SpecCraft by Three-Body Technology

[Hanz Meyzer]

...On the other hand, why did you set it to 8x? So at 1x, it is 12ms?

[El°HYM]

4x = 4312 samples, 44,9 ms
2x = 4240 samples, 44,2 ms
1x = 4096 samples, 42,7 ms

With Lookahead it will obviously cause even more Latency.

I would suggest to just try out the demo, its still a pretty good and useful tool.

https://www.threebodytech.com/en/products/speccraft

[Hanz Meyzer]

Ah thanks. Tried it now myself. It seems to sound really good, but that latency is not acceptable for me at least. Any idea what kind of latency Soothe has?

Using this plugin, I barely can hear any kind of FFT artifacts anymore, yet I bet you could achieve the same quality using TBAudioPro's DSEQ3, but with a lower resulting latency then...

[pandafish]

Out of interest, why would latency be a concern? I always thought of this class of plugin as mixing tools that would be used well after any tracking or performance. During mixing I often have 100+ ms total latency mostly from lookahead limiters and spectral tools and aside from a noticeable startup pause it’s not an issue. Are people tracking through soothe or DSeq?

[Hanz Meyzer]

Mixing and composing for me is often the same step, when it comes to sound esthetics while composition. In any case I would like to have the minimum possible overall latency. It would be ok for a final offline render to have a ton of latency, but not while any kind of live processing.

[El°HYM]

There is no perfect solution for this and indeed it would be cool to have something low latency which works adaptive to the frequencies. Looking in the hardware world there are things like an acceleration limiter (mostly used for Vinyl - cutting) or some kind of sophisticated de-esser. So its not that bad to have different tools to choose from itb as some have latency or high cpu hit, or even both etc.

[dastewart]

I finally got round to giving this a try to see if I wanted to jump ship from DSEQ. Initial impressions were very positive, the GUI and workflow are imho much better than DSEQ and I liked the compensation options. Only negatives were the lack of any scale on the gain reduction and I wasn't really sure about the Q control (vs DSEQ selectivity) both in terms of audio and the way it was represented on the GUI.

I was pretty much ready to buy it but, wary of the "new shiny thing" syndrome I thought I'd better do a proper A/B test with DSEQ. I didn't spend ages auditioning but they do obviously sound a bit different without there being a clear worse/better but the thing that made me stop and think was the relative CPU load. DSEQ was considerably more efficient, especially once you start applying oversampling, and I'm not sure I want to add more CPU load into my workflow even if it is easier to use.

So I think I'll wait and see if TBPro Audio overhauls the DSEQ GUI (unlikely) or if TBT improve the performance of Speccraft (possible).

[enCiphered]

SpecCraft has just been updated to v1.3.0 introducing Zero Latency mode.
From their product description:

Like many frequency-domain processors, SpecCraft uses linear phase filters by default, making it ideal for mixing. However, real-time applications are just as important! That's why SpecCraft also includes a Zero Latency Mode. When activated, SpecCraft switches to minimum phase filters, enabling zero-latency processing. This makes it perfect not only for mixing but also for live performances, arranging, and other real-time demanding scenarios.

Annoying resonances during live gigs? Not anymore!
Latency
Linear Phase Mode: 2048 sample points, about 46ms at 44100 Hz.
Zero Latency Mode: 0 sample points, 0ms.

[enCiphered]

New updated available with v1.4.0

Added "Range" parameter to set a limit of the gain reduction.
Added a setting that, when enabled, will show the maximum gain reduction amount.
Fixed a bug where the LR Linking parameter has no effect in some cases and remained at 100%.
Fixed a bug where the levelmeter not displaying MS in MS mode.
Fixed a bug where the stereo channel parameters for bands of priority curve were not being saved.

[dastewart]

---snip---
Added a setting that, when enabled, will show the maximum gain reduction amount.
---snip---

Yes! One of the things I thought that was missing.

Oh dear, just demoed it (again) and the implementation of this is a bit daft. There's a bouncing line showing max gain reduction and a number on the right of the line. But that line (and the number) bounces at the same speed as the gain reduction curve without any kind of "hold" as far as I can see. So it's very hard to see the number and kind of gives you motion sickness if you stare too long at it trying to catch the number.

Pleased they're still working on this and I'm still wondering whether to buy it but shame they didn't quite get this right. Better than nothing but needs work.

[_gl]

just to point out it can't be FFT based else they couldn't do a zero latency mode, it uses a bunch of filters instead, linear phase and minimum phase in zero latency.

[dastewart]

I did end up buying this. From a purely workflow perspective I was gravitating towards this over DSEQ3 as it just works more like my other plugins. Time will tell whether that was the right choice but, for the moment, this is my first choice now for resonance suppression.

[Funky40]

i´m a TBT fanboy.

i´m happy i jumped just alone for what it is showing me.
I like to compare Dry vs. Wet vs. Delta with my modular percussion beats.
First of all it gives me insight, and tells me something how production-work people might look at the things.
It might even lead further to a rearrangement of what i think is the best sound vs. single instruments. Yet i think on single insrruments is a good dynamic EQ still unbeatable for the bigger part of it.

Its a new timeage for my feel. With new tools and a new sound.
Vintage sound is passé for my taste. I like that very clear, very tidly cleaned up "modern-time" digital sound.
While i should use this one just alone for it´s delta output to do some FX experiments. Planned ! but i didn´t came to it so far.

These modern Tools, that´s what i like to see from SW !
While ofcoarse, hoping for everybody else, that you got allready your "perfectly fine matched" clones of all that Vintage stuff allready. I´d bet you do

[panspOrmia]

Tried RESO and others, but SpecCraft (for me) sounds the best.. but still not as good as Soothe 2. Unlike all the alleged `Soothe-killers`, Soothe2 does a superb job of removing resonances in my field recordings.. without effing-up the original audio. I`m going with Soothe2, but need to save up some coin to buy it. I wish their Rent-to-Own option applied to the sale price..

[roman.i]

It is only me finding these tools unnecessary?
Why would you flatten the FR of one of the instruments, unless you have a bad recording with few specific resonances in certain area, where it is worth applying this processor.
But in general, applying this to everything as I hear in examples just makes everything sound unnatural and flat, even for electronic sound.
I guess it is like a taste difference between liking it medium or well done...