PlexiTape Review – Sound On Sound With The Echoplex EP-3 Plugin

If you like audio plugins with a distinct, organically rich character, you’re probably already familiar with Audiority’s vintage-flavored catalog. Luca Capozzi, Audiodity’s mastermind, is an experienced developer whose sound libraries and plugins have been used by artists such as Anders Trentemøller, Dave Porter, Michael Nielsen, Martin Gore, Kaveh Cohen and many others.

Months ago I was looking for sound on sound-capable delay plugins, and I found out about Audiority’s PlexiTape, an analog-modeled simulation of the iconic Maestro Echoplex EP-3™ vintage tape echo.

According to the company, they modeled every aspect of this unit: motor, tape, FET preamplifier, heads and, most importantly in my case, the sound on sound feature.

This is a feature of some delay units, which essentially allows you to use the tape as a looping recorder.

Audiority went beyond the original unit’s specs, adding a full stereo double delay line, tempo sync and more.

Here’s the main features of the plugin at a glance.

• Analog Modeled Vintage Solid State Tape Echo
• Auxiliary Echo with Echo Pan for full stereo effects
• 3 Echo Modes: Echo, Off (Preamp + Tape colour only) and Sound On Sound
• 2 FET Preamp models: Early and Late
• 2 Playback Modes: Regular (with Varispeed) and Sync
• Varispeed from 3 to 15 IPS
• Echo Tone equalizer
• Delay Ducking
• Machine Age
• Tape Erase
• Internal hum noise (fully adjustable, for increased realism and self oscillation)
• Resizable interface

Here below a video overview of the plugin with some audio examples:

Hands-On Impressions

I had lots of fun with Plexitape. It’s exactly what it says on the tin and definitely fills a hole in my plugin arsenal. It’s pretty intuitive, oozes vintage character, and is a great match for any song that requires some kind of “dirty treatment”.

If you’re into experimental ambient stuff, you’ll love the sound on sound feature. It just sounds alive. I loved the little “electrical imperfections” that you can create and layer by messing with the controls. Just be careful, it’s easy to get lost in it and lose track of the time! Also, in my experience, the plugin proved to be very stable (which is not a given in this kind of delay plugin, trust me!)

The only thing I didn’t like about Plexitape is that it’s hard to see the position of the Echo switch (even resizing the interface). I wish the developer could find a more usable (albeit less visually faithful) solution for it. Needless to say, this kind of (vintage-modeled) plugin lives often in a purely skeuomorphic world (see for instance the inclusion of the perfectly useless input and output connectors), so you’ll either love it or hate it according to your design taste.

Despite these minor visual niggles, I totally recommend checking out Plexitape (a demo is available). It’s fairly priced (65 EUR as of now) and gets you in that magic and highly sought-after Echoplex sonic territory, with all the added benefits you would expect from a software plugin.
Make sure to check also the rest of Audiority’s catalog, there are several gems there waiting to become part of your plugin collection.