Can someone explain the C.L.A.S.P. system to me?

I'm not saying it's the emperor's new clothes, but to quote Jellyfish, "The King is Half-Undressed".

There are other ways to run most everything through tape before you get to Pro Tools. Like for example, recording the bed tracks (drums, bass and guitars) on a 24 tracks and then dumping the entire thing into protools for editing before adding the vocals and/or keyboards and/or horns and/or strings etc.

Have a read: www.endlessanalog.com/what-is-clasp It's an expensive way of what I've just outlined above. But frankly, considering how good Pro Tools with the Avid HD i/o converters sounds these days, I don't see the need or the point. And of course, there are other great converters and platforms as well.

When you record to analog tape there's a gap between the record head and playback head.
This creates a time delay between what's being recorded, and what you are hearing being played back off the tape.
The CLASP system compensates for the delay so you can hear what's coming
off the analog tape in real time without the delay.

I don't get it either , but heres a video about CLASP .








But you know Brad McGowan here on the forum ? He figured out a way to do the same thing pretty much but without a CLASP .

I think it's a neat product for studios who are time (hourly rate) based AND already had 2" decks gathering dust.

I do think it's not a static setting, because tape does run at a static speed. Mostly irrelevant when you're cutting a track start to finish...but, of of more importance when you're using the system to do in/out punches.

Also note, with the second "delay the Cubase input channel"...does Cubase do the same compensation of the playback for input channels? I never use them...but, is it going to delay the entire rest of the mix by the same amount? I always thought the CLASP thing has as much to do with it being seamless--it literally IS set and forget--and it maintain sample accuracy from the repro head as the speed varies and things are dropped in and out.

That said...the audience for this is ironically limited to people who are already having a hard enough time making ends meet. Seems a lot like a solution for a really rare problem.

Plus, it's not "endless analog"....cause in 15min, you're gonna have to rewind. Or is that the other part? Does CLASP actually control the tape transport, too, as part of the sync?

Brads solution is cool(where is he?), could you just loop a piece of tape and use it till you wear it out?

It's been done.
A Roland Space Echo or Echoplex.