automate it to create organically changing bit crushed lines and create steep curves for screaming resonances.

Refined Crush Controls

The Bite Harder offers the classic bit crushing features but adds unique controls to refine or destroy your sound even more. With the Silky dial, you can smooth out the effect of the individual bit and sample controls. Alongside this, denise added the push-pull graph, a layer of FX and a drive control.

Controls:

• Resample
• Reduce
• Silky
• Distort
• Clipper

Presets from Florian Meindl

denise asked one of their favourite electronic music producers in Berlin to create crazy presets for the Bite Harder & My Crush. They are included for free and in addition to the presets that denise created.

Crazy FX for Extra Fun & Destruction

Create an extra layer of mayhem with the tailored effects in the Bite Harder.

FX:

• Repeat & Stutter
• Repeat
• Glitch
• Drive
• Random

Trigger Your Creativity!

Production tricks & ideas for creative bit-crushing.

Inspiration

denise wanted to create an adaptable bit-crusher with complete control over its sound. On top of that, denise wanted an extra layer of surprise, joy and an almost instrument-like feeling. The plugin is based on a crazy-sounding bit-crushing algorithm that denise added their push-pull graph technology to, which you might know from the Dragon Fire & God Mode, with tailored FX and clever smoothing to top things off.

This plugin enables you to destroy your audio and make extremely rough and bold sounds by merging the push-pull technique, as well as classic bit reduction and sample reduction functionalities: You don’t need anything more than this plugin to go from a clean bassline to a distorted, screaming monster, or to give your drums the edge they need and create new glitched up and futuristic arrangements.

Features

• Push-Pull Graph – Complete control over the frequencies that are going to be crushed, giving you endless possibilities and new sounds
• Drive – Sometimes less is more, but definitely not with this one. An extra layer of mayhem to make your loops, and sounds, break and scream even more!
• Solo – Solo frequency ranges to audition individual bands.
• Presets – Custom from Florian Meindl are included on top of presets from denise.
• Transparent Clipper – Use it heavily to add extra dirt and saturation.
• Side-Chain Control – Destroy the sound using an external input source.
• Silky Control – Smooth out the bit-crushing sound for more delicate, high-end, rounder and warmer sounds.
• Continuous Reduce & Re-Sample Control – Individually set the bit & sample rate.
• Looper & Stutter – Create extra arrangements, textures and glitches with a host syncing toggle.
• Glitch – An extra ring modulator for all your glitching needs. Perfect to create IDM, transitions and effects.