Ampex^® ATR-102 Mastering Tape Recorder

Friend of mine, great sound engineer, told me never ever demo this thing... Well he was right. I have bought it after 30 minutes of demoing.... It sets record for me....

My favorite master buss processor. Mixing thru the UAD Ampex 102 is a dream. Everything from wide open to bit crunchy. I love being able to check in on the tape while mixing & make changes as the mix demands it. I love being able to dial in additional crosstalk, flutter & noise after a mix is sitting just right. That really kicks it up a notch. I find I'm using less EQ while mixing through it. With a setting of 456 tape, 15ips & 1", it's got a beautiful open sound stage & really lifts the whole sound spectrum. Simply put, there is NOTHING like it on the market today. This combined with the UAD Studer A800 = HEAVEN. Please continue making such invaluable tools UA!!!

Digital was never so analog. I havev been using this for months now and the possibilities are endless, from mastering to surreal old dodgy tape saturation like you've had left a cassete tape baking under the sun.. But for real!

I fell in love almost instantly with the ATR. It made everything i ran thru it just sweeter. After a couple days with the demo, i just decided to get it on the magnetic month promo ! It's quite hard to describe it if you're not used to the way tape sounds, but believe me, you'll love it. I hadn't played with manual cal settings yet ,but you can get some awesome effects from the ATR, like a (sort of) doubler, using wow and flutter plus tape delay, or some cool delays using 3.75ips and miscalibrating the controls (for degenerative repeats, just put an aux send feeding back to the input of the aux you're using)

Anyway, five stars. Best tape emulation ever, at least for me.So bad i cannot afford a full restoration / pimping of studio's old beatup Ampex ATR102.

Amazing,

Ampex A TR-102 is one of my fav in every production...Voices getting more warmth and brilliance and stereo sound.
If you put it for mastering your track , you can give more softness and warmer sound in your productions.

Thank you UAD for this awesome product.

WOW!

what you get here is simply the best, since i bought this plugin it never left my main bus, it does sound very good and glues your signals in a sexy way and adds some nice and warm colour to your mix, i also love the background noise adding some extra "space" to the music. i love to listen to all my tracks thru this! if you are searching for some special analog roots kind of feeling within the digital domain, try this one and buy this one.

Best "Analog meets Digital" tool on the market today!

I can only ehco the reviews that have been written by the other members...
Im A/b ing this After 15 mins of adjusting the Ampex on my master bus - OMG !!!
It adds, Warmth, Clarity, Detail, Depth and vastly improves Stereo image.
Top Marks UA !!

This is hands down the best plug in I have ever used. I use it on all of my customers. (SonicPharmacy.com)

I strapped this across the master buss during mix down, WOW. The sheen it added to my mixes is unlike anything that I've been able to achieve with compression and or EQ. Everything you read and hear is absolutely true, everything sounds better coming out than it went in. I give this plug in 5 Stars! If they had 10 Stars I would have given it 10. Nothing that I have tried or purchased prior to this even comes close. Ampex ATR-102 is the real deal, a fine plugin and solid investment. The best part? I got it on sale!

I have been mixing for a while...have sent mixes out for mastering with some top mastering engineers...and have spent quite some time studying the art and science of audio mastering and analyzing through some critical listening some of my favorite albums. It has been quite a journey!

After purchasing just about every plugin you can think of and becoming frustrated because I can get close enough to the sound I'm trying to achieve, but there's always something missing that I can't explain.

Like many others, I was skeptical when I heard of the release of UA's ATR-102 plugin. Then I had the opportunity to demo it and voila!! I finally got to where I've always wanted to be with my mixes:-)

I can't get to technical about what this thing does simply because all I care about is the sound. Never thought I would ever again buy a plugin. But this, is actually worth every single penny and perhaps a whole lot more at least for me and the kind of work I do. Absolutely invaluable!

If you're after the 'sounds like a record' thing, try it, you won't look back!

God bless everyone!

ldiazmusic

You will never find a single plug-in that will do more to enhance your final mix. Worth the price of the card and plug-in for this plug-in alone.

For me THE masterpiece from UAD!!!

Impossible to make a (bus / mix) signal badder. Just insert it, and you get a wider, more transparent, but anyway warmer, smoother signal.
I love this tool.
With the possibility to adjust the tape speed, choose the tape type, the tape head and at last the callibration levels for different tape responses, you can get every sound you need.

I always use the STUDER A 800 for Drums, especially for the BD, cause you can make every harsh drum sound round and muddy in a positive way.

But the AMPEX is the Stereo Output working horse.
But it don't means you cannot use ist for any each channel of your mix ;-)

Just Recently got this after using up the Demo period and fell in love it it.
I ran one of the preset (I think the third on the list which is set at 456 / 15 IPS) with just little tweak and they just brought the Songs I was Mixing In my Home studio to live.
Once I bypass it the song seems to just fall back deep into my Monitors and when turned on pushes the Mix forward.
wont send out a Mix without This Plugin On the Stereo Buss Any longer

I never had the chance of using an analog tape machine, I´m from the new generation, but with this plug in now I understand what the people said about the magic of the old tapes. Im in love with the plugin, everything sounds biger and warmer

First I was very skeptical and I found I can get similar results with other plug ins.

But the day after I was going on with a song something was missing.
I watched the mix-bus and the ATR 102 Plug In was bypassed.

This was the moment where I recognized "Sounds like a record" is not pure marketing hype. The base range glued more together and the transients where much rounder, the soundstage opened a little up.

But this is not a set and forget plug in.
You have to tweak it to your needs.

I am just not sure of buying it because of the huge price-tag for a plug-in.
On the other side owning such machine would be more expensive.

But money is these days rare,
I guess I would be in at 20-30% price drop.
The problem is I want to buy the lexicon reverb 224 as well.

May I ask for second demo period- before I buy it to make sure I need so badly.

5 Stars for modeling!
4 Stars for the price-tag!
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Overall 4 Stars from Germany.

If there's two things I don't want. It's to have to buy another plug-in, and another plug-in that claims to be tape emulation. I've listened to them all going back as far as 1996 when such things were in there infancy. Some emulations come sort of close, others do interesting things that are useful but they aren't tape and they don't evoke that certain magic which comes with listening to good analog equipment. The UAD Ampex plug-in is the closest I've ever heard come to that experience. I even calibrated the machine with the tape emulation I used back in the 90s and it's really really good. It made me smile, and that's not something many plug-ins can make me do. : )

To be very honest, when the website was updated with the V6 release, I read "Sounds like a record." I thought it was a great slogan for the release of the Ampex ATR-102 but honestly didn't expect to run mixes through it and hear *that* familiar sound of so many recordings I've hear throughout my life. It's a familiar clarity on the mids and high frequencies as well as a punchiness in the low end that reminds you of some record that you're used to hearing, I honestly didn't think I would get masters sounding very much like records I've grown up listening to by simply throwing on this plug-in on the master bus and tweaking a few things to get the sound I want, it's almost like it drives itself, it's amazing! Quite possibly the best effect UA has released (and I have every one of them except the SSL-branded effects at this point).

This Plug-in adds a great depth to the mix. When I used it on my master, the saturation and sound was so much cleaner and upfront. I highly recommend this plug in to anyone who is looking for a processor to polish off the final mix.

This is one amazing plug-in. Just used it on the Emmys and two film scores since I've had it.
I'll be using it on the next film score "Possession". This Plug-in along with the Studer A800 take me back to where I started...The Analog World. Don't get me wrong I love the Digital World with all its flexibility, But this stuff puts me in Analog Heaven without the headache of aligning a tape machine.

Thanks UA,
Robert Fernandez
Film Scoring Mixer
Los Angeles, CA