Overview

Harrison Tape Saturator is a saturation plugin which models the saturation characteristics of analog tape. That is, it recreates the non-linearities that occur when audio is recorded at levels to tape that near the maximum dynamic range of the tape and machine. Many engineers seek this type of saturation as it can “shave off” sharp transients leaving a more “beefy” transient in its place—one that still punches while requiring less dynamic range. Magnetic recording was the norm for professional recordings for many decades, so the sound of magnetic tape is engrained in decades-worth of hit songs and also brings practical benefits to mixing that the precision of pure digital systems lack.

In addition to providing the saturation benefits, Harrison Tape Saturator also allows the introduction of various "defects" to the audio, such as flutter, dropouts, and tape hiss. Combined with the selectable tape grades and speeds, it can be used for everything from pristine masters to a grungy lo-fi effect.

Supported formats:

• AAX
• VST
• VST3
• AU

Supported channel configurations:

• Mono
• Stereo
• Multi-mono

Latency: 128 samples

Controls & Components

Input Meter & Gain

The Input level is shown on the Input Meter on the left side of the plug-in. You can control the input level using the Input Gain knob right below it to achieve a good level (reaching the yellow area of the meter) without going into the red.

Fidelity Selector

The Fidelity Selector switches between different grades of tape. The “Best” setting will provide the greatest headroom, widest bandwidth, and minimal distortion. These qualities will be reduced as the selector is moved down towards “Low”.

Speed Selector

The Speed Selector switches the running speed of the tape from 60 inches-per-second (like high-quality studio reel-to-reel machines) down to 1 7/8 inches-per-second (the speed used by compact cassette tapes). The slower the speed, the lower the fidelity.

Drive Knob & Meter

The Drive Knob can be used to push the audio level harder into the tape, which will increase the saturation effects. You can monitor how hard the audio is hitting the tape on the meter above the knob.

Flutter Knob

One of the anomalies that tape machines exhibit is “wow & flutter” which refers to the slight variations in tape speed that are simply unavoidable with mechanical devices such as these. The Flutter Knob and adjoining “enable” button can be used to add a selectable amount of inconsistency to the playback speed, which will result in slight pitch changes to the audio. The higher the knob is set, the more extreme the variations to where they can be almost distracting. Unlike areal tape machine, however, this effect can be completely disabled on Tape Saturator so that playback speed is absolutely perfect.

Dropouts Knob

“Dropouts” are an anomaly of the magnetic tape. They occur when the magnetic tape becomes damaged, such as from physical creases that cause the tape to temporarily lose contact with the tape heads. In this brief moment, the audio will appear to “drop”—it may just be a slight drop of volume or worse, depending on how high you set the Dropouts Knob. For replicating a worn cassette tape, this is a good tool to use. But when working on pristine master, you can disable this with the adjoining “enable” switch such that the audio is perfectly consistent.

Hiss Knob

Even with the highest quality tape and machines, some amount of “hiss” added to recordings is unavoidable; it’s just a side-effect of the analog components and magnetic particles on the tape. Use the Hiss Knob to dial in a level of hiss if you wish to create an authentic tape sound—slower tape speeds usually exhibit more hiss. However, if you wish to just use the saturation of Tape Saturator, you can completely disable the additional hiss with the adjoining “enable” switch.

Output Meter & Gain

The final output level of the plugin is shown on the Output Meter and can be adjusted with the Output Knobbelow it such that an appropriate level is sent to successive plugins.

Bypass Switch

The Bypass Switch in the upper-right corner allows you to completely bypass all processing so you can make a quick comparison of the processed output against the original, unprocessed signal.

This switch has a special dual behavior—it can function as a momentary bypass, or will toggle the bypass state as follows:

• If you click and hold on this switch, it will bypass the signal for as long as you hold the mouse button. Normal operation will resume when you release the mouse button.
• If you click and quickly release this switch, it will toggle the bypass state.

Undo / Redo

You can click the left-pointing arrow to undo previous actions or click the right-pointing arrow to redo undone actions. 

A/B Comparison

Use these buttons to switch between two temporary states of the Harrison Tape Saturator. This is useful for making quick comparisons between two different sets of settings to see which one sounds better.

Presets

Harrison Tape Saturator comes with a number of presets to get you started quickly and you can scroll through the presets using the left and right arrows. The current preset's name will be shown in the center of this display. Whenever the current settings of Harrison Tape Saturator deviate from the currently selected preset, an asterisk will be appended to the end of the name.

Additionally, you can click on the preset name to open the Preset Menu where you can see a list of all the presets in order to select one directly, as well as commands for saving new settings to the current preset, saving a new preset with the current settings, deleting a preset from the list, and also specifying new settings that Harrison Tape Saturator will load as defaults in the future.

Documentation

This button provides a quick link to this documentation.

Zoom Factor

Click this magnifying glass will open a menu with various zoom factors—click on an option to set a new size for the plugin that best suits your needs.

Tooltips

Clicking this button will toggle the state of the Tooltips that provide quick information about a control whenever you hover your mouse over it helping you learn the operation of Harrison Tape Saturator. Turn this off once you've learned the plugin or if the Tooltips are distracting.

Control Behaviors & Shortcuts

Various mouse & keyboard shortcuts can be used to perform certain actions on the following controls:

Sliders/Knobs

Labels

Combo Boxes (Drop-down menus)

Band Controls

Graph Rulers

System Requirements

Your system should meet one of the following OS version requirements in order to run Harrison plugins:

PC:

• Windows 11
• Windows 10*

Macintosh:

• macOS 26 Tahoe
• macOS 15 Sequoia
• macOS 14 Sonoma
• macOS 13 Ventura – 10.15 Catalina*

* NOTE: We do not actively test these older operating systems as they are no longer supported by their respective developers, but we currently know of no reasons the current versions of our plug-ins will not work on these systems. That said, your mileage may vary; if you are running an older OS version, we recommend you demo our product to verify that it is compatible with your system before purchasing. If you need access to older versions of our products, please check the SSL/Harrison Legacy Plugins Download list.

macOS Apple Silicon/ARM Support: This plug-in is provided as a universal binary for macOS and features native Apple Silicon support.

Note for Pro Tools users: Pro Tools 11 or higher is required on Mac, 10.3.5 or higher is required on Windows.

Additional requirements on Windows

Harrison plugins require the “Windows C++ Universal Runtime” to be installed on your computer.  Universal runtime is part of the system’s core libraries on Windows 10. On Windows versions Vista to 8.1,  it will be automatically installed via Windows Update. It is also possible to install the runtime manually, but that is outside the scope of this manual.

Note for Linux Users

If you’re experiencing issues with the plugin’s graphics or the GUI isn’t showing up correctly on Linux, make sure your system’s graphics driver supports the minimum required OpenGL version of 3.2 or higher. To check this, run glxinfo | grep Max in a terminal window and make sure that the value listed for the OpenGL core profile version string is at least 3.2 or greater.

If your core profile version meets this requirement but you are still experiencing graphics issues like the ones mentioned above, it is likely that your system is reporting an OpenGL version lower than 3.2 to ensure backwards compatibility with deprecated OpenGL functions. To work around this, you can force the system to report an OpenGL version of 3.2 or higher by setting this environment variable: MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.2

You can use this as a prefix when opening your DAW from a terminal command like so:

MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.2 {command_to_launch_program}

This will set the environment variable for that particular terminal session only, so it will be reset once the session is ended. If you don’t want to run this command every time you launch your DAW, you can set the environment variable in your profile script so that it automatically gets set every time you login.

Installation & Licensing

Licensing on macOS & Windows

This plugin is licensed through iLok on macOS and Windows. Visit iLok, Licensing and Activation for guidance on activating your Harrison plug-in. 

Licensing on Linux

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.openssl.org/)

In DEMO mode, after using the plugin for a certain amount of time, it will display a message:

This message will come up periodically unless a license is provided. You can purchase a license directly from Harrison’s web store or from an authorized plugin reseller. Once you’ve purchased a license, install it by entering your license key into the designated field on this screen. Continue to the next section for detailed instructions on how to obtain your license key. 

Obtaining your License Key

After you purchase a license, you will receive a license key that will look something like this:

{your  name}*AVA-BF*DC-138971-151520-1|gGLbnvCZJe386ULohzfQN6cIsoZ71n7c+AUg==|

This license key is required to install your license and activate the full version of the plugin. The way to obtain your license key varies depending on where you purchased the license from.

If you purchased the license from Harrison’s web store, you will receive an email with a link to download a text file containing your license key. If you purchased the license from a reseller, you will receive an email containing the license key text.

Licensing your Plugin

When prompted by the plugin, copy and paste your license key into the designated text input field. This will automatically install your license and register it with the plugin.

Once installed, Harrison’s license files are simple text (.txt) files which are stored in the user’s HOME folder. The HOME folder is the folder that contains your Desktop, Downloads and other folders. The location of your HOME folder is different for each operating system:

• Linux: /home/{your username}

You may keep a copy of this file for your own use. The license is a per-user license and you may install the license file on all of your computers. To install the file on a new computer, simply save the file to a USB key or other transferable disk; then transfer the license file to the new computer’s HOME folder. The license file has your name encrypted in it, so you should not share it with other people. Your name will appear on the top of the plugin’s control panel to indicate that it is licensed to you.

The plugin will automatically detect your license key as long as the license file is stored in the HOME folder of the computer you are using. After transferring the license file to a new computer, it may be necessary to close and re-open your DAW in order for the plugin to detect the license.

If you don’t want to keep your license in your HOME folder for whatever reason, you may also store it in the following alternative location:  ~/.config/harrisonconsoles

Finding the plugin in your DAW 

DAW operations vary tremendously. Generally speaking, to use the plugin you must follow these steps:

1. Install the plugins, using the provided plugin installer application.
2. Follow your DAW’s instructions to “scan” for new plugins.

Please refer to your DAW manual to see which plugin formats (AAX, AU, VST, or VST3) are supported by your workstation.

Most plugin formats require that plugins are installed to a specific location on the system. In these cases, the installer will place the plugins in the default locations.

For VST format, on Windows, it is normally expected that the user defines the location of VST plugins, and tells the workstation where to find the plugins. The default location for VST plugins is C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VST.  The plugin installer will save the VST (.dll) files to that location if a custom VST path is not provided by the OS.  If you are having trouble, you should verify that the path is included in your DAW VST scan paths.

Thank you for purchasing this Harrison plugin!

Harrison has been making products for the audio engineering industry since 1975. We continue to make these products, with intense dedication, from our Nashville, Tennessee factory.  

As the audio industry has changed through the decades, Harrison has too. Originally launched to provide mixing consoles for music recording studios, the Harrison brand has extended to provide products for live broadcast, live sound, theater installations, post-production, film dubbing stages, and bedroom studios. We’ve lived through the launch of the commercial music industry, the maturation of analog, the digital revolution, the establishment of the internet, and now the acceptance of computers as the de-facto platform for the audio industry. In our pursuit of audio excellence, we’ve developed our own analog circuits, digital I/O solutions, digital DSP engines, control surfaces, audio workstations, and nearly every aspect of pro-audio technology.

“If you asked a hundred engineers, mixers and producers to define the “perfect console” you would probably get a hundred answers. The answers, however, would all contain the same salient points.”
“The “perfect console” would have totally transparent sound, capturing the true musical quality of all performances. It would have unlimited features, facilities, and functions. It would perform all required tasks with a minimum of operator effort. It would be totally reliable and require no preventive or corrective maintenance…
You can spend the rest of your life looking for the “perfect console”. You’ll never find it. You will find, however, that we have what you need.”- quote attributed to Dave Harrison;  Harrison MR20 brochure; circa 1982

True-er words were never spoken; indeed every year there are many products and technologies that seem tantalizingly necessary for audio excellence. Our lasting experience has proven that simple, straightforward, well-engineered, and great-sounding tools are the only necessity.

These plugins represent the pinnacle of Harrison’s engineering practices for digital audio sound & workflow. We sincerely hope that you enjoy using these tools as much as we enjoyed creating them. Your continued support is greatly appreciated!