I'm puzzled and disappointed by these modes and am curious as to what others think.
As I understand it analogue and tape delay hardware is loved and emulated because the sound evolves on each successive repeat and contains elements of instability. It sounds like an interaction that isn't wholly predictable and this makes it feel musical, organic, interesting.
The 2.4.0 software slightly improves things. The Vintage mode Filter can now evolve over time – but only for 5 repeats, after which it is static, unless on the maximum setting where it does progress to a resonant frequency. The first repeat is still heavily filtered instead of starting from a nearly-clean tone. The Tape mode's Wow and Flutter still impose a mechanical Wah and Stutter over each repeat – creating the opposite feel to that of tape.
I know that if I bored you with a description of how my DD20's Tape mode progressively dissolves and blurs and bends each delay Eventide's valid response would be that the DD20 is modelling one effect at one setting, whereas TF's concept is give us the tools to make our own. And that's why I've got a TF – the problem is the second row knobs aren't the right tools for these modes.
When the Modfactor is so good at random inter-modulation its baffling that the four second row knobs don't facilitate this for the two TF modes that rely on it. The choices for these knobs seem to miss the heart of the matter. Given 10 more knobs it'd be lovely to have things like Bitrate and Flutter, but they seem misguided when users and potential customers can't approximate the shifting textures of their DL4's, DD20's, Memory Mans, etc. I think the solution involves dropping the one-knob-does-one-thing philosophy, instead having knobs like Instability, Dissolve, Warp, each affecting the delays in two or three respects and possibly interacting with each other.
TF's reputation has had a honeymoon period but I suspect excitement at its possibilities will shift towards head-to-head assessments of its modes as more people buy them.
