Guess I better go back to tape, console and all outboard hardware too, as everything that is older harder is better for the home musician enthusiast, roight?

I don't know that I'd put carving out a hole with an equalizer up there with, say, hand-cranking your car to start it or making your own shoes.

bitflipper

I don't know that I'd put carving out a hole with an equalizer up there with, say, hand-cranking your car to start it or making your own shoes.

Well, this plug does more than that, does it not?


I tried it.  It works as advertised, installation was smooth, no stability issues or other bugs that I noticed, and the GUI is nice.  Whether you actually need this plug is another question ... I can see it being useful on a mix that has a wild guitar or synth solo over a wide-frequency backing pad or other wall of sound, for example.  But when it tried it with vox vs. gtr, I got similar results as with a sidechain comp, which wasn't too surprising since the two tracks had similar freq ranges.  As with any plug, YMMV.  


Cheers, 
Eddie

Yes, Eddie, it does do more than an equalizer. Whether it does enough more to warrant purchasing, I'll have to demo it and see. 

Past experience tells me that when it comes to tools such as this, if you don't know how to accomplish the task without it you probably won't have much success with it, either. 


I'm still waiting for the next generation of truly intelligent plugins that analyze a problem and apply a solution more efficiently than a human could. Consider automatic transmissions as an analogy. For decades, automatics were less fuel-efficient than manual transmissions because they weren't smart enough to compensate for the power they took from the engine. Contemporary automatic transmissions, though, make faster and better decisions than a human can, and you can no longer assume that shifting gears yourself will save gas.

I guess I'm saying that current audio plugins are at the level of sophistication of a 1950's era Powerglide.

Which...was kinda clunky.

Hey folks,
 
I wanted to add to this thread by saying that after putting the demo of TrackSpacer through further testing, I decided to buy it.  When using it on vox vs. acoustic gtr, for example, it seemed to blend the two tracks together in a more transparent and natural way than by using traditional sidechain compression.  It works equally well in other scenarios such as piano/gtr and elec gtr/bass.  I also tried sending all instrument tracks to a bus, and hitting that with the vox output -- the vocal was then more intelligible and "sat in the mix" better. 
 
I'm not saying this will save all your mixes.  The effect is subtle and needs to be used with care -- it's certainly possible to crank the knob too much and get weird effects.  But used judiciously, it can certainly help, and it's easy to dial in.  Bottom line: this plugin does what it says it does with a minimum of fuss.  Plus, it's been rock-solid in its operation, and the GUI is cool.  Can't say the same about too many plugins from indie developers.
 
http://plugins.wavesfactory.com/
 
Intro price of 39 euros (about $52) is good till 11/30.  After that it's 59€.
 
Cheers,
Eddie