A complete tape machine path for printing a signal: drive into the tape, transport wobble, bias, the low-end head bump and a protective output stage. Nine controls follow the order the signal takes through the machine.
The idea
Taper is an algorithmic tape model rather than a capture of one machine. Its character comes from a chain of explicit stages. The signal is brightened on the way in and darkened by the same amount on the way out, so the tape stage in between saturates the detail before it is put back. A wandering stereo delay adds wow and flutter, a bias stage moves between sticky and slew-limited behaviour, and a pair of resonant filters adds the low lift that people often hear as "tape" before they notice the saturation.
Every control sits at a neutral middle by default, so you can start from a fair comparison and push one stage at a time.
