Trackspacer...looks interesting!

Yep. It is cool and it seems to work. 

Simple and easy.

This has been done before. Check out Space Boy by Elevayta. Popular with people who do voiceovers. And half the price of Trackspacer.

I have demoed Space Boy before, but not Trackspacer. I think I'd better do that before passing judgement.

I've been testing Trackspacer, controlling the full instrument mix from the lead vocal. In theory, this should make the vocal stand out better without actually turning it up. And it does do that, but at the same time just sucks the life out of the instruments during the vocal.

To be fair, I'm trying this on a finished mix where I've already created a spectral hole for the vocal and used automation to drop the instruments slightly during the vocal phrases and bringing them up in between vocal clips. IOW, where I've already manually done what Trackspacer purports to automate. Consequently, I'd expect the results to be underwhelming.

I can mitigate the life-sucking action a little by tweaking Trackspacer's LP and HP filters. There is a passage in the song that's just a lead vocal over bass and drums. The drums are big during that section, featuring heavy toms. In order to keep Trackspacer from thinning the drums out too much, I raised the HPF so that the < 600Hz content of the vocal would not effect them. Unfortunately, that had the effect of making the vocal more sibilant, because only the higher frequencies were being unmasked by the plugin. Catch-22.

I can also mitigate the negative effects by simply turning down the % control on Trackspacer, reducing the amount of gain reduction. The more subtle the effect, the less damage it does. However, to my ear the best sound was when I turned it off altogether.

I'm still experimenting, but my initial reaction is that conventional EQ and automation will give you far greater control and more desirable results than this plugin can achieve. 

The market for Trackspacer, however, may not be people like me: hobbyists who can take all the time they need to tweak a mix. More likely, it will appeal to folks like yorolpal, who crank out material in bulk and must work within strict deadlines. It could be a time-saver for them. Unfortunately, the bulk of Trackspacer sales will probably go to hobbyists who are hoping for a shortcut around having to learn how to mix, and they'll be disappointed.

Next, I tried Trackspacer in the role they best like to demonstrate: kick modulating bass. 

Initially, I was unable to get Trackspacer to do anything at all when placed on the bass track. I could only get it to work on a bus, so I created a new bus and routed the bass to it. Maybe a bug, maybe a demo restriction, I dunno.
The result was not unlike simply ducking the bass with a compressor. Even though Trackspacer is ducking specific frequencies and therefore should be more transparent, in reality you're working with such a narrow band of frequencies with kick and bass that the effect is pretty much the same as using a compressor.

At this point, it doesn't look like I'll be sending them 60 bucks. But I continue to test...

It would really be nice if this plugin had adjustable attack and release times. When ducking the instrument bus off the vocal, the release is sometimes too long, causing instrumental fills between vocal phrases to get killed unnecessarily.

I'm finding that the key to making Trackspace transparent is narrowing the effected frequencies using the LP and HP filters. Also play with the send levels from the reference track to the sidechain input, if you want to avoid having the effect kick in during reverb tails and echoes. The send level is effectively your threshold control for Trackspace.

By adjusting the filters I was able to make the effect more subtle and less damaging to the instruments. I'm even beginning to think this plugin might actually have some practical use - though probably not enough to spend $60 or $80 on it.

OK, one last observation. The detector seems to be mono-summed, so that instruments that are hard-panned (and therefore not masking the center vocal) are attenuated the same amount that they would have been had they been panned center and actually causing a problem. 

This is a big limitation, I think. It would be much more transparent if it were either a true stereo effect or worked in Mid/Side. Ideally, you only want to attenuate sounds that actually mask the reference track.

For me, I've decided to pass on this one for now, but I'll definitely come back to it if there's ever a rev 2.

yorolpal


Couldn't one just...you know...mix their track better?

That would take ALL the fun out of buying plugins!!!