New Release: Spectral Agent v1.0.0 by Immanent Audio (Unmasking & Dynamic EQ)

[ImmanentAudio]

Alright, the hotfix is in!

The demo version bug is resolved and will now provide 60 seconds of unhindered usage, as requested:
https://gumroad.com/products/cveia
(Same link, just providing again)

Also, still working on the Mac version

[DCrown]

Interesting. What are your thoughts regarding when tracks/instruments change priority (eg. a solo for an instrument that was in the background becomes the new focus of the song), particularly if it's a gradual transition?

A solo in the background?
Why would a solo be in the background?
The most important part of mixing is gain staging!

[ImmanentAudio]

If I can jump in on rj0’s behalf, using this plugin makes that process a little more nuanced. The example situation was if we had a guitar that was strumming along in the background for most of the song, and then gets a big solo during the bridge.

However, with this plugin, the guitar originally would have been “Yielding” (filtered to free up frequency space for vocals/drums/more important tracks) for that entire first part of the song. Even if you cranked the gain for the solo, the filtering would still be present and you’d have a “front and center” instrument that is still being carved out to favor other tracks.

So the spirit of the question was how to transition a track from more of a Yielding role to more of a Master role in the mix, using Spectral Agent. You’d likely complete your gain staging in harmony with the plugin changes!

[rj0]

If I can jump in on rj0’s behalf, using this plugin makes that process a little more nuanced. The example situation was if we had a guitar that was strumming along in the background for most of the song, and then gets a big solo during the bridge.

However, with this plugin, the guitar originally would have been “Yielding” (filtered to free up frequency space for vocals/drums/more important tracks) for that entire first part of the song. Even if you cranked the gain for the solo, the filtering would still be present and you’d have a “front and center” instrument that is still being carved out to favor other tracks.

So the spirit of the question was how to transition a track from more of a Yielding role to more of a Master role in the mix, using Spectral Agent. You’d likely complete your gain staging in harmony with the plugin changes!

Yes, and great example.

Thanks for jumping in.

[Dr.Gunjah]

Alright, the hotfix is in!

The demo version bug is resolved and will now provide 60 seconds of unhindered usage, as requested:
https://gumroad.com/products/cveia
(Same link, just providing again)

Also, still working on the Mac version

Looks way better now. Thanks for the quick fix. I'll give it another shot soon.

[pekbro]

Looks interesting, will try it out.

[ImmanentAudio]

Looks interesting, will try it out.

Let me know what you think!

[ImmanentAudio]

Alright everybody - I appreciate all the interest in this forum thread thus far! A couple announcements:

1) I decided to go ahead and add window resizing, rather than waiting for v2. Gotten too many complaints about it already. If you already own the plugin, you should be able to grab the new .zip through Gumroad (but I'll send some emails out to make sure you can get the update for free).

2) Everything is building and looks happy on the Mac side. Just need to notarize it, so you can expect this version to be available sometime this weekend. One push for the immediate window resizing update was that I know you Mac folks love your hi-res monitors.

If you ever have questions, feel free to email me at immanentaudio@gmail.com.

[Dr.Gunjah]

Thanks for adding the resizing, it really helps. Now if you could make it so the size is saved and not reset any time you open a plugin instance again, that would be perfect.
I think it's fine as is for demo purposes but later when working with the plugin I doubt anyone would like to resize the probably numerous plugin instances over and over again.

[Dr.Gunjah]

Now that it can be tested properly, I have to say I really like this. I've added like 10 instances of this tool to some instruments, bass and the drums of a house track. The result is, the track sounds more focused and the "master" instruments have way more impact. I really prefer this kind of setup to something like trackspacer where this would be very tedious to set up with all the sidechaining. I'll try it on some other stuff, but I'll most likely buy this. For 20 bucks it's quite the steal.

It's not perfect though. The analyzer is not quite easy to read because there is so much going on all the time. It didn't really help me to set the parameters.
Some features that would vastly improve the plugin in my opinion:
- Some way to set custom bands or to set the crossover frequencies for the existing bands at least
- Multiselect for the targets to set up multiple relations at once, including the parameters like depth. This woud improve the workflow greatly. For example if I want to set the bass master in the low band to all other instances this is quite tedious. You basically do the same steps over and over.

[ImmanentAudio]

Now that it can be tested properly, I have to say I really like this. I've added like 10 instances of this tool to some instruments, bass and the drums of a house track. The result is, the track sounds more focused and the "master" instruments have way more impact. I really prefer this kind of setup to something like trackspacer where this would be very tedious to set up with all the sidechaining. I'll try it on some other stuff, but I'll most likely buy this. For 20 bucks it's quite the steal.

It's not perfect though. The analyzer is not quite easy to read because there is so much going on all the time. It didn't really help me to set the parameters.
Some features that would vastly improve the plugin in my opinion:
- Some way to set custom bands or to set the crossover frequencies for the existing bands at least
- Multiselect for the targets to set up multiple relations at once, including the parameters like depth. This woud improve the workflow greatly. For example if I want to set the bass master in the low band to all other instances this is quite tedious. You basically do the same steps over and over.

Whew, glad you liked it after those early struggles with the demo I appreciate your honest feedback.

And yes - I often found myself relying on my ears rather than the analyzer when setting many of those parameters. I have some ideas to improve the visual cueing.

The spirit of v2 will be a focus on ease of use. While a step up over individually sidechaining, it's still a process to modify each interaction individually. I'm aiming to give options to make broader strokes: if I want my drums to stand out more, I should be able to scale up my parameters on all those interactions simultaneously. I'll have to approach that carefully to make it both intuitive and very functional.

All this to say, I'm looking forward to continuing the refining process. I've been really excited about this full mix unmasking concept from the start.

[Shabdahbriah]

Very interesting. Will def being checking this out. Well done.

[ImmanentAudio]

Very interesting. Will def being checking this out. Well done.

Thank you!

[Dr.Gunjah]

I just wanted to buy this, but it seems like checkout doesn't work. There is only one payment method shown (card) but even if I had a card, I can't enter anything. Will paypal be supported?

[ImmanentAudio]

I just wanted to buy this, but it seems like checkout doesn't work. There is only one payment method shown (card) but even if I had a card, I can't enter anything. Will paypal be supported?

Interesting. I've had people checkout successfully through both KVR marketplace and directly though Gumroad.

I can see those who checked out through KVR were able to use Paypal. If you don't want to go that route, send me an email (immanentaudio@gmail.com) and I'll help sort it out.