Subtle tape to get your synths and guitars in the box. Pulls them in where they belong, without losing the feeling.
CASSETTESTUDIOWALKMAN
Buy Honey · $15
v1.1.0 · VST3 + AU effect · macOS + Windows
In the studio · The accidental phaser
▶ WITH SOUND
Made an accidental phaser on a tape machine. Leave MIX part way and the tape path drifts against the dry signal. Mistakes lead to cool things in music, so we kept it.
In the studio · Honey (Cassette)
▶ WITH SOUND
Grey is before. Color is Honey on the CASSETTE. Real session, real audio.
In the studio · Honey (Walkman)
▶ WITH SOUND
Grey is before. Color is Honey on the WALKMAN. Real session, real audio.
In the studio · Honey (Studio)
▶ WITH SOUND
Grey is before. Color is Honey on the STUDIO deck. Real session, real audio.
Synths and guitars, in the box
Synths and guitars get out of control sometimes. Stacked oscillators, big unison patches, bright strummed chords, anything with those flying harmonics pushes past the line, and you get that slight distortion that ruins the clean, crisp feel you worked for. Honey pulls them back in. It is a soft tape stage that rounds the peaks and glues the layers, while everything you love about your progression stays intact. Same notes, same movement, same shine. Just sitting inside the mix instead of fighting it. It makes that subtle difference you have been looking for.
What Honey does
Honey is what happens to your chords when they get printed to good tape. It is built on real tape physics: the record and playback emphasis curves, magnetic hysteresis, gentle tape compression, head bump, high-frequency loss, wow and flutter and hiss, all modelled instead of faked. The result is not distortion. It is smoothness. Digital edges round off, sustains glue together, and pads sit back in the mix like they belong there.
Get started in 3 steps
1. Put Honey on your chords. Keys, pads, guitars, melodies, vocals. It is warmer than dry with nothing touched.
2. Pick a machine. STUDIO is a two-inch deck at 15 ips: expensive glue. CASSETTE is the default: moderate hiss, a little wobble. WALKMAN is a worn tape on dying batteries: heavy wow, dropouts, a ceiling around 9 kHz. The whole face changes with it.
3. Turn DRIVE until it smiles. Then WARMTH for the head bump, WOBBLE for movement, AGE for years of wear. Save it as a preset when it is yours.
Make it yours
DRIVE. How hard you hit the tape. Below 12 o'clock is glue. Past 12 it climbs hard: soft saturation that stays smooth because the highs saturate first, all the way to crushed tape at the top, level-matched so it never just gets louder.
WARMTH. Head bump and low-mid weight, tuned per machine. Where chords get their body. Past 12 o'clock the top end rolls off and the lows swell until it sounds like the tape is melting.
WOBBLE. Wow and flutter. A little is human, a lot is a memory. Past 12 o'clock it goes seasick: nearly four semitones of drift at the top.
HISS. Real tape noise, dosed to taste, machine-dependent. Cassette is louder, Studio is faint.
AGE. Years of wear. Dulls the top, adds dropouts, softens everything. Crank it and the tape starts falling apart: dropouts every few hundred milliseconds and a top end that is barely there.
MIX and OUTPUT. Parallel blend and level. Same positions on every face, so your hands always know where they are. Leave MIX halfway on a chord loop: the tape path drifts against the dry signal and the chords start to phase. It is a glitch we kept on purpose. Automate MIX slowly and it becomes a flanger that breathes with the tape.
PRESETS + INIT. Preset pill in the header, 16 factory sounds (Worn, Walkman '94, Chewed and Crushed live at the loud end), save unlimited of your own. Right-click, two-finger tap or Cmd-click any knob for INIT: that one control snaps back to the preset you loaded.
READOUT. Grab any knob and a small readout appears in the bottom-right corner showing exactly where you are (66%, 67%, -3.5 dB). Let go and it fades. Every knob's bottom half is the original Honey sound, so your old sessions and presets sound exactly the same.
Pro tip
Put Honey on the chord bus in CASSETTE with DRIVE around 11 o'clock and WOBBLE just past off. Then put a second Honey on the drum bus and push it harder. That is the lofi session in one plugin.
On the master. STUDIO, DRIVE low, WOBBLE off, MIX around a third. A tape stage at the end of the chain that smooths the whole mix without adding dirt.
On lofi drums. Turn WARMTH all the way up, then start turning DRIVE up while dropping MIX and OUTPUT a little. It makes your lofi drums nice and tight and Spotify ready.
Common questions
How much is Honey? $15, one-time. Instant download after checkout. Full version, no locked knobs, no subscription.
What DAWs does Honey work in? Any DAW that loads VST3 or AU plugins: Ableton Live, Logic Pro, FL Studio, GarageBand, Reaper, Studio One and more.
Is there a Windows version of Honey? Yes. macOS (VST3 + AU) and Windows (VST3), code-signed on both.
How do I install Honey? Run the installer and it puts the plugin files in the right folders. Restart your DAW, rescan if needed, done.