SpecCraft by Three-Body Technology

[dastewart]

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...

In general I tend to agree with you but here are some examples where I do find resonance suppressors have come in useful

o taking out resonances in distorted guitars around the 2khz to 3khz mark, more often when a digital amp sim has been used. Tbh, I normally use deres or an eq as these tend to be fairly static.

o taking out resonances in vocals below 600khz. Sometimes a high pass and low shelf is all you need but I have sometimes used a resonance suppressor to good effect

o clearing space between different tracks by sidechaining the resonance suppressor in one track to the signal from the other. This doesn't always work as well as it should in theory but I have used it with some success in clearing a path for the vocal in a heavy mix

The one area that I've never had any success is in "de-harshing" a track, bus or mix. Bizarrely this is where things started out for these gizmos (soothe is called "soothe" for a reason) but I've just never found it works any better than a simple eq.

[bmanic]

The one area that I've never had any success is in "de-harshing" a track, bus or mix. Bizarrely this is where things started out for these gizmos (soothe is called "soothe" for a reason) but I've just never found it works any better than a simple eq.

A little tip for getting better "de-harsh" results, especially with Soothe (but this same tip probably applies to all other similar plugins too):

Make sure you use LONG attack times. You can keep the release quite short but at the very least keep the attack long. In Soothe this means an attack of at least 5, though I very often end up with a value between 6-8.

Why? Because all of these types of plugins are dynamic plugins, meaning they change the volume of various parts of the audio, which in turn guarantees that they produce distortion (harmonics) which in turn WILL result in aliasing. Now if you are trying to remove harshness around the 3 to 12kHz region with very fast attack/release, you are creating a HUGE amount of extra harmonic content which is directly targeted at these harsh frequencies, thus you only compound the problem instead of fixing it. This is one reason why a static EQ will sometimes work much better than any form of dynamic EQ.. there are no additional harmonics created.

So to counteract and control the amount of harmonics, you use a much longer attack time. This gives you a sort of hybrid of a static and dynamic solution, vastly reducing the amount of harmonics (and thus also aliasing).

Keep in mind that even if you oversample a dynamic plugin like crazy, it will only affect the amplitude of the aliasing, it will NOT change the harmonics generated. The only control you have over amount and amplitude of harmonics is slowing down the dynamic action, especially the attack time as it's the one that creates the harmonics "on top" of the stuff you want removed.

Unfortunately very few presets seem to use these and very few users seem to be aware of the correlation between attack/release and the amount of harmonics.

In short: Use much slower attack/release times and you get better results with de-harshing in these types of plugins. In general if you find that dynamics processes add "brightness" and forwardness, it's due to the harmonic series created and it's amplitude.

[dastewart]

The one area that I've never had any success is in "de-harshing" a track, bus or mix. Bizarrely this is where things started out for these gizmos (soothe is called "soothe" for a reason) but I've just never found it works any better than a simple eq.

A little tip for getting better "de-harsh" results, especially with Soothe (but this same tip probably applies to all other similar plugins too):

Make sure you use LONG attack times. You can keep the release quite short but at the very least keep the attack long. In Soothe this means an attack of at least 5, though I very often end up with a value between 6-8.
--snip---

Thanks for the tip, I'll try it out next time I have something to "de-harsh" and see how I get on. I don't have Soothe but I do have both DSEQ3 and (now) Speccraft and never play with the attack times so it will be interesting to see if this was the missing piece

[Alexander_D]

Still like soothe honestly... But this looks so interesting as well...

[Dr.Gunjah]

Thanks @bmanic for yet another very educational post. I think I have never used an attack above 5 in soothe.
What I've noticed in speccraft is that when pushed hard it produces that overcompressed "breathing" sound unlike other plugins like soothe or curvesEQ. How can I counter this effectively? Increase release time?

[Alexander_D]

Hmm. So, does this one really better than Soothe?..

[panspOrmia]

Hmm. So, does this one really better than Soothe?..

Not to my ears. Soothe2 does the best job with taming resonances in my field recordings. I`m currently enjoying Kraft Dinners in order to buy Soothe2 sometime this month..

[Alexander_D]

Hmm. So, does this one really better than Soothe?..

Not to my ears. Soothe2 does the best job with taming resonances in my field recordings. I`m currently enjoying Kraft Dinners in order to buy Soothe2 sometime this month..

Hm.. if you don't have Soothe, how you compare them? I got Soothe but don't check SpecCraft.

[_gl]

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.

this is just me, but I mainly use these tools for unmasking via the side chain. and I have used it on a particularly resonant sound (a resonator guitar effect that gets very harsh, sort of a worst-case scenario). so far I haven't used it yet as a general 'massager', but I'm not ruling it out (yet). I can see both arguments, and then it depends how subtly you use it.

[dieterlaser]

Hello,

SpecCraft is 89$ on their webpage and over 130 on pluginboutique

Is this a TTT sale or now the usual price? I'm confused

[dieterlaser]

guess, I get UNMASK then, lol