KAUSTHUB RAVI & SIVANESH NATARAJAN
New plug-Ins in
town: Catch ‘Em All
Waves factory Trackspacer 2.5
PLUG-IN
SOMETIMES THE SIMPLEST IDEAS ARE THE BEST
This one is a fresh iteration of an old friend that I use. This
simple but effective plugin has won quite a few awards and
its the closest thing to “auto-mixing” that we have right now.
Anyone who has had masking issues with certain elements in
a mix, for example, a guitar part and vocals, has tried a variety
of methods by now. From mid-side EQ, compressing certain
frequencies with a multiband compressor, to straight up
carving the frequency out if the guitar. There was a technique
that I personally liked to do, where I’d send a side chain signal
out of saying a vocal track. Now I would add a multiband
comp on the track that I want to be ducked and select the
overlapping frequency. Now the multi band comp, with the
side chain input from the vocal only ducks the offending
frequency in the guitars.
This is pretty much what Trackspacer does. But it does it with
much more ease and it does it well! While I used a multi band
comp, Trackspacer uses an internal 32 band EQ that listens to
side chain signal from one track and applies a reversed EQ to
the source that its on. The UI is super simple. It has a big knob
in the middle to dial in the amount of reduction that's being
applied to the source along with high cut and low cut filters.
there's a small button that opens up an advanced menu with
pan, Mid-side and attack/release controls.
While this plugin seems like an absolute must have and must
do on every mix, I would advise some caution. Sometimes
masking can be musical and while the instant gratification of
achieving easy separation in a mix is great, in a lot of cases it
leads to a sterile and uninteresting mix. The big “mix knob” as
38
The
Score Magazine
highonscore.com
I like to call it is quite important and the less you can use, in
my experience, the better results you ultimately get. The high
pass and low pass filters basically let you choose the range that
the plugin ducks and it can be used for quite narrow bands. I
quite prefer narrower, as I find it to be the least invasive. You
can really get a kick and bass to easily separate while still
leaving out the subs either one etc. Lots of possibilities when
compared to straightforward side chain compression.
All in all, its a great tool to have and it does make mixing
quicker and easier. Go easy on it and it can make a huge
difference to a mix.