Trackspacer - still the king or any alternatives?

[Caine123]

hey guys, afaik Trackspacer is/was the best(?) when it was handling side chaining signals and i mostly use the FL Studio Limiter's sidechain function but im wondering if Trackspacer still has the great reputation and if there is any alternatives/products which were released which might be maybe less CPU consuming (wasnt this an issue?) and maybe improved?

just askin , thx

[simmo75]

I like Duck, it’s so quick to dial in your desired frequency bandwidth of the sidechain, and it’s also cheap as chips.

[Ah_Dziz]

Cpu hasn't been a big issue for me and really isn't on my newer system. I still use track spacer all the time as it's incredibly straightforward for the thing it does and I like the developer a lot. There are tons of dynamic eqs and multiband compressors that are capable of the same thing or one could use a relatively small FFT size spectral compander to do it. Track spacer does exactly what it's designed for in a small amount of time and is able to make space for a lead or vocal in a busy arrangement very quickly and easily.

[Thymos]

Soothe 2 with its side chaining function is more precise than trackspacer. It only ducks what is necessary instead of ducking a whole frequency area/band.

[legendCNCD]

Soothe 2 is also much, MUCH more CPU heavy than Trackspacer is. In trackspacer you can select the ducking area too, not so different from soothe isnt it? Anyway, I have used soothe with sidechain but daymn if I need more CPU while doing so. (Yes I need new PC)

[diroxe7660]

Depends on the desired result.

For kick triggered ducking I'd stick with a side chained compressor on a bus holding most of your non-kick tracks.

If on the other hand you're looking for automated frequency unmasking between several tracks, then smart:EQ would be the first plugin I'd look into.

[superscan]

Neutron has an unmask module or stand-alone plugin for sidechain that’s easy to use.

Pro-Q3 can show you the overlapping frequencies so you can carve them out

[andymcbain]

On my setup, Soothe 2 was using less CPU for me when I compared it to Trackspacer in Studio One - so I've used Soothe 2 ever since.

[MJACau]

Dseq3 does side chaining as well, on ECO ECO mode it's only 8ms latency. Very low CPU.

[vitocorleone123]

Depends on the desired result.

For kick triggered ducking I'd stick with a side chained compressor on a bus holding most of your non-kick tracks.

If on the other hand you're looking for automated frequency unmasking between several tracks, then smart:EQ would be the first plugin I'd look into.

Pretty sure smart:eq has a lot more latency, though.

Trackspacer does use a bit much CPU for me to use it more regularly on my aging computer.

[Zoopy]

I've seen people use smartcomp as an alternative with a little more control, it's a bit deeper and fiddly tho.

I think it's important to differentiate trackspacer as a spectral processor rather than just a sidechain ducker. It's affecting way more than just volume.

[Mathematics]

I wrote about this on another page...Trackspacer is good but MSpectralDynamics is superior. In fact, it's far superior to everything mentioned on this page. However, it isn't superior for everything. Soothe does a better job for broad bands but when you turn up the sharpness, it's more of an effect than a practical solution. It's all subjective. Anyway, like I said, I've written about this topic and made an extensive comparison of the plugins at the time. MSD has a smaller version now, which is lighter on the CPU. Still, for ducking harmonics or flattening the spectrum or taming areas, spectrally, my go-to is MSD.

[MogwaiBoy]

If I want to duck the whole signal, like for heavy kick-to-bass sidechain, then I go for an external input capable compressor like Pro-C or TrackComp.

If I want a more transparent frequency-dependent effect like solving clashing/overlapping frequencies on instruments, then yes Trackspacer is still king for me. For example ducking the lead synth against some other elements (hihats for example) to make sure the lead sound stays steady.

I've heard that Soothe is even better than Trackspacer for this but I still haven't tried it, even though I own it Soothe has higher quality settings and far more 'bands' for more precision, so it probably does sound marginally better/more elegant/more transparent than Trackspacer at the right settings.

[trackbout]

Big fan of Laser https://www.sweetsonics.com Super transparent, and the offset knob is awesome for fine tuning the timing.

[Ploki]

Soothe 2 with its side chaining function is more precise than trackspacer. It only ducks what is necessary instead of ducking a whole frequency area/band.

+1.
Trackspacer is like a hammer.
Soothe2 is like a scalpel.


However for very transienty material, trackspacer might work better.

If voxengo added external sidechain to soniformer id retire trackspacer.