Trackspacer by Wavesfactory is currently on sale for € 29. If you use Pianoteq for sympathetic resonance in your DAW, sidechaining Trackspacer can duck the resonance frequency, which may give your piano extra clarity (note: it may not be noticeable to most ears).
Sidechaining Trackspacer with strings and pads also allows you to dynamically carve out or duck their frequencies, especially when layering with piano, resulting in a cleaner mix.
RESO (currently also on sale) is also a nice simple alternative.
Or better off use some freq. attenuation plugins such as TEOTE (by Voxengo) or HarmoniEQ. You want an FX plugin? Voxengo probably has developed it ages ago!
SmoothOperator (by BabyAudio) or Gullfoss (for final mastering), maybe also Soothe2 itself (is expensive but good; maybe will be on sale for BlackFriday).
If you use the Plugdata-FX platform (it is sort of a visual sandbox for plugin chains, fully free/open-source application available under the GPLv3 license) you can also use N-Silk plugdata which is really simplified alternative to Soothe2. N-silk is a spectral resonance suppressor with a dynamic threshold + spectral filter, giving you fast and easy control over problematic frequencies and spectral sidechain masking/ducking.
DSEQ (by TBProAudio) is also a good alternative to Soothe2 but it's UI is more complicated.
One perk with Trackspacer is that the latency is negligible, so it works well for real-time playing. Something like Soothe2 is much more surgical but adds significant latency. Just something to bear in mind depending on your own use case.
How is it different from a dynamic EQ? Just curious.
Vlad
It is sort of automated Dynamic EQ. You control the amount of freq. range to get affected and how much towards a "standard" target curve or proportional equalization but it is not a compressor (like multi-range compressor).
It should introduce latency, because it should utilize look-ahead, no?
I don’t experience any latency with my setup because my Piano track directly goes to the Main output. The Pianoteq resonance is in another track with Trackspacer sidechain parallel to the Piano. Trackspacer automatically carves the frequencies you’re sidechaining from, which is great.
Further, the latency in Trackspacer appears to be quite low and negligible, as Mindbullets mentioned above.
Initially, I was thinking of buying FabFilter Pro-Q 4, but I’m not sure how to use it since I’m still a newbie. Trackspacer seems perfect for my use case because I only want to duck resonance and strings/pads without compromising latency, and it is very easy to use.
Vlad
For real-time application – yes. But it depends on range, buffer size. Usually it is for mixing not recording.
There is a version of Soothe2 called SootheLive for such purposes. Not sure about the other pulgins but the latency should be ok for tracking. Got to test it though. Great idea for the weekend!
