A standalone tape machine that models real tape and its transport down to the physics, so it plays back a little differently every time you listen. Every instrument and effect you need to make an album is built in.
Or start completely free on iPhone. The same physics engine, 8 tracks, no in-app purchases or ads. Get it on the App Store →
Most "tape" plugins are a fixed EQ curve with some hiss and a bit of wow baked in on top of your audio. Model 8 works differently. Under the hood is a proprietary engine that simulates how magnetic tape and the transport pulling it actually behave, calculated in real time as the track plays instead of printed once and reused.
Real tape never repeats itself exactly, and neither does this. Wow, flutter and the way the tape settles against the heads are all calculated live as the reel runs. Hit play twice and you'll hear it breathe differently, the same way a real deck does.
A 1-inch master doesn't sound like a cassette, and it shouldn't. Every format runs on its own custom physics engine built to replicate that specific machine, right down to its frequency response, noise floor, flutter and saturation.
Pull on the tape or work the tension arm while it runs and the pitch and tension react the way they would on a real deck. Vari-speed drags and glides like a real motor, with weight and momentum to it. Print those fluctuations straight into the recording.
Flip the tape and record backwards with no glitches or gaps. Record, reverse, layer, and keep going without the transport ever falling apart on you.
Dial in oxide age, stiction and stick-slip, dynamic frequency curves and transport character. Keep it clean and hi-fi, or run the same machine down until it wobbles, hisses and fights you back.
It's a tape machine you can actually get your hands on, and it sounds like one because it models the real thing every time you press play.
| Tracks | 24 tape tracks on desktop & iPad, 8 on the free iPhone app |
|---|---|
| Tape Engine | Proprietary real-time magnetic-tape physics: wow, flutter, oxide age, stiction, dynamic HF response |
| Formats | 1-inch master through cassette, each a discrete physics model |
| Transport | Vari-speed, hand-on tension arm, reverse recording, punch-in with zero-latency monitoring |
| Sync | True tempo sync across instruments, benches and the Pad Looper · reel lock · tap tempo |
| Instruments | A-10 Poly Synth · A-1 Mono Synth · Model 73 and Model 100A electric pianos · Voxtone Drum Machine · Glissandio · Pad Sampler · Strum Plate · Arpeggiator / Sequencer |
| Outboard | LA-2A opto · FET-76 · Model ’66 and Model ’55 guitar amps · tape echo · spring reverb · parametric EQ · multi-modulation · chromatic tuner |
| Editing | Tape Loop Bench (second tape machine for looping, sound on sound and delay) · Splice Bench (cutting, reversing, scrambling) · in / out markers on import and bounce |
| Hosting | Unlimited third-party VST / AU (AUv3 on iPad), multi-output support, internal MIDI routing between plugins |
| Interface | Mk I Zoom and Mk II themes plus new color schemes · full-screen mixer · all-tracks waveform viewer · track names on the tape strip |
| Platforms | macOS 10.13+ (Intel & Apple Silicon) · Windows 10/11 · iPadOS 15+ · iPhone (free) |
| License | Perpetual · up to 3 of your own devices, usable at the same time · free updates for as long as I keep working on it |
Vintage analog expert Espen Kraft takes a 15-minute deep dive into Model 8. He runs a 16-track session here, but the DAW goes to a full 24 tracks with a workflow reminiscent of a classic Tascam 388 console.
Model 8 comes with a whole studio inside it. Every instrument and effect you need to make a full record is here: analog-modeled synths, sampled Rhodes and Wurlitzer pianos, guitar amps, the Voxtone drum machine, Glissandio, plus a full outboard rack with opto and FET compressors, tape echo, spring reverb, EQ and modulation. Load your own plugins if you want to, but you don't have to buy a single thing to finish a record.
3.0.3 adds a second tape machine and a splicing table, both running the same physics as the main transport.
A really fun new tool that adds a second tape machine with the same physics for looping, Sound on Sound, and delay. You can also just use it as an effect and play live through tape with essentially zero latency, if you want your guitar or instrument to sound like aged tape.
A new tool for tape-style editing like cutting and reversing. You can also do Sgt. Pepper’s style scrambling, which cuts the tape into a bunch of pieces, scrambles them, and reverses or varispeeds chunks. It also lets you load audio onto a second reel and splice in sections from it. I made this work exactly like reel tape splicing, so it works globally across all of the tracks.
Everything in the update is listed on the downloads page.
"Just when you thought there are more than enough tape machine emulations, along comes GCS Model 8, a full-fledged analog multi-track DAW running on your computer. Can't think of one feature that has been left out, except maybe the smell of warm tape."
"I'll be doing my next full-length album entirely with the Model 8. This workflow is what I didn't know I was dreaming of in a DAW."
"Best DAW I've ever used. The mobile and desktop versions both blow the competition out of the water."
"A lot of people would have their brains explode if they fully understood exactly what this is."
"I'm recording basically all of my music with this now. Thank you for this amazing software."
"La migliore DAW in assoluto, simulazione impeccabile. Un grazie infinito allo sviluppatore."
"The limitations of tape, track count especially, were a missing part of my process digitally, until now. It's killer."
I really do recommend grabbing the 10-day desktop trial before you buy. Model 8 has been beta tested hard for the last six months, but this is still a soft launch and everybody's audio setup is different.
Make sure the standalone DAW plays nice with your specific interface, your OS, and your favorite third-party plugins first. If it does, and it almost always does, then buy it. (Or just grab the free iPhone version and start now.)
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Model 8 is the flagship, but it isn't the only thing I build. Here is the rest.
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