Arturia is giving away a free lo-fi tape plug-in for the holidays

It's become something of a holiday tradition for Arturia to give away a free plugin for the holidays. Last year it took its recreation of the iconic chorus from the Juno-6 and turned it into a stand alone effect. This year, it's breaking out the tape effects from its Mellotron emulation.

The original Mellotron is, of course, an iconic keyboard that played back tape loops of other instruments — kind of like a proto-sampler. Arturia caught wind that some artists were using their Mellotron V plugin in an unexpected way. They were loading custom samples in and, rather than playing them back as a melody with the keyboard, simply adding the warmth and vibe of the simulated tape loops.

So this holiday season Arturia decided to just cut out the middleman and release Tape Mello-Fi as a standalone tape simulator plugin. It can add distortion, saturation, tape flutters and even some filtering. Its interface is simple and delivers everything from subtle warmth to full on machine malfunctions. There are even 25 presets included to get you started.

Of course, there are tons of lo-fi and tape simulation plugins out there. But Arturia's is particularly good. And, it's free. So there's really no reason not to grab it. And you should do it sooner than later. Tape Mello-Fi will be available as a free download from Arturia's site from December 21st through Friday December 31st. After that, well, who knows.