In-depth sampler and vintage tape emulation.Add dreamy and imperfect character and feel ofold machines to your recordings.

ALIAS is a vintage station in your mixing and production chain. Worn-out tape, CD read errors, vinyl crackle and 12-bit sampler crunch, in one plugin.

Click the row to hear the dry sound.
Click again for ALIAS mode transformation.

TimeSoundKey

00:00Synth–

00:00Beat–

00:00Vocal–

Rooted in the sampling and tape hardware of 1980s and 1990s music production, down to inner-groove wear and noise floors recorded off VHS and Betamax.

A clean track goes in and comes out with a past, the grain of old converters, the drift of tape, cassette generation loss and oxide dropouts.

ALIAS

WHAT IS ALIAS?

ALIAS creates the sound of a vintage sampler, a tape deck, a worn record and a failing CD player, on any track you feed it.

CRUNCH

Four sampler characters with three variants each, inspired by the SP-1200, the MPC60 and 3000, the S950 and the Mirage.

TAPE

Four tape states, three variants each and twelve in all, reaching from a clean studio reel all the way to a sticky-shed tape.

THE PROCESS

ALIAS makes no choices for you and holds no generative AI. It removes the effort, not your intention.

CrunchSP 1200MPCMirageS 950123

TapeSubtleSatLoFiWorn123

Bit

Conceal

FlowWOWFLTRJIT

Hiss

SpaceSPRNGPLATE12BIT

WidthMONOAZI

Speed1/22x

Dropout

Vinyl33WARPRESET

Error

Gen 1NEW

FOUR SAMPLER CHARACTERS, TWELVE TAPE SETTINGS

The sampler and tape characters are inspired by classic hardware, not rebuilt from it. The components are our own, put together for a sound of our own that still feels familiar. The twelve tape settings sit at one level, so switching changes colour, not loudness.

SAMPLERS, INSPIRED BY

E-mu SP-1200 · 12 bit at 26.04 kHz · Classic / Filtered / Hot
Akai MPC60 · 40 kHz, 18 kHz brickwall · MPC3000 · MPC60 Hot
Akai S950 · 12 bit · Clean 19.2 / Warm 10 / Dark 7 kHz
Ensoniq Mirage · 8 bit · Full / Dark / Crushed

TAPE

Subtle · studio 38 cm/s · home 19 cm/s · chrome cassette
Sat · ferro · chrome · metal
Worn · stretched · creased · sticky-shed
LoFi · old ferro cassette · microcassette · 8-track

CHARACTER

Eleven tiles follow the sampler and tape stages, each one a single kind of wear with its own numbers. They stack in a fixed order, so a record can also be a worn cassette copy.

DIGITAL

Bit · 16 down to 4 bit, follows the chosen sampler
Error · CD read errors, one sector up to 250 ms
Conceal · the player’s interpolation over the gap

TAPE

Generation · up to eight copy generations
Dropout · oxide loss in events of 8 to 90 ms
Speed · half or double tape speed

VINYL & MOTION

Vinyl · platter at 0.556 Hz (33 1/3) or 0.75 Hz (45)
Flow · wow, flutter and clock jitter
Width · the side loses treble, azimuth up to 40 µs

NOISE & SPACE

Hiss · ten recordings at −30 dBFS RMS
Space · spring, plate and 12-bit reverb
FACTORY · reshapes two to four tiles at musical amounts

TECH SPECS

FORMATS

VST3 · AU
macOS 10.13+ · Windows 10/11
Universal · Apple Silicon + Intel
64-bit only

AUDIO

32-bit float signal path
44.1–96 kHz
Constant latency · 1011 samples (22.9 ms) at 44.1 kHz
Mono or stereo in / out · no sidechain

ENGINE

Four sampler characters · four tape states · three variants each
Eleven effect tiles plus FACTORY
Ten real tape and video-tape noise recordings, seamlessly looped
Seeded noise and wear · the seed travels with the session
151 automated checks, 0 failures

SYSTEM & I/O

~350 MB installed (all three formats)
~110 MB RAM per instance
Internet for activation and the update check · no sample downloads
42 automatable parameters · no MIDI in / out
Host tempo sync · the ERROR grid follows the transport
Hosts: any AU or VST3 host

BUNDLE

BUNDLE · €139

ALSO BY orph