I found it to be very useful when having a muddy mix as snares, vocals, pads and low synth notes can occupy the same spectral space and making way for the snare to cut through simply tweaking a few knobs is amazing.

Another trick is to use it on the kick and bass relation. Sidechain from the kick to the bass and set to apply to below 80hz more or less. In this way the plugin will only duck the lows and the mids & highs will stay clean.

Also bringing pianos to the front of the mix can be tricky mainly when there is another synth playing at the same time, you got the idea, right? Sidechain one to the other, set some of the parameters as the attack, release and frequency range and the magic is done.

There are literally only 6 knobs to twist counting the advanced panel and a lot can be archived with it.

Trackspacer is available at Plugin Boutique for £49,00

System Requirements

Mac OSX:

• 10.9 or higher (64-bit only)
• Big Sur & M1 compatible
• DAW capable of hosting VST or AU, or Pro Tools.
• DAW with sidechain functionality.
• Intel processor.

Windows:

• Windows 7 or higher (64-bit only)
• DAW capable of hosting VST plugins, or Pro Tools.
• DAW with sidechain functionality.

Important Note: This software is 64-bit compatible only and will not function on 32-bit systems.

The post Reviewed: Trackspacer appeared first on Data Transmission.

It is definitely one of the most versatile VST’s in the market. For the last 6 months, Pigments took over my sound design workflow as the possibilities are truly limitless and version 3 is just blowing my mind.

Something you won’t see every day on a VST is a combination of 3 oscillators analog-style engine, wavetable, sample playback with granular synthesis capabilities and now with the latest upgrade the harmonic engine for additive synthesis and a third utility engine.

The Harmonic engine is without a doubt the biggest feature of the upgrade, allowing users to control a combination of sine waves adding up to 512 partials for richer sounds. You can also customise odd and even harmonics and morph from A to B of the wide variety of filter shapes.

The new Utility engine counts with a fourth oscillator and 2 sample-based noise generators. Although the amount of noises is quite large there’s no option to import your own noise samples, which could make things a lot more fun.

64 wavetables were included to make a total of 164 in its library plus the possibility of importing your own.

A multi-band compressor and a pitched delay are new features of the effects section. The Chorus Jun-6 (Roland Juno-6 emulation) and the BL-20 Flanger (Bel BF-20) can bring ease to the “vintage sound lovers” in times of modern sound design. Not only that, Arturia added its own Jup-8 V4’s (Roland Jupiter-6) low-pass filter and either filter 1 or 2 now can be routed to either FX bus A or B.

Extra points to Arturia for adding in-app tutorials plus the video tutorials on their website. I wish every VST had such an easy way to learn them.

For holders of version 2, the new upgrade is FREE but for newcomers Pigments 3 is available here with 50% discount of its original price for £84.95 and you can choose between DriveShaper or Dubstation 2 for free.

The post Reviewed: Arturia Pigments 3 appeared first on Data Transmission.

It detects the scale or chords you are playing and suggests progressions which you can edit to your taste. This detection also works with MIDI and Audio files by drag and drop which makes life so much easier for those who like to get inspired by sample pack’s loops. Just bear in mind, MP3 files are not supported.

After the detection, you need to choose which style/mood of the scale you would like to go with and it is very nice of them to have put what each scale sounds like in words. For example Cm scale: Serious, Sad, Emotional, Sentimental or C Dorian: Jazzy, Bluesy, Rocky, Sophisticated.

You can edit each part of the progression on the Edit tab changing Chord Voicing, Inversion and Semitone to give your own personality to the notes and also Playback Timings and Playback Performances. 

Under the Chord and MOD tabs, there will be Chord suggestions and you can also use the Circle of 5ths as a guide.

This plugin is fantastic for every musical aspect of your track apart from the drums so now you will choose an option under Perform tab depending on which part of the track you are writing. It can be Articulations where you will find the Arpeggio and Strumming mode or Expressions with Performances, Phrases, Rhythm, Bass and Melody. Every single one of them is super simple to use.

Another useful feature is the Key Lock function which allows you to play only the notes in the scale or chord you selected in the beginning. Right next to it the Voice Groupings makes smooth the changes between chords as it group notes in a specific range, and Humanize which applies random velocity, swing and/or timing to each note.

As of in Scale 1 you can Drag and Drop the MIDI created from the plugin to the DAW.

It also comes with lots of cool sounds.

Although you cannot place a VST before Scaler, there are ways to route Scaler to play whichever instrument you want, depending on your DAW.

Final thoughts:

As I am not a trained musician and do not play any instruments, Scaler 2 has been seriously helping me with my melodies as it is so quick and easy to use. Some features go beyond my understanding because it was not just made for beginners but I have been learning a lot while having fun! Surely a plugin worth having!

If Scaler 2 sounds like something that you can help you then grab it from here

The post Reviewed: Scaler 2 by Plugin Boutique appeared first on Data Transmission.

Now let’s talk about the 3 main features:

Smart Chords is truly smart as first you’ll select which scale you are in, then for every note of the keyboard within one octave (it will be applied to every octave you play) you’ll be able to select which type of chord will be played as 5th, Triad, Sus4, 6th, 7th, 9th and 11th making very easy to create chord progressions. The possibility of adding Bass notes and Auto Invert the chords makes it even more fun. To humanize the whole thing a Strum option is available which imitates rolled chords by adding a slight delay to each of the notes.

The Multi-Layered Arpeggiator for me is one of the best features as is much more powerful than a regular arp having 3 arp layers but is still very easy to use.

You can adjust the number of Layers, number of Hits, the Rate, Offset, Pattern Type, Swing and how many octaves up it will play.

And last but not least the Audio effects: A selection of 8 types of effects is available with X/Y control for each one allowing you up to 4 effects at the same time. Keep in mind that to keep the effect on at all times you’ll need to activate the Hold button

Even if you don’t own an MPE controller like me, Roli Studio Player it’s still a great plugin to have with a vast soundbank and is very fun to play with. If you do own an MPE Controller than you’re in for a treat! 

Roli Studio Player usually retails for £79.00 but you can grab it for £39.95 from Plugin Boutique here

The post REVIEWED: Roli Studio Player by Roli appeared first on Data Transmission.

Listening to one track louder than the other is where the problem begins as we humans perceive loud bass and highs as being better and for that, the Level Match is perfect having 3 modes: “Match to Original” which will match to the DAW’s track, “Match to quietest” which will find the lowest of the volumes between your references and DAW’s, and “All to -14 LUFS st” which will match all the tracks to what is the most common loudness for pop songs in streaming platforms. I personally stay on “Match to Original” and “All Tracks”.

“Mirror mode” will play the reference track at the same point as the DAW’s and also opens the option Track Align which enables perfectionists like me to perfectly align the original and the reference track manually or automatically.

“Free mode” gives you the ability to select which point of the reference track you’d like to listen and also create loops.

This plugin not only makes you listen to the tracks properly but it also visually shows you what you need to work on and for that, the “Trinity Display” comes into play.

• Activating the “Level Line” one can easily see where to make EQ adjustments, the more the white line goes down the more the track needs a boost of that frequency and vice-versa.
• Stereo Width” shows how wide is the stereo field but keep in mind that you’ll only see the selected track’s so you’ll have to toggle between them to compare which I hope they’ll find a way to show both at the same time.
• The “Punch Dots” will show how their short term dynamic range compares so if the dots move towards the centre that means the original needs less compressing and if it moves away from the 0dB line the original needs more compression.

A very annoying thing is having to level match every time I put an effect on a channel to be able to A/B test and for that Reference 2 comes with an extra plugin called “REFSEND” which bypasses the entire FX chains to make loudness matchedA/B comparison.

s.

Reference 2 by Mastering the Mix made my life so much easier and absolutely changed the way I mix for the better. 

Reference 2 is priced at £49 on Plugin Boutique, grab it from here

The post REVIEWED: Reference 2 by Mastering the Mix appeared first on Data Transmission.

Putting aside the knobs that every compressor comes with I’d like to talk about some very interesting features of this plug-in:

There are 3 types of compression styles to add colouration:

• Feedback: More musical as the SSL Bus Compressor 
• Relaxed/Instant: Makes the sound be a bit less transparent with a little bit of pumping on the release (The original Molot operates on this mode)
• LoFi: It enables the gain reduction to be 8 bit and the output signal 12 bit creating a more aggressive type of sound without depth which can be great for instruments that need to be in the front of the mix.

The Alpha-Sigma knob in between Attack and Release sets the attack curve shape so if you’re looking for transient shaping I’d recommend leaning towards Sigma as towards Alpha would bring more saturation to the sound.

SC HP is the sidechain highpass filter with changeable slope the higher you go. This is an excellent feature for applying compression to mids and highs and leaving the lows intact. Bear in mind, it won’t fuck the sound, only the application of the compressor. There is also the option of using an External SC when selecting on the top menu line, but that would fuck the whole signal.

The Input can be processed in various ways as Stereo, Mono, Left, Right, Sum, Diff and Sum diff opening a whole range of possibilities. When Sum diff is ON the “W Threshold” and “W MakeUp” (W = width) appears to adjust the difference between Sum and Diff and to compensate the loss in loudness respectively.

Apart from that the guys from Tokyo Dawn built in an EQ section, a brick-wall Limiter, and a Saturation section which sounds very nice and crispy.

Final Thoughts:

That’s a very versatile plugin when it comes to colouration. With different compression styles, stereo configuration and even dual-stage creativity can go far! Apart from the saturation that didn’t sound very appealing to me as I’d rather saturate with a dedicated plug-in TRD Molot GE is a beast!

You can grab the TRD Molot GE from Plugin Boutique here

The post Reviewed: Tokyo Dawn TDR Molot GE appeared first on Data Transmission.

If you’d like to know more about the original hardware click here

As digital technology develops so does the audio plugins and this one is proof of that not only doing an incredible job at emulating the hardware but also bringing more features to the table which would not be possible in the “real world”.

Let’s start with the heads: Previously on the original hardware the heads were pre-set, now you can modify each one of them to your taste adjusting Volume, Pan, Time (You can also sync with your DAW), a LPF and a HPF activating and deactivating each one of the heads from the white 1, 2, 3 buttons underneath.

Moving on to the “TAPE” we got 3 sections:

• The HISS brings up that flavour of the hissing noise from the tape
• The CAT-IFACTS: 
  • WOW emulates the fluctuations caused by speeding up and slowing down the motor
  • FLUTTER adds some random pitch variations 
  • AGE alters the frequency response, losing high-frequencies and gaining low frequencies. If feels as if the tape was getting older and dustier on the surface.
  • SIGNAL LOSS controls the amount of high-frequency signal that is randomly lost 
• The LOOP GAP: Analog tapes can never be glued together perfectly to make a loop, there’ll always be at least a small gap creating a signal loss which gets repeated by the Heads. The more the depth amount, the bigger the gap. That just adds up to the analog feel of the plugin.

Now let’s modify the MOTOR behaviour with 2 more sections:

• HUM adds low-frequencies switchable between 50hz and 60hz found on the original Copicat. The Auto Mute will automatically stop the humming noise when there is no signal coming in.
• VARISPEED: With this, you can vary the speed of the motor so the times of the heads also vary having a slight pitch effect.
  • SMOOTH acts like an ADSR attack and also controls the slew effect when changing the time parameters
  • MODULATION DEPTH: Amplitude of the LFO 
  • MODULATION HZ: Speed of the LFO

When getting to the MASTER there are some interesting features:

• DUCKING eliminates the need for using a sidechain between the plugin and a vocal for example. It ducks the wet signal when the dry one comes in. In it, you can adjust the speed, the amount and also the target flicking through Stereo and Mid. Would be great to see an update where you can act on both simultaneously.
• GLOBAL TONE is the overall EQ with HPF, LPF, BASS being a Low Shelf and TREBLE a High Shelf.
• FAKE ST applies 5ms delay on the right channel to give the impression of a wider sound (Be aware of the mono compatibility issues that might appear)

Apart from all of the main features, Echo Cat comes with an HQ button to allow oversampling, a Panic Button in case you need to erase the tape suddenly, 77 presets, the option of saving your own presets, a By-Pass button as Power ON 220-240 AC and if you’re having issues with the rendering of the plug-in you can try to enable/disable OpenGL on the top right burger menu. AH! I almost forgot. The screen is resizable!

Final thoughts:

Waves Factory Echo Cat really gave me the feeling of using an old analog hardware. For a producer in-the-box like me, it is an amazing way to get closer to that raw signal. I’m definitely using on my productions from now on.

You can grab the Echo Cat from Plugin Boutique here

The post REVIEWED: Waves Factory Echo Cat appeared first on Data Transmission.

iZotope just created a reverb plug-in that listens to your settings and automatically EQs the pre and post signal to better fit your mix. Well done!

Let’s start with the Pre EQ Audio Cut:

This feature will listen to the dry signal and automatically remove the frequencies which can cause muddiness. A Amount fader will help you adjust how much of the EQ will be applied. You can also DIY but you only get 3 points to do so while the AI will create as many as it is needed. 

The Reverb EQ minimizes the overlap of frequencies and brings more clarity between either the Dry & Wet or the Wet & other channel’s signal. On the second option the EQ will detect only tracks with iZotope plug-ins such as VocalSynth 2, Nectar 3, Neutron 3 and Relay.

The Blending Pad by default will allow you to manually blend between Reflections, Plate and Hall. The Plate can be turned into Medium Chamber or Room while Hall can be switched to Large Chamber. You can also turn them ON and OFF simply clicking on the blue, purple and orange buttons.

Going to Neoverb Advanced Panel is when things get more interesting:

Reflections is where you will be able to adjust the early reverbs switching between Time, Size, Diffusion and Angle. You can also use a LPF as you prefer.

Using Plate and Hall sections there is something rarely seen in reverb plugins, the Time can be switched to BPM over the DAW making it much easier to adjust other than having to use math to calculate how many milliseconds is a ¼ of the BPM you are using. It can also be used on Pre-Delay. Ten points to Gryffindor!

The Mod gives some extra subtle Square or Sine wave pitch movement but even at its maximum Rate and Depth is not too strong. 

The Smooth button subtly removes some of the attack of the reverb.

Now that we know all about iZotope Neoverb’s settings let’s talk about the elephant in the room: The Reverb Assistant

Right after clicking on it you’ll be given a few options to choose from:

Adjust them at your taste and hit Next. It will automatically go through the Pre EQ and Reverb EQ analysis and Voilà! Instead of changing every setting we saw earlier manually Neoverb will change them all according to what you had in mind when adjusting the Reverb Assistant. Obviously you will be able to make more adjustments after that.

Final Thoughts:

Thinking outside of the box is what defines this plugin. Not only combining features but also bringing something new to the table. I believe this is a must have in every professional and amateur studio as it makes every one’s life easier and opens a bigger range of possibilities when dealing with reverb.

Grab you copy here on Plugin Boutique!

Reverbate’s ‘Dejavu’ is part of our BOOST Weapons Brighton Music Conference Compilation, which you can check out below and you can download the whole VA on Beatport.

The post REVIEWED: iZotope Neoverb in partnership with Plugin Boutique appeared first on Data Transmission.

I got access to the Standard Bundle which consists of:

• Noise Remover
• Voice Deepener
• Voice AutoEQ 
• Voice Leveler
• Reverb Remover
• De-Esser
• De-Clipper
• Plosive Remover 
• Audio CleanUp Assistant

They are all very easy to use and understand as the plugins are one knobs. They also use hardly any CPU producing very low latency.

Across all of them you’ll find an A/B button which makes much easier to make decisions when applying the processes and the windows are all resizable fitting any type of screen.

So, here are my thoughts about each one of the plugins in the new ERA5 Standard Bundle:

Noise Remover

I would like to start with the Noise Remover which I got quite impressed with. Working with loads of audios which are often not recorded with a top-notch mic in a perfectly treated room I nearly always need something to remove those annoying background noises and this plugin does the job incredibly well with only one knob! You can choose between 5 different types of “Focus” giving you more control over what you are cleaning from your audio. The Hum/Buzz control button gives you the ability to remove a persistent tonal noise as of an AC.

Voice Deepener

Have you ever noticed how in any voice recording the person’s voice is higher pitched than normal? This plugin helps a lot to retrieve those missed information making anyone’s voice sound more natural and fuller. If you’re looking for something very natural and clean Accusonus advise to stay in between 20% and 60% of the Processing knob, more than that you’ll probably sound like Darth Vader which can also have some sound design applications. The Modes are related to the mixing process as the Normal mode maintains the natural-sounding voice while the Punchy cuts through the mix applying some kind of compression or level gain to the final signal.

Voice AutoEQ

This plugin was designed to equalize speeches so when you first open it you’ll be asked to play a snippet of the speech for up to 8 seconds. I tried to analyse a speech with a background music and it did not work so well so try to avoid that. When the analysis is done you’ll be able to choose between Clarity, Body and Air. The Clarity will control those nasal aspects, the Body will act almost like a Voice Deepener helping the low frequencies and the Air can be used if you need to favour the high frequencies.

Voice Leveler

Have you ever faced those speeches when the person talking can’t hold their hand still and keeps moving the mic away from their mouth? This plugin is perfect for that! Not only that I might add. With Breath Control you can minimize the volume of one’s breath smoothing out the whole recording. Emphasis on the other hand is very smart only applying its effect of adding presence into what is needed. A cool feature on this plugin is that it shows in black the input and in yellow the output signal making so much easier to understand what is going on. Just be aware that the Voice Leveler will also increase the volume of any background noise and for that you can use the Noise Remover.

Reverb Remover

This one is a game-changer! Countless times I got audio which was recorded in a non-treated room with lots of reverberation making it very hard to get a clean voice out of it through processing. This plugin interface is very similar to the Noise Remover having 5 types of Focus but with an Auto button underneath the Output, Gain fader to compensate for the lowering of the volume due to the dereverberation.

De-Esser

Syllables with “S”, “P”, “T” and “F” has always been a problem when processing a vocal as they carry a lot of sibilance creating undesirable high frequencies. The De-Esser plugin does a pretty good job removing those frequencies and like the Voice Leveler the smoothened parts of the audio are shown in a different colour on the waveform. The Normal mode will apply the effect mostly on the higher frequencies making it very useful for using and the Broad mode will be applied to a wider range of the spectrum. The DIFF button is super sweet as with it you can listen to what’s being removed other than the final result so I found very interesting to apply the De-Esser with DIFF ON and adjust the Processing knob until I hear the actual word and not just the sibilance, turn the DIFF OFF and there you have it!

De-Clipper

This one made keep thinking how could Accusonus develop a tool capable to recover so well a clipped audio?? I did not find the answer to that but what I know is that if you have a clipped audio which you cannot record again then your problems are over. There are 2 types which 1 is softer and 2 if for heavily distorted sounds. Underneath you’ll find the 2 qualities to choose from: Standard and High. I would say to keep on High if your CPU can take it or just preview in Standard and render in High (even though High takes a small amount of CPU usage anyway). If the Output indicator starts flashing that means you de-clipped so much that it started to clip again so simply just turn down the output gain slider until the indicator stops flashing.

Plosive Remover

Due to microphone’s bad placement the “b”, “p” and “t”s when spoken can cause what we call “p-pops” sounding as if someone was blowing into the mic giving that impression of having someone spitting on your face when they talk. Plosive Remover smooths the audio tackling this so common problem. There are two modes being Normal and Extreme. The extreme you would only use on severe cases only. As the De-Esser it also has the DIFF function.

And last but not least the Audio Clean-Up Assistant

Of course, with so many plugins to so many different applications you’ll have to combine them to attack different problems while processing your audios and for that the guys from Accusonus made a host plug-in where you can use up to 5 slots adding any of the 8 plugins available on the bundle. They also carefully created 18 presets to help speeding your workflow but you can also save your own racks. The only issue I found is that you cannot automate the Output and the Intensity Faders but you can do it if using the plugins buy themselves outside the Assistant.

Final thoughts:

I am amazed by what those plugins can do with only one knob. Things that would usually take me a long time to process are easily solved quickly and effortlessly and the being able to combine the 8 plug-ins together opens a whole new spectrum of possibilities.

Grab you copy here on Plugin Boutique!

Reverbate’s ‘Dejavu’ is part of our BOOST Weapons Brighton Music Conference Compilation, which you can check out below and you can download the whole VA on Beatport.

The post REVIEWED: Accusonus ERA 5 Standard Bundle appeared first on Data Transmission.