T-racks = Any Good?

General Discussion
1

Hi.

I’ve been looking into this “T-Racks” software which is supposedly a very nice and easy way to master your songs.

Does anyone have any experience with this software? And if so, what do you use it for? (Limiting/compression/equalization etc)

ThAnKs

Long live Big Fat Pumping Tracks!

2

i have not heard t-racks personally… but i recently heard the iZotope Ozone… fantastic stuff!

will try to listen for a sample… been looking for good mastering vsts.

and i’m quite dumb at mastering, so i’d need something easy to use. lotsa presets, etc.

3

t-racks is ok for fast and good sounding mastering … but you get better results with the waves plugins … and you need to know what you are doing!!! … there is still no one-click-professional-mastering-software B)

4

I always do 3 different masterings: T-racks, Ozone and Waves plug-ins. As Alexander said, the Waves plug ins set is not very easy to use because if you don’t know what you’re doing you can destroy your mix.

Ozone is easier to understand than T-Racks, and you can get good results with both of them.

If you’re going to use T-Racks and you don’t know anything about mastering, try its presets, then change some parameters and see/hear what happens. It will allow you to understand how it works (this is pointed expecially to its compressor, which is not “threshold based”…)

Btw, mastering is not a science, is an art, so don’t follow fixed rules and trust your ears…

5

I use T-RackS24 for quite some time now and I can really recommend this program. And as Mekkah already said the Presets are for newbies a good tryout.

The manual of it is also really good btw.

6

Thanks, P.T!

Do you use the Stereo Enhancer?

I found it very very helpfull…

B)

7

mhh? which stereo enhancer??? :blink:

thinking edit

ahhh, you mean that Stereo-enhance Preset :D

well… not yet :)

8

Hey, the stereo enhancer is the one located at the top right on this picture.

9

I have long time expirience with both T-racks and Ozone mastering equipment… It was good for me untill i faced necessity to make more effective and professional mastering…

Now i vote for customly created and adjusted plugin chain (i create it in Sound Forge internal chainer). It’s useful cause you can create your own chain for any mastering case, to process any material… (and save it as preset)

Usually i use :

  1. Waves X-Hum (to reduce low-rumble and stabilize DC-offset)
  2. Waves LinMB (Linear-phase multiband compressor)
  3. Waves L2 (Ultramaximizer - smart limiter)
  4. Waves DeEsser (for better Hi-range adaptation)
10

owww, right… thought you talked about the preset before :rolleyes:

Well, I don´t use it that much. I´m morely using the eq and the limiter to finalize my stuff.

It´s still hard to come up with soem detailed explainations since I use this program for around 2 months now :)

… still also a bit newbish ;)

11

I see you run on high budgets my friend :)

I guess this is true, if you could produce the massive amounts of money you need to fork up for their stuff.

Just L1 Ultramaximizer costs around $300.
the C4 Multiband Compressor adds a whopping $400 to the shopping bill.
In case you feel like your lucky pants are on, dish up some $3800 for the Diamond bundle and your all set :)

I think for the ‘home’ users, stick to some o that cheaper, still good stuff, like Voxengo. Try out the Soniformer… Sure, it’s not 4-channel multiband compression but I’m quite sure you’ll feel goot about it costing you 50-60 bucks instead of those 400 ones.

12

Wow this is crazy…

I remember back in the FastTracker days when I didn’t even care about mastering or anything, just render the song to .wav, encode to .mp3 and that was it…

Now that I’ve got Renoise, the outcome sounds so much better that it’d almost be an insult towards the software not to do your best to optimize the quality of the track! Now i’ve got to face Compressors, limiters, EQs, multiband this and that…

But I guess that’s also because all of the new opportunities and features that popped up in Renoise. It was a, well, LARGE leap from FastTracker.

:blink:

But i guess that’s what’s cool about music right, you can always learn something new.
Edit: And of course you can always get better at it.

B)

13

And hey… let’s not forget about the glorious days of Karsten Obarskis Soundtracker. Man 4 channels, and that was it. Does anyone still have that ST-01: disk hanging around? ;)

those were the days!

14

Hey dudes… :ph34r: have you ever tried Cool Edit Pro 2.1? (now its name is Adobe Audition 1.0) it supports many multitrack features, along with compressors, equalizer, pan/vol effects, effect chains, etc… It’s very cool as the name says, and I’ve been using it for almost five years, doing its job very nicely!

B)

15

there is the possibility to buy pro stuff by second-hand … e.g. on ebay … or privat advertisements in music-magazines and so on … B)

waves master bundle on ebay … for 399EUR = 450$

but you are right … there also cheap great software …

and … in comparison to pro hardware music equipment software is cheaper and the handling is easier and more comfortable …

16

I have used T-Racks for about 2 years and found it very good software mastering program. I use almost all stuff but mostly EQ and compressor. Most of my tracks are mastered with it. Only the latest album has been mastered in studio. I can recommend it to you. It’s also fast to learn and easy to use. ;)