Great free plugin tip + a preset (free download for a limited time)
Hey ya'll!
I noticed you can download Izotope's hecking nice Trash 2 for free for a limited time.
A good reason to try it out – in addition to trashing the signal – is that it can actually act as a 4-band gate!
The fourth band has to be activated from the prefs.
Or, you can download this Trash 2 preset I created, which'll give you those 4 bands and will get you gating.
I love gating drums for a tighter feel (you can suck out a lot of reverb)!
Comments (5)
You opened my brain up to the possibilities of this plugin. I saw your explanation of it on yt a while back. Such a great tool if we use it for more than the builtin presets. On another topic, im curious what your thoughts are about mastering. Not the process, but how you like to prepare your songs for platforms. Im a little stumped getting mixed information from all over the place when it comes to how strict we should be about the -14 LUFS mark for places like Spotify. Some people rage about making it perfect so they don't change the levels. Some seem to not care at all. I've been wrestling with Pro-L2 and Master the Mix Expose 2 & Loudness Penalty, Youlea, and a few tools from Plugin-Alliance. I tested a free mastering site that says "Spotify ready", which came back -11 LUFS...which would get penalized by Spotify. So im just kinda.... I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. What is it you aim to do when you call a master "DONE". I find myself more stuck on this issue than actually finishing my songs right now. I used to think it was enough just to make it sound the best I can without it peaking, but it feels much more complicated these days. Maybe I'm overthinking it.
If you want a Spotify-*optimized* version, that can be done. Other than that, I don't care about any of that. What's a Spotify-optimized version then? Loudness is at -14 LUFS, with True Peak level of -1. That'll give your song an ideal level on Spotify – when its normalization setting (that can be turned off) is on. You can send material at any level to Spotify. If it's louder than that, it'll just play less loud (like my own tunes, as I never do that Spotify-optimized version; not all distributors will even take two versions for distribution, so I go with a loud one, which'll get turned down by Spotify, but I don't care). I think it's a bit of a joke in a way that it was supposed to end loudness wars or something but it doesn't do it. When you turn the normalization setting off on Spotify, songs will play at the level they were submitted at. A real-life scenario of how a non-optimized Spotify version won't hinder your success: John Summit: "Deep End" (on Defected) on Spotify. It's mixed and mastered by me and got 33+ million plays. It's not the loudest song you'll find on Spotify, as John never asks for the Spotify-optimized version, so he uses just one version, the loud one.
Thanks, dude! I've had Trash for a while now and just now figured out it was pointing to the wrong preset folder! Looks a lot like using Ableton's Multiband Dynamics plugin but with more parameters (e.g. Attack, release, knee) plus the extra band.
Easy Janne, is the preset link correct?
Yes; on Mac, the correct location for it is: Documents ▸ iZotope ▸ Trash 2 ▸ Global Presets