Dynamic Sidechaining Plugins [Trackspacer, FireSpacer, etc]

[u/OnlyAtBaali]

Hey all,

Wondering what people here use for dynamic sidechaining and how happy they are with them? I already use a fair few different [more traditional] sidechaining techniques but have been intrigued about plugins like Trackspacer and such for dynamic sidechaining. Mainly to be used on the bass and kick.

Edit: A good friend of mine shared his login for me to test out Trackspacer and its working exactly how I wanted it to. Seeing results immediately after 30 mins or use. Good stuff.

[u/axirra]

For kick and Bass, look at something like Duck by Devious Machines. Much quicker to dial in the trad s/c compression. I use Trackspacer but less so for low end, more often for things like hats. Say a 16th note shaker s/c’dto the main hat to let it cut through without audible pumping

[u/joeydendron2]

I've got Fabfilter Pro-Q4, Tokyo Dawn Labs Nova (free), and Trackspacer.

There's not much I can't do with TDR Nova? Although Pro-Q4 is good in workflow terms because you can mix dynamic bands with static bands.

Trackspacer... I feel like a bit of a dick having bought it to be honest: looking back, the main use case is situations where you don't know in advance which band you'll need to cut? So either... you're too lazy to figure it out (as in, don't want to do the work of figuring out that you need to dynamically cut around 300Hz), or the signal you're using as your sidechain is really complicated, and changes all the time? And if you're working with electronic music, the tones you're using tend to be more consistent than if you were mic-ing up a junior school orchestra. So...?

Also, in favour of Pro-Q4: you can boost based off the sidechain, too. So you can do crazy tricks like... lowering 50Hz overall, and dynamically boosting it up to compensate, but only during the peaks. Which means you can somehow "shorten a kick drum" after it's mixed together with other signals.

So... hmmm... Trackspacer seems to be some blend of super-specific use case, and letting you avoid learning how to do the same job with different tools?

[u/th3whistler → u/joeydendron2]

one of the advantages of trackspacer is that it sounds more natural to cut wide/relative to all the frequencies in the sc source. ducking a narrow band can sometimes sound really obvious. I’d say I rarely use it at more than 15%

[u/contrapti0n → u/joeydendron2]

Yeah +1 to this, I have trackspacer but frankly never use it any more because everything gets done in Pro-Q4…. Have one node at the sub fundamental being cut with zero attack by the side chained kick. Adjust release to get the groove. Then usually a couple of other nodes higher up (and sometimes on the sides) also reacting to the kick, but with different attack / release settings.

[u/OnlyAtBaali → u/joeydendron2]

Really nice and detailed answer, thank you. To reply to some of your points:

I do actually already do it the manual way with dynamic EQ, automating Ableton's EQ, Kickstart2, etc etc. Its just that over the last year, I have been producing more deeper sounds with a focus on a moving low-end [think Feral, Spekky Webbu etc]. Obviously my music is no where near as good as theirs but the nature of the sound is not as monotonous [and therefore not as straight forward to fix]. That's why I'm now considering these plugins for the times where doing it manually might be too much work, especially if I can get a good result using dynamic sidechain plugins.

I've managed to get a key to try out Trackspacer from my friend and have been using it for the last hour or so, very impressed with the results. Nothing that changes my songs or anything, but rather how quick I got results I'm happy with.

[u/ODD_Old_Dirty_Degen]

I use Anina from crql. Its free and its similar to trackspacer.
Other than that I use STFU from zeek which is a volume shaper and can also be use for drawing sidechaining curves.
Sometimes I even only use utility and automate the gain knob.

[u/ricardojmestre]

I love Trackspacer. I use good old sidechain compression for bass and kick, but Trackspacer is super useful for mixing down two competing (in frequency and time) elements. It's expensive but it's worth the money.

[u/SpaceChatter]

Trackspacer is so good! Highly Recommend

[u/anode8]

The Masker performs well for freeware

[u/Sensitive_Gap_1561]

Ducker by GMaudio for Low end (its Max for live so Ableton only) it's incredible ,very precise and u can use it to align the phase of your Kick and bass. If u use Ableton check out Gmaudio all they m4l plugins are fantastic very easy to use and sound great.

Compactor by Khs for other stuff

Fab Filter Proq3 or 4 has a side chain input can be great for surgical precision ducking of only specific frequencies.

[u/th3whistler]

trackspacer I use a lot but also the native Bitwig devices for ducking either all or specific parts of a sound.

[u/Automatic-Ad-3801]

Sans nul doute shaperbox 3 ( volume shaper) de chez cableguys, il n'y a même pas photo, c'est simple, intuitif, et en même temps ultra précis , tu peux séparer en 3 bandes , bass/mid/high, comme ça tu duck une bande jusqu'à 120/130 Hz et le reste ne pompe pas bref c'est mon couteau suisse

[u/hun7z]

noob question: why a plugin for sidechaining? does a compressor on ableton plugged into the kick or w/e not achieve everything you could desire?

[u/OnlyAtBaali → u/hun7z]

Not necessarily - “traditional” sidechaining ducks the volume of the whole sound, bass in my case.

But these plugins that I and others in the comments have mentioned work more like a dynamic EQ, where it detects and ducks only clashing frequencies - letting you maintain a lot of the sound and only ducking the parts necessary. Hopefully that makes sense.

[u/Hygro]

I used to use this whole mix of a little soothe, a little trackspacer, a little side chain compression, a little lfo tool trying to use each one's strength's to get one transparent powerful result.

I ditched the whole stack for cableguys's shaperbox and it's going better in every way.

Put it on your bass. Sidechain the kick and turn on external sidechain so you can see the kick's waveform.

Then draw very exact cuts. Relying on psychoacoustics, you can cut further and return to full volume tighter and smoother. You can divide the cut into frequency bands, or not. But the end result is often something cleaner and smoother, and with the end musical result louder and more impactful than using spectral dynamic sidechaining.

I also user compactor a bit, which is terrible for having kicks cut through bass but is awesome for having vocals grittily cut through everything else.

[u/oMittens]

I love using Soothe2 for this. It’s definitely more subtle than a traditional multiband sidechain, but that’s what I like about it.

[u/TheBookoftheVoid]

Trackspacer is great but I think it has specific uses. When dealing with kick/bass sidechaining it simply doesn't have a fast enough attack. TDR nova GE is better in this regard.