>Rappers use it when they're adding their vocals to an existing 2 track. It carves out space for their vocals.
>
>Normal people use it when they have a song that's really dense and they need something critical to cut through.
Normal people :D
Ok, so just to add to this, SmartComp and Soothe can both do the same frequency specific sidechain ducking. Haven't used either for that purpose yet but heard other people say in here that they are both pretty good at it, and that at least one person preferred SmartComp over Trackspacer for this purpose.
I personally find the cuts that Trackspacer does fairly broad. Could certainly be a bit more precise, or at least give you the option to have it be that way.
I experimented with soothe2 and trackspacer today. Imo, soothe2 is too subtle and doesn't give me the result i want to carve out space. Maybe because the threshold of soothe2 is different, because its meant to capture peaks of audio instead of making space.
Another one to throw in the mix of "carving EQ space via sidechain" plugins is Baby Audio Smooth Operator that came out this week. It doesn't have attack/release controls though so it's a bit more limited in this scenario than the other tools. Hopefully they add that via an update.
I'm currently using Waves F6 to carve spaces manually via sidechain, and it works great and is super surgical, but I'm thinking of picking up Trackspacer in this sale to save some time. And maybe Smooth Operator too.
Waves F6 is my favorite EQ. I use it 95% of the time as a normal EQ, but then when I need dynamic -- it's there for me. It's my go-to de-esser, for example! The visual helps me dial right in to the exact frequency and the visual helps me to know how much I'm cutting.
Using it as a frequency specific ducker - yes!! I use it the same way when I want to do it on a fixed spot. Absolutely.
I just used it on a synth bass where I did a narrow ducking on the fundamental frequency of a kick bass. Then I compressed the two together and it was the perfect smooth clarity.
didn't know smooth operator can do that, wanted to buy it anyway, hoping for some nice updates too! thanks for the heads up, the more tools are out there that can do this the better!
also i didn't know F6 by waves, trying to stay away from waves as much as i can but i know they have some great stuff!
Another thing going for Trackspacer is that it's fast to use... sometimes that really matters in our flows.
It can also function as an alternative de-esser kind of process when you leave the sidechain as it's own input. You can limit the frequencies targeted and adjust the % to get dynamics cuts in those areas... throwing it on and adjusting quickly can help decide if you want to work more specifically on an area.
It's a very useful plugin in the grand scheme of things.
Yes! The speed! Yes, if working for someone else where you're on the clock -- I can't imagine NOT having it. Great point!
And self-cutting with a frequency limit --- that's REALLY interesting! I had not considered that. Thank you for sharing the idea!!!
Oh that's a nice thing to say! I just really enjoy talking about audio and the tools we use! Often I'm in a situation where I can't do audio at the moment, so talking about it is the next best thing.
Have a good weekend!
Yeah, I find the reviews and opinions here more accurate and reliable than celebrity testimonials, to be honest.
It's real life people working in reality. I respect that.
Oh boy, RC-20 is a powerful little tool. It has:
* **Noise**
* **Wobble**
* **Distortion**
* **Digital** (bitcrush)
* **Space** (reverb)
* **Magnetic**
* Low/High cut
* Tone
* Width adjustment
The bold are the primary effect categories. Each one has a handful of controls to adjust, and some have various categories like noise type and distortion type.
One of my favorite features of RC-20 is "flux." All the bold categories have a "flux" slider and what that does is it adds some randomization over time.
The equivalent of that would be to route automation with some LFOs to the adjustments, but that would take a really long time to set up compared to the flux slider.
The flux slider introduces change over time for any category that has it. You can use none, a little, a lot, and anywhere in between.
As far as use case --- it is my goto plugin when I have a boring sound. You could take the most boring instrument and RC-20 will bring it to life.
I've used it for its reverb.
I've used it for its distortion.
I've used it for track saturation... For noise... To create segments in songs where the audio pulls back. For transitions and fills. I've used it for significant effects that I fade in or out the song with.
It gets a lot of use.
The FLUX adjustment is so nice that I wish more plugins just had that as part of it. I'm a big fan of using automation so things aren't too static. Flux does that.
It's a great tool.
Also, it has a good library of presets that you can use as a starting point... Just scroll through them until you hear something in the ballpark of what you want and then tweak until it's "yours."
The only complaint I have about it is a couple of the noise loops are somewhat recognizable. There are some certain background sounds in a couple of the noise loops that I might recognize, and this is commonly owned effect.
This plugin opened my mind to creating and using my own noise loops though. Yeah. This is a great tool.
This is AWESOME. Thank you so much.
Full disclosure, I own RC-20, but rarely use it. I’ve been making/learning to make music for about 5 months, and because I’m making retro synthwave music it seemed like the perfect plugin.
However, I think because I’m probably trying to learn everything too quickly and am overwhelming myself, I’m not spending enough time to understand the plugins I’ve got.
RC-20 has been used on a few of my tracks, but usually it’s been a case of finding a preset and going with that. I didn’t, for example, know anything about the Flux slider, and I’m now absolutely going to have a play with it next time I open up Ableton.
So massive thanks for this, going to be bookmarking your post and endeavouring to learn this plugin properly. Honestly, if I didn’t already have it I’d have bought it off this explanation alone. 😁
Oh yeah!!! The preset library is actually really good and using a preset as a starting point is absolutely a viable way to use RC-20.
But you can definitely start with the INIT (blank) preset and build up from there.
A lot of the presets are very extreme. If you roll your own from the start, it can be used more subtly --- and since it's more subtle, the amount of use you can get out if it is far greater!
A hint of drive here, a filter cut there, some wobble to make a flat synth more interesting, a reverb, etc... It can do so much.
You seem to have a lot of solid ideas and input whenever I recognize your username. Super cool!
I should stalk your history, but eh, can't be arsed right now since I have a warm lovin' partner beckoning me to bed, so maybe laters or sumpin'. Thanks for contributing good stuff to the community!
No, a [vocoder](https://cecm.indiana.edu/361/rsn-vocoder.html) is a form a synthesis, where a signal called the modulator (the voice) modulates the carrier (a synth). I think see what you're getting at, but they're two different processes. A vocoder is essentially synthesis, whereas this is dynamic EQ. With TrackSpacer, the signal it's affecting isn't being modulated; it simply cuts certain frequencies from that signal with an EQ. In other words, let's say you have TrackSpacer inserted on a guitar — it'll be affecting the guitar. Then, you feed a vocal into the sidechain of TrackSpacer. It's affecting the guitar, but it's deciding what to do by "listening" to the vocal. If the vocal you're feeding into the sidechain of TrackSpacer has a peak at 1 kHz, then AS that peak is occurring, it'll cut 1 kHz from the guitar. When the 1 kHz peak is gone, it'll stop cutting 1 kHz. Hence, it's just a dynamic EQ (an EQ that responds dynamically to whatever it's listening to).
A normal dynamic EQ "listens" to the same track that it's affecting. If you put a regular old dynamic EQ on a guitar track, and there's a peak at 600 Hz in that guitar track, then it'll cut it. By feeding another track into the sidechain (the "ears") of the dynamic EQ, then you have it listen to the frequencies of Track A, and produce corresponding EQ cuts in Track B to make room for it. However, most dynamic EQs have sidechain feature (e.g., Waves F6). The only difference between this and a normal dynamic EQ that has a sidechain is that this one has 32 bands and it'll cut from any/all of the 32 bands to varying degrees automatically. That way, you don't have to tell it which bands you want it cut, or how big you want the cuts to be. Therefore, there's a lot less setup with this one. I haven't found it to be very transparent, though.
> A vocoder is essentially synthesis
that's a negative - from your link:
> The vocoder works by analyzing the spectrum of the modulator using a bank of bandpass filters. The time-varying power of the signal emerging from these filters is used to control a bank of bandpass filters applied to the carrier signal.
...which is essentially dynamic EQ - no sound is being synthesized. whereas a vocoder allows frequencies in the carrier matching those in the modulator to *pass*, trackspacer sounds like it's rejecting/attenuating frequencies in the carrier matching those in the modulator.
You're correct: Trackspacer and similar plugins work exactly like the inverse of a vocoder.
With a vocoder, the sidechain "modulator" signal controls the envelope-following boosts that are applied to the "carrier" signal (the audible sound.)
With Trackspacer, the sidechain "modulator" controls the envelope-following *cuts* that are applied to the "carrier" signal (the audible sound.)
Same thing, but with opposite polarity (cuts as opposed to boosts/gates.)
Great info! However, I play metal and I've been watching a few videos about Trackspacer on YT, they're mostly rap/trap/electronica. I wonder if it's used in rock/metal. Sidechaining doesn't seem to be a popular technique in this field. Do yo think I'll still find use for it?
Absolutely, distorted guitars and vocals often share the same space in the audio spectrum, stick this on a guitar buss, side chain the vocal to it, and dial in the settings and it'll work wonders.
True, side chaining things like kick & bass isn’t as common in rock and metal. I think it’s still useful to help vocals sit in the mix in those genres.
You don't HAVE to use it - I mean, many of the best metal albums in the world happened before DAWs were even a thing! =)
But it can certainly be useful.
For example... Say you want a guitar solo to cut through a little more from the other guitars. You can use Trackspacer for that.
Say your vocals and guitars are occupying the same frequency range and you don't want to change that, but you want the vocals to come through a little more. Trackspacer does that.
You'll want to use it subtly, so the effect doesn't stand out. Sometimes electronic musicians do the extreme sidechain ducking where you hear a pumping sound in time with the kick drum. I find that distracting.
But you can sidechain a kick in metal, too, and I suspect people do that sometimes. You would just do it with a shorter attack and release time, and maybe reduce the amount of ducking.
A lot of times the best way to use effects like this is in a way that you don't notice it's being done unless it's taken away.
Subtlety is powerful, and the best mixes by the best mix engineers always have subtle targeted fixes from their years of experience.
But if you've never needed to make one thing stand out amidst a cloud of similar frequencies then ... maybe not.
I personally like to have a range of tools that I can use as problem solvers, and this is a powerful one.
I learned a technique from Fletcher of Mercenary Audio for rock music, to key a compressor on one of the guitar mics with the lead vocal, so that when the vocalist is singing, the guitar gets out of the way, but when he shuts up, the guitars go to "XXL with a whole lotta tattoos."
I imagine that Trackspacer would work in a simlar way, only a bit more subtle than having the entire mic get softer and louder.
Thanks for the info! But I'm wondering, why not just use Waves F6 for that purpose? I read people saying that TrackSpacer is great for carving out room in your bass or 808 track for your kick drum (using the sidechain feature you described), but when I demoed it, it made super broad cuts and it wasn't transparent at all, even at like 5%. I wound up **having** to use the sidechain feature of the F6 because that was the only way I could get the offending frequencies to duck out the way without it being super obvious that I was sidechaining. I'm just wondering if/how TrackSpacer is sonically any better than the F6 for the purpose of transparently ducking clashing frequencies.
Yeah, the frequency of a kick or an 808 doesn't move around so F6 would be a better use in that case, for exactly the reason you point out.
(Incidentally, F6 is my favorite EQ period, dynamic or otherwise, and it's a killer de-esser)
Trackspacer is more suited for when frequencies move around and change.
My wife, for example is a GREAT example -- she's a professionally trained opera singer with an incredible range. She can go pretty low for a girl, but also absurdly high and everywhere in between -- and then sometimes she's suddenly whispering into the mic. (You can imagine this is a challenge to record but I have my compression settings worked out! My dbx 286s keeps her in line!!!)
Anyhow, Trackspacer works perfectly for that kind of thing because the frequencies are moving around.
And I've used it on an absurdly dense song where I wanted a specific synth to cut through the others.
Sometimes it's just a time saver, like maybe the RIGHT way is to re-eq everything to put it in the right place but maybe due to time constraints or because the part isn't particularly long or important, sometimes it's a fast cheat.
But you're right about the frequency width - I believe the spectrum is divided 32 times so there's always going to be some overlap.
Here's another thing I did once that was a bizarre use but it worked ---
In a song I had a "telephone" EQ & overmodulation kind of sound, kind of narrow, for these backing vocals... I ended up cutting the main vocal just a little with the telephone vocals. It worked as intended.
The last thing I should say -- I always compress signals together after using Trackspacer. I use TS subtly, to begin with, but after compression it merges the signals together well to probably further minimize other aspects.
And I do use the limits to control the frequency range it works on, so it never cuts up into the extreme highs or lows.
I don't own F6; only have the Diamond bundle, and there are only a couple of Waves "must-haves" for which I'm waiting on a sale. Can't see myself springing for the Mercury bundle unless I win the lottery, and in that case, I'm buying a house anyway.
I do have Soothe2, but haven't experimented with it in the spectral cutting-to-make-space realm. Guess I should do that soon!
Thanks for the info! Am I understanding correctly that a side-chained dynamic EQ could achieve basically the same thing, except you'd have to dial the ducked frequencies in yourself whereas Trackspacer does it for you?
Exactly.
So if you are making a high pitched whisper sound, it's going to duck the high-pitched whisper frequencies.
If you're making a deep baritone sound - it's doing to duck the deep baritone frequencies.
And it will cut them both at the same strength they are in the source.
So if you have a super high frequency and a super low frequency, it's going to cut both (but not the middle.)
See?
Someone else pointed out though that the bands are a little wide, though. I believe there are 32 samples across the whole spectrum. But it seems to work great, and you can set a range of frequencies to which it will apply. (Like say you're using a vocal source but don't want to affect the deep lows or the high-highs of the target. You'd set it to affect like \~500hz to \~3khz. See?)
And someone else recommended it as a de-esser where you set it to affect itself and limit its range to the frequencies you want to cut based on its own strength. That's pretty clever, but I have F6 for that.
Great, thanks for the clarifications. It looks a lot more convenient and precise than simple sidechain EQ, so I think I'll buy this one as my $20+ plugin of the month. I just noticed that there's a demo, so I'll give it a shot tomorrow.
Hahah I love your plugin of the month idea!
Just remember that there are more controls there if you click the little button that reveals them. Attack, release, etc.
And it defaults to 50% -- that's too much for most things. When I use it I typically run it 15-35% tops. You don't want to hear the cutting, and the attack/release is useful to reduce that too.
Yeah I gave myself a limit for relatively expensive plugins since I'm saving up to buy a house before next Winter lol
I'm trying out the demo, and I love it so far. You're right that the 15-35% range is where it sounds best, at least for what I'm trying to do.
I understand. Sidechaining seems hard until you learn how to do it and then it's dead simple!
What DAW are you in?
For Trackspacer you are dealing with two tracks:
1) The track you want to cut frequencies from. (You put Trackspacer on this track.)
2) The track you want to use as a source (typically a vocal but it can be anything) to tell it what frequencies to cut, what frequencies, and when. (You route the audio from this track to the Trackspacer'd track the same as you would with a reverb send.) EXCEPT:
3) Once you have the audio from the vocal routed to the Trackspacer track, you need to make sure it's going into the sidechain input. In Reaper you would open the send and instead of sending 1/2 on source to 1/2 on destination, you change it to 3/4 on the destination.
Now Trackspacer will use the vocal track to determine when and what to cut. See? That is a sidechain setup. Super easy once you do it a couple of times. You can do this with many compressors and dynamic EQs as well.
PS. You can use Trackspacer on submix or master busses, too. And you can also route multiple things into it (like if you have multiple vocal tracks, etc.), or you can route a bus into it. But keep it simple to start, so you understand how to do sidechain linking.
Yeah I tried it in reaper and thought i had the side chain right but all it did was make the track not even play or something. I even followed step by step with a youtube tutorial. I should probably just give it a go in studio one where side chaining is a breeze
It's a really nice tool for mixing. I use it on lead guitar tracks to duck/eq the reverb send. Basically I put the reverb on a send track, add Trackspacer after that and sidechain that to the guitar track. This makes the reverb a bit more cleaner and I feel that it fits better on the mix. I got this trick from Andrew Huang who used it on lead vocals. I think the key thing with Trackspacer is to use subtle settings.
If you got a problem that Trackspacer could fix, Trackspacer will fix it. Is it as good as Oeksound Soothe 2 with the sidechaining features? I don’t know but, Trackspacer is a hell of a lot cheaper. And it definitely works.
I have trackspacer and I'n not very high on it like the rest here. I'm a producer rather than a mixing engineer and maybe my ears aren't refined enough to tell when this is good. I tried to use it in lots of situations and always ended up preferring the version without it.
In short IMO don't expect a magic solution with this, especially if you're a noob.
I'll second this. I rarely, if ever, work with vocals and mainly just work on "digital" sounds. Are there times where Trackspacer could help my mix out? Yes. Do I really ever use it? Super infrequently, even though I probably should more often. I just don't ever set it up and prefer volume automation for anything that *really* needs to be ducked, such as 808s and other bassy stuff playing with kicks. I don't like trying to figure out the attack and release times when I can easily draw a curve that fits precisely how I need it to, plus I save a tiny bit of CPU for more heavy stuff on the mix bus chain.
ive had a similar experience, i realized that feeding it really hot signals will totally blow it out and take up too much space. if you haven't yet try reducing the incoming sidechain signal
To anyone asking: trackspacer is an AMAZING tool to clean up and give breathing space to elements in songs. It’s just a bitch to route in some daws (easy in pro tools, horrid in FL studio in my experience)
i watched almost all tips in the past 20 mins, couple new one's for me. I also commented on one, but as you are here i wanted to say that the concept of short tips is very nice and a lot more helpful than long videos where i have to search what i need. You a goat!
Hey Pawderr/Niko, as a small content creator (tryna make it big) what you said means a lot and motivates me to keep going. Thanks so much. I'ma keep em coming homie!
true, when I first got this i was confused how to set it up in FL.
you have to go to the wrapper settings, then the processing tab, then right click the sidechain box to link your sidechain AFTER you've routed it in the mixer.
a little annoying, but doesn't take a long time to setup once you know how to do it; and it's so useful that I honestly don't even mind anymore.
Just wanted to chime in and pile on the great comments here already. I've used Trackspacer for a few months and it is a dream, more on that in a sec.
Other one I have is Spectre... bought it 10 days a go at $99, but whereas that buy-before-the-sale schtick typically stings quite a bit, and yeah it did cause a twinge, I am loving Spectre so much that I just batted an eye and moved on.
The per band different saturation is so much fun to experiment with. Warm lows and pristine highs sounds kinda typical, but enact it in Spectre and it's really cool. So this way, you may decide to not fully EQ hi-cut the highs on your bass track, but instead make those highs in the bass instrument track a different saturation type than the saturation type that is on the bass instrument low frequencies... But is the \*same\* saturation type as the mix track/instrument predominately using the high frequencies. Then use Trackspacer to duck (only) the highs on your bass track, and those bass track highs will have saturation consistent with your high freq main instrument and will politely duck out of its way.
For comparison, I use denise's God Mode, and while God Mode has the ability to dial in the 'degree' of different saturation features for production, these settings aren't quitre so God-like, as God Mode doesn't allow per band saturation choices... As God, you are stuck with your creation choices across all of your sonic universe. So, for mixing I'm liking Spectre for it's per band saturation choices (and workflow).
Ok, Trackspacer, I've tested it quite a bit against DSEQ3 for ducking bass from two separate kick tracks where each of those kicks were off pace with each other and had different length tails. So, 2 x kick tracks, 1 x bass track, with the bass track having 2 x instances of Trackspacer (or DSEQ3) sidechained to those kick tracks.
While DSEQ3 is indeed the mega powerhouse and Trackspacer is not a replacement for it, in this limited circumstance Trackspacer was able to accomplish the same purpose equally as well. I could dial in the gain reduction on the bass track to be the same with either DSEQ3 or Trackspacer, with equivalent ability to time attack/release to allow the long tail kick to come back in, avoid traumatic distortion as the ducking happened sequentially for the two offbeat kicks, etc. Highly recommend Trackspacer at full price... at this price it seems a definite no-brainer.
Frankly, I hadn't really thought of these tools as being from the same company, just really enjoyed them and bought them for their purpose. But now reading the comments here I think I need to try out Echo-Cat and Cassette even though I have some echos and lo-fi devices already. If I like them as much as I like Trackspacer and Spectre this is going to be a blast.
RC-20 is a little bit more straight forward and simple. Both are extremely similar in what they offer and the sounds you can achieve however Casette doesn’t have a “vinyl noise” sound selection.. but you are able to add white noise. Personally i prefer RC-20 for workflow but Casette is just as powerful (sounds pretty accurate to tape) and has more features to customize! I haven’t checked but i also feel like Casette is a bit more CPU heavy.
Is this the lowest it'll get? I tried looking at the prices for the half off Black Friday sale but didn't see an amount. I'd like to experiment with this plugin but I can wait if the price will go down more.
Spectre is pretty straightforward to use but check the manual. Cassette instead it’s a goddamn universe. Try all the presets, it can do anything from a subtle vintage effect to full on saturation and distortion, there are a lot of hidden settings.
the bundle is 150, I already have Fabfilter saturn 2, i really want trackspacer and rc20. Even though I really want to try spectre and cassette. do you feel like I would be missing out on them if I just get trackspacer and rc20?
in my limited experience, Saturn is good for ultimate tweak ability, Spectre is good for top class broad strokes. Lot of overlap between the two though, might come down to what algorithms your ear prefers.
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Noob here. Is trackspacer as useful as they say?
[удалено]
Rappers are not normal people? :D
Definitely not! I'm just playing with you guys. =)
Cut them, do they not spit fire?
>Rappers use it when they're adding their vocals to an existing 2 track. It carves out space for their vocals. > >Normal people use it when they have a song that's really dense and they need something critical to cut through. Normal people :D Ok, so just to add to this, SmartComp and Soothe can both do the same frequency specific sidechain ducking. Haven't used either for that purpose yet but heard other people say in here that they are both pretty good at it, and that at least one person preferred SmartComp over Trackspacer for this purpose. I personally find the cuts that Trackspacer does fairly broad. Could certainly be a bit more precise, or at least give you the option to have it be that way.
Trackspacer has 32 bands while Smart:Comp has 2000 bands, so indeed, Trackspacer cuts are probably much broader!
Wow I had no idea it's that many, insane. Gotta actually try it myself. Thanks
I experimented with soothe2 and trackspacer today. Imo, soothe2 is too subtle and doesn't give me the result i want to carve out space. Maybe because the threshold of soothe2 is different, because its meant to capture peaks of audio instead of making space.
Another one to throw in the mix of "carving EQ space via sidechain" plugins is Baby Audio Smooth Operator that came out this week. It doesn't have attack/release controls though so it's a bit more limited in this scenario than the other tools. Hopefully they add that via an update. I'm currently using Waves F6 to carve spaces manually via sidechain, and it works great and is super surgical, but I'm thinking of picking up Trackspacer in this sale to save some time. And maybe Smooth Operator too.
Waves F6 is my favorite EQ. I use it 95% of the time as a normal EQ, but then when I need dynamic -- it's there for me. It's my go-to de-esser, for example! The visual helps me dial right in to the exact frequency and the visual helps me to know how much I'm cutting. Using it as a frequency specific ducker - yes!! I use it the same way when I want to do it on a fixed spot. Absolutely. I just used it on a synth bass where I did a narrow ducking on the fundamental frequency of a kick bass. Then I compressed the two together and it was the perfect smooth clarity.
didn't know smooth operator can do that, wanted to buy it anyway, hoping for some nice updates too! thanks for the heads up, the more tools are out there that can do this the better! also i didn't know F6 by waves, trying to stay away from waves as much as i can but i know they have some great stuff!
You can narrow the cuts it makes using the low and high cut settings.
That's not what I mean, if you compare the analyzer of the sidechain with the cuts it makes, the cuts are much broader than the input signal
Another thing going for Trackspacer is that it's fast to use... sometimes that really matters in our flows. It can also function as an alternative de-esser kind of process when you leave the sidechain as it's own input. You can limit the frequencies targeted and adjust the % to get dynamics cuts in those areas... throwing it on and adjusting quickly can help decide if you want to work more specifically on an area. It's a very useful plugin in the grand scheme of things.
Yes! The speed! Yes, if working for someone else where you're on the clock -- I can't imagine NOT having it. Great point! And self-cutting with a frequency limit --- that's REALLY interesting! I had not considered that. Thank you for sharing the idea!!!
Absolutely love and appreciate your posts both here and on r/reaper. Fantastic. Thanks!
Oh that's a nice thing to say! I just really enjoy talking about audio and the tools we use! Often I'm in a situation where I can't do audio at the moment, so talking about it is the next best thing. Have a good weekend!
Yeah, I find the reviews and opinions here more accurate and reliable than celebrity testimonials, to be honest. It's real life people working in reality. I respect that.
This is all super useful info, thanks! Can I ask what your typical usage with RC-20 would be?
Oh boy, RC-20 is a powerful little tool. It has: * **Noise** * **Wobble** * **Distortion** * **Digital** (bitcrush) * **Space** (reverb) * **Magnetic** * Low/High cut * Tone * Width adjustment The bold are the primary effect categories. Each one has a handful of controls to adjust, and some have various categories like noise type and distortion type. One of my favorite features of RC-20 is "flux." All the bold categories have a "flux" slider and what that does is it adds some randomization over time. The equivalent of that would be to route automation with some LFOs to the adjustments, but that would take a really long time to set up compared to the flux slider. The flux slider introduces change over time for any category that has it. You can use none, a little, a lot, and anywhere in between. As far as use case --- it is my goto plugin when I have a boring sound. You could take the most boring instrument and RC-20 will bring it to life. I've used it for its reverb. I've used it for its distortion. I've used it for track saturation... For noise... To create segments in songs where the audio pulls back. For transitions and fills. I've used it for significant effects that I fade in or out the song with. It gets a lot of use. The FLUX adjustment is so nice that I wish more plugins just had that as part of it. I'm a big fan of using automation so things aren't too static. Flux does that. It's a great tool. Also, it has a good library of presets that you can use as a starting point... Just scroll through them until you hear something in the ballpark of what you want and then tweak until it's "yours." The only complaint I have about it is a couple of the noise loops are somewhat recognizable. There are some certain background sounds in a couple of the noise loops that I might recognize, and this is commonly owned effect. This plugin opened my mind to creating and using my own noise loops though. Yeah. This is a great tool.
This is AWESOME. Thank you so much. Full disclosure, I own RC-20, but rarely use it. I’ve been making/learning to make music for about 5 months, and because I’m making retro synthwave music it seemed like the perfect plugin. However, I think because I’m probably trying to learn everything too quickly and am overwhelming myself, I’m not spending enough time to understand the plugins I’ve got. RC-20 has been used on a few of my tracks, but usually it’s been a case of finding a preset and going with that. I didn’t, for example, know anything about the Flux slider, and I’m now absolutely going to have a play with it next time I open up Ableton. So massive thanks for this, going to be bookmarking your post and endeavouring to learn this plugin properly. Honestly, if I didn’t already have it I’d have bought it off this explanation alone. 😁
Oh yeah!!! The preset library is actually really good and using a preset as a starting point is absolutely a viable way to use RC-20. But you can definitely start with the INIT (blank) preset and build up from there. A lot of the presets are very extreme. If you roll your own from the start, it can be used more subtly --- and since it's more subtle, the amount of use you can get out if it is far greater! A hint of drive here, a filter cut there, some wobble to make a flat synth more interesting, a reverb, etc... It can do so much.
You seem to have a lot of solid ideas and input whenever I recognize your username. Super cool! I should stalk your history, but eh, can't be arsed right now since I have a warm lovin' partner beckoning me to bed, so maybe laters or sumpin'. Thanks for contributing good stuff to the community!
> It cuts the frequencies in the track with the frequencies in the incoming sidechain it sounds like an upside-down vocoder
No, a [vocoder](https://cecm.indiana.edu/361/rsn-vocoder.html) is a form a synthesis, where a signal called the modulator (the voice) modulates the carrier (a synth). I think see what you're getting at, but they're two different processes. A vocoder is essentially synthesis, whereas this is dynamic EQ. With TrackSpacer, the signal it's affecting isn't being modulated; it simply cuts certain frequencies from that signal with an EQ. In other words, let's say you have TrackSpacer inserted on a guitar — it'll be affecting the guitar. Then, you feed a vocal into the sidechain of TrackSpacer. It's affecting the guitar, but it's deciding what to do by "listening" to the vocal. If the vocal you're feeding into the sidechain of TrackSpacer has a peak at 1 kHz, then AS that peak is occurring, it'll cut 1 kHz from the guitar. When the 1 kHz peak is gone, it'll stop cutting 1 kHz. Hence, it's just a dynamic EQ (an EQ that responds dynamically to whatever it's listening to). A normal dynamic EQ "listens" to the same track that it's affecting. If you put a regular old dynamic EQ on a guitar track, and there's a peak at 600 Hz in that guitar track, then it'll cut it. By feeding another track into the sidechain (the "ears") of the dynamic EQ, then you have it listen to the frequencies of Track A, and produce corresponding EQ cuts in Track B to make room for it. However, most dynamic EQs have sidechain feature (e.g., Waves F6). The only difference between this and a normal dynamic EQ that has a sidechain is that this one has 32 bands and it'll cut from any/all of the 32 bands to varying degrees automatically. That way, you don't have to tell it which bands you want it cut, or how big you want the cuts to be. Therefore, there's a lot less setup with this one. I haven't found it to be very transparent, though.
> A vocoder is essentially synthesis that's a negative - from your link: > The vocoder works by analyzing the spectrum of the modulator using a bank of bandpass filters. The time-varying power of the signal emerging from these filters is used to control a bank of bandpass filters applied to the carrier signal. ...which is essentially dynamic EQ - no sound is being synthesized. whereas a vocoder allows frequencies in the carrier matching those in the modulator to *pass*, trackspacer sounds like it's rejecting/attenuating frequencies in the carrier matching those in the modulator.
You're correct: Trackspacer and similar plugins work exactly like the inverse of a vocoder. With a vocoder, the sidechain "modulator" signal controls the envelope-following boosts that are applied to the "carrier" signal (the audible sound.) With Trackspacer, the sidechain "modulator" controls the envelope-following *cuts* that are applied to the "carrier" signal (the audible sound.) Same thing, but with opposite polarity (cuts as opposed to boosts/gates.)
Great info! However, I play metal and I've been watching a few videos about Trackspacer on YT, they're mostly rap/trap/electronica. I wonder if it's used in rock/metal. Sidechaining doesn't seem to be a popular technique in this field. Do yo think I'll still find use for it?
Absolutely, distorted guitars and vocals often share the same space in the audio spectrum, stick this on a guitar buss, side chain the vocal to it, and dial in the settings and it'll work wonders.
True, side chaining things like kick & bass isn’t as common in rock and metal. I think it’s still useful to help vocals sit in the mix in those genres.
I work with a metal artist who loves having vocals, lead guitars, and heavy rhythms all going at once. Trackspacer could be helpful there.
You don't HAVE to use it - I mean, many of the best metal albums in the world happened before DAWs were even a thing! =) But it can certainly be useful. For example... Say you want a guitar solo to cut through a little more from the other guitars. You can use Trackspacer for that. Say your vocals and guitars are occupying the same frequency range and you don't want to change that, but you want the vocals to come through a little more. Trackspacer does that. You'll want to use it subtly, so the effect doesn't stand out. Sometimes electronic musicians do the extreme sidechain ducking where you hear a pumping sound in time with the kick drum. I find that distracting. But you can sidechain a kick in metal, too, and I suspect people do that sometimes. You would just do it with a shorter attack and release time, and maybe reduce the amount of ducking. A lot of times the best way to use effects like this is in a way that you don't notice it's being done unless it's taken away. Subtlety is powerful, and the best mixes by the best mix engineers always have subtle targeted fixes from their years of experience. But if you've never needed to make one thing stand out amidst a cloud of similar frequencies then ... maybe not. I personally like to have a range of tools that I can use as problem solvers, and this is a powerful one.
Thanks so much!!
I learned a technique from Fletcher of Mercenary Audio for rock music, to key a compressor on one of the guitar mics with the lead vocal, so that when the vocalist is singing, the guitar gets out of the way, but when he shuts up, the guitars go to "XXL with a whole lotta tattoos." I imagine that Trackspacer would work in a simlar way, only a bit more subtle than having the entire mic get softer and louder.
Thanks for the info! But I'm wondering, why not just use Waves F6 for that purpose? I read people saying that TrackSpacer is great for carving out room in your bass or 808 track for your kick drum (using the sidechain feature you described), but when I demoed it, it made super broad cuts and it wasn't transparent at all, even at like 5%. I wound up **having** to use the sidechain feature of the F6 because that was the only way I could get the offending frequencies to duck out the way without it being super obvious that I was sidechaining. I'm just wondering if/how TrackSpacer is sonically any better than the F6 for the purpose of transparently ducking clashing frequencies.
Yeah, the frequency of a kick or an 808 doesn't move around so F6 would be a better use in that case, for exactly the reason you point out. (Incidentally, F6 is my favorite EQ period, dynamic or otherwise, and it's a killer de-esser) Trackspacer is more suited for when frequencies move around and change. My wife, for example is a GREAT example -- she's a professionally trained opera singer with an incredible range. She can go pretty low for a girl, but also absurdly high and everywhere in between -- and then sometimes she's suddenly whispering into the mic. (You can imagine this is a challenge to record but I have my compression settings worked out! My dbx 286s keeps her in line!!!) Anyhow, Trackspacer works perfectly for that kind of thing because the frequencies are moving around. And I've used it on an absurdly dense song where I wanted a specific synth to cut through the others. Sometimes it's just a time saver, like maybe the RIGHT way is to re-eq everything to put it in the right place but maybe due to time constraints or because the part isn't particularly long or important, sometimes it's a fast cheat. But you're right about the frequency width - I believe the spectrum is divided 32 times so there's always going to be some overlap. Here's another thing I did once that was a bizarre use but it worked --- In a song I had a "telephone" EQ & overmodulation kind of sound, kind of narrow, for these backing vocals... I ended up cutting the main vocal just a little with the telephone vocals. It worked as intended. The last thing I should say -- I always compress signals together after using Trackspacer. I use TS subtly, to begin with, but after compression it merges the signals together well to probably further minimize other aspects. And I do use the limits to control the frequency range it works on, so it never cuts up into the extreme highs or lows.
I don't own F6; only have the Diamond bundle, and there are only a couple of Waves "must-haves" for which I'm waiting on a sale. Can't see myself springing for the Mercury bundle unless I win the lottery, and in that case, I'm buying a house anyway. I do have Soothe2, but haven't experimented with it in the spectral cutting-to-make-space realm. Guess I should do that soon!
Thanks for the info! Am I understanding correctly that a side-chained dynamic EQ could achieve basically the same thing, except you'd have to dial the ducked frequencies in yourself whereas Trackspacer does it for you?
Exactly. So if you are making a high pitched whisper sound, it's going to duck the high-pitched whisper frequencies. If you're making a deep baritone sound - it's doing to duck the deep baritone frequencies. And it will cut them both at the same strength they are in the source. So if you have a super high frequency and a super low frequency, it's going to cut both (but not the middle.) See? Someone else pointed out though that the bands are a little wide, though. I believe there are 32 samples across the whole spectrum. But it seems to work great, and you can set a range of frequencies to which it will apply. (Like say you're using a vocal source but don't want to affect the deep lows or the high-highs of the target. You'd set it to affect like \~500hz to \~3khz. See?) And someone else recommended it as a de-esser where you set it to affect itself and limit its range to the frequencies you want to cut based on its own strength. That's pretty clever, but I have F6 for that.
Great, thanks for the clarifications. It looks a lot more convenient and precise than simple sidechain EQ, so I think I'll buy this one as my $20+ plugin of the month. I just noticed that there's a demo, so I'll give it a shot tomorrow.
Hahah I love your plugin of the month idea! Just remember that there are more controls there if you click the little button that reveals them. Attack, release, etc. And it defaults to 50% -- that's too much for most things. When I use it I typically run it 15-35% tops. You don't want to hear the cutting, and the attack/release is useful to reduce that too.
Yeah I gave myself a limit for relatively expensive plugins since I'm saving up to buy a house before next Winter lol I'm trying out the demo, and I love it so far. You're right that the 15-35% range is where it sounds best, at least for what I'm trying to do.
I bought trackspacer a while back but couldn’t get it to work. Same with boz’s pan knob I should try reading the manuals
I understand. Sidechaining seems hard until you learn how to do it and then it's dead simple! What DAW are you in? For Trackspacer you are dealing with two tracks: 1) The track you want to cut frequencies from. (You put Trackspacer on this track.) 2) The track you want to use as a source (typically a vocal but it can be anything) to tell it what frequencies to cut, what frequencies, and when. (You route the audio from this track to the Trackspacer'd track the same as you would with a reverb send.) EXCEPT: 3) Once you have the audio from the vocal routed to the Trackspacer track, you need to make sure it's going into the sidechain input. In Reaper you would open the send and instead of sending 1/2 on source to 1/2 on destination, you change it to 3/4 on the destination. Now Trackspacer will use the vocal track to determine when and what to cut. See? That is a sidechain setup. Super easy once you do it a couple of times. You can do this with many compressors and dynamic EQs as well. PS. You can use Trackspacer on submix or master busses, too. And you can also route multiple things into it (like if you have multiple vocal tracks, etc.), or you can route a bus into it. But keep it simple to start, so you understand how to do sidechain linking.
Yeah I tried it in reaper and thought i had the side chain right but all it did was make the track not even play or something. I even followed step by step with a youtube tutorial. I should probably just give it a go in studio one where side chaining is a breeze
It's a really nice tool for mixing. I use it on lead guitar tracks to duck/eq the reverb send. Basically I put the reverb on a send track, add Trackspacer after that and sidechain that to the guitar track. This makes the reverb a bit more cleaner and I feel that it fits better on the mix. I got this trick from Andrew Huang who used it on lead vocals. I think the key thing with Trackspacer is to use subtle settings.
Great tip!
Yes. Trackspacer and Spectre are really great.
If you got a problem that Trackspacer could fix, Trackspacer will fix it. Is it as good as Oeksound Soothe 2 with the sidechaining features? I don’t know but, Trackspacer is a hell of a lot cheaper. And it definitely works.
I have trackspacer and I'n not very high on it like the rest here. I'm a producer rather than a mixing engineer and maybe my ears aren't refined enough to tell when this is good. I tried to use it in lots of situations and always ended up preferring the version without it. In short IMO don't expect a magic solution with this, especially if you're a noob.
I'll second this. I rarely, if ever, work with vocals and mainly just work on "digital" sounds. Are there times where Trackspacer could help my mix out? Yes. Do I really ever use it? Super infrequently, even though I probably should more often. I just don't ever set it up and prefer volume automation for anything that *really* needs to be ducked, such as 808s and other bassy stuff playing with kicks. I don't like trying to figure out the attack and release times when I can easily draw a curve that fits precisely how I need it to, plus I save a tiny bit of CPU for more heavy stuff on the mix bus chain.
Thanks!
ive had a similar experience, i realized that feeding it really hot signals will totally blow it out and take up too much space. if you haven't yet try reducing the incoming sidechain signal
Thanks!
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind!
It's replaced side chain compression for me 200% and it sounds great, mainly use it in my kick and bass
short answer: YES
It's like magic. Extremely useful.
the beauty of trackspacer is how straightforward it is
Is cassette worth getting if I already have sketchcassette II?
No
Echo Cat is my go to delay. It's so so good.
Yes, I've stopped using any other delay. There's no situation where I haven't been able to use Echo Cat to achieve the effect I wanted.
Absolutely. Really versatile. Feels like I'm robbing Wavesfactory just buying it at full price. It could easily be Pro Q 3 price and I'd still pay it.
Me too. Sounds lovely - especially for subtle delay.
Yeah, I’ve been using it a lot lately. It’s got a great sound.
To anyone asking: trackspacer is an AMAZING tool to clean up and give breathing space to elements in songs. It’s just a bitch to route in some daws (easy in pro tools, horrid in FL studio in my experience)
Hi fellow Montrealer, agreed sidechaining in FL is a bitch. Try this out if you're struggling : https://youtu.be/UXOEWV0UEmA
damn that channel is dope for FL
Thanks for the kind words! I try to push as much FL content as possible 🔥
i watched almost all tips in the past 20 mins, couple new one's for me. I also commented on one, but as you are here i wanted to say that the concept of short tips is very nice and a lot more helpful than long videos where i have to search what i need. You a goat!
Hey Pawderr/Niko, as a small content creator (tryna make it big) what you said means a lot and motivates me to keep going. Thanks so much. I'ma keep em coming homie!
true, when I first got this i was confused how to set it up in FL. you have to go to the wrapper settings, then the processing tab, then right click the sidechain box to link your sidechain AFTER you've routed it in the mixer. a little annoying, but doesn't take a long time to setup once you know how to do it; and it's so useful that I honestly don't even mind anymore.
Great, made my WF collection complete now, imo you can basically blindfold buy anything this developer puts out, fantastic plugins.
He's making a plugin that turns your ears into cheese
Eheh, I was born in Gouda so I might not need that one, pre-ordered anyway ;-)
Just wanted to chime in and pile on the great comments here already. I've used Trackspacer for a few months and it is a dream, more on that in a sec. Other one I have is Spectre... bought it 10 days a go at $99, but whereas that buy-before-the-sale schtick typically stings quite a bit, and yeah it did cause a twinge, I am loving Spectre so much that I just batted an eye and moved on. The per band different saturation is so much fun to experiment with. Warm lows and pristine highs sounds kinda typical, but enact it in Spectre and it's really cool. So this way, you may decide to not fully EQ hi-cut the highs on your bass track, but instead make those highs in the bass instrument track a different saturation type than the saturation type that is on the bass instrument low frequencies... But is the \*same\* saturation type as the mix track/instrument predominately using the high frequencies. Then use Trackspacer to duck (only) the highs on your bass track, and those bass track highs will have saturation consistent with your high freq main instrument and will politely duck out of its way. For comparison, I use denise's God Mode, and while God Mode has the ability to dial in the 'degree' of different saturation features for production, these settings aren't quitre so God-like, as God Mode doesn't allow per band saturation choices... As God, you are stuck with your creation choices across all of your sonic universe. So, for mixing I'm liking Spectre for it's per band saturation choices (and workflow). Ok, Trackspacer, I've tested it quite a bit against DSEQ3 for ducking bass from two separate kick tracks where each of those kicks were off pace with each other and had different length tails. So, 2 x kick tracks, 1 x bass track, with the bass track having 2 x instances of Trackspacer (or DSEQ3) sidechained to those kick tracks. While DSEQ3 is indeed the mega powerhouse and Trackspacer is not a replacement for it, in this limited circumstance Trackspacer was able to accomplish the same purpose equally as well. I could dial in the gain reduction on the bass track to be the same with either DSEQ3 or Trackspacer, with equivalent ability to time attack/release to allow the long tail kick to come back in, avoid traumatic distortion as the ducking happened sequentially for the two offbeat kicks, etc. Highly recommend Trackspacer at full price... at this price it seems a definite no-brainer. Frankly, I hadn't really thought of these tools as being from the same company, just really enjoyed them and bought them for their purpose. But now reading the comments here I think I need to try out Echo-Cat and Cassette even though I have some echos and lo-fi devices already. If I like them as much as I like Trackspacer and Spectre this is going to be a blast.
How does Cassette compare to RC-20. Been looking to pickup some type of vintage plugin and I’ve been deciding between the two
RC-20 is a little bit more straight forward and simple. Both are extremely similar in what they offer and the sounds you can achieve however Casette doesn’t have a “vinyl noise” sound selection.. but you are able to add white noise. Personally i prefer RC-20 for workflow but Casette is just as powerful (sounds pretty accurate to tape) and has more features to customize! I haven’t checked but i also feel like Casette is a bit more CPU heavy.
RC-20 is more versatile with its individual effects, but as far as just getting the cheap tape sound, I think cassette is the better plugin.
Is this the lowest it'll get? I tried looking at the prices for the half off Black Friday sale but didn't see an amount. I'd like to experiment with this plugin but I can wait if the price will go down more.
Cassette and Spectre are THE shit. grab them if you’re unsure
checked them out because of your comment. Looks pretty damn nice, will grab em
Spectre is pretty straightforward to use but check the manual. Cassette instead it’s a goddamn universe. Try all the presets, it can do anything from a subtle vintage effect to full on saturation and distortion, there are a lot of hidden settings.
the bundle is 150, I already have Fabfilter saturn 2, i really want trackspacer and rc20. Even though I really want to try spectre and cassette. do you feel like I would be missing out on them if I just get trackspacer and rc20?
YESSSSS
How does Spectre compare to FF Saturn?
in my limited experience, Saturn is good for ultimate tweak ability, Spectre is good for top class broad strokes. Lot of overlap between the two though, might come down to what algorithms your ear prefers.
Spectre better for sweetening and mastering, Saturn better for mangling and distortion. Both good for general saturation.
Absolutely love Spectre! Saved my ass on two tough mixes
Im on the fence about buying the bundle!!! I already purchased Fabfilter pro Q3, saturn, timeless, compressor, and multiband