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IK Multimedia T-Racks 24

19-Mar-2024

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IK Multimedia T-Racks 24



Category:  Products / music software / software mastering & editors

Added: 13-Mar-02  |  Author: admin

New price: $ 299 / € 329  |   S/H price: Not listed


IK Multimedia T-Racks 24

T-Racks have this product out for some time, and i'm just adding it into the listings.. I heard about it first thru the www, and since then a freind of mine in the biz has raved about it... Funnily I never checked it, but tonight I did, and my God this things is superb!.. and they didn't send me this.. I borrowed a copy to check it out so really.. beleive me, this thing rocks!!


T-Racks is a s/w rack of mastering tools which works as a standalone - also available as a Pro-Tools RTAS plugin - You load waves into it to master and render the output to file.. This is not an editor or anything like that but rather think of it as a suite of processors for adding that mastering sound & 'Hotness'


As for file types, T-RackS® 24 now supports 24 bit Aiff, Wav and SDII files for importing and exporting.






Th first thing that strikes you about T-Racks is the superb GUI... it really is tasty!... You can select in PREF (preferences) any of 3 default included skins, and I do beleive there are other available...



'Gold' skin......




'Copper' skin......




'Chrome' skin......



Anyways, it reeally looks good and the interface is well thought out... it's more an intuitive tool.. you don't get tons of menu's and settings and sub-settings and the rest... T-Racks is designed to emulate a Pro analog valve gear sound, and all the control & options for settings you need are realistic to this... and they work!





VALVE EQ SECTION

You get a 4 band semi-parametric eq, each with gain, frequency & hi and lo 'Q' switches... T-Racks says it's: "modeled on classic top quality analog gear" - and it certainly sounds good, in fact, it's frighteningly good.. amazing what s/w can do now... You really do get what sounds like a rack of good ol' vintage gear...





Handily on the right-hand green 'oscilloscope-like' screen display you can see the curves adjust as you tweak.. it'd be nice if the screen could be 'un-latched' from the main body tho and re-sized to whatever you like, as the screen on the version I tried tonight (v1, old) whilst VERY handy could be bigger - Anyways, it's easy to setup eq's and compare with a handy IN/OUT switch...





VALVE COMPRESSOR SECTION




The you got a compressor section, all pretty standard controls, but the sound really does simulate valve comp well... you can go from subtle and soft compression, thru 'adding warmth & 'hum', right to 'pumping the roof off!' - VERY nice... The thing which is so good with this 'valve sim' comp is that you can get drastic compression if required, but whatever you do the sound has 'breathing' and still retains dynamic's, but in a really sweet tasty was, totaly different to your standard tranny or dig' compressor - NOTHING sounds like a valve comp' and T-RACKS really have done themselves proud with this valve comp' emulation!!






MULTI-BAND LIMITER SECTION



Next, is the Multi-band limiter, and I had to check this one out.... 'When an audio signal is clipped, a limiter will generate harmonic and intermodulation distortion above and below the frequency of clipping. A multiband limiter minimizes these distortion components by splitting the audio signal into pre-determined frequency bands, each with their own clipping stage. The output of each clipping stage is then filtered for distortion outside the band before all bands are recombined into a single waveform.'

In practice this section applies emphasis which add's more of a hardness to the sound whilst still having breathing & dynamic's... The sound from this section is hard to describe compared to compression for newbies... but it gives the sound more 'smack' so to speak and it REALLY works to get hot levels while the compressor pumps the bottom end a bit & breathes the drums.







MASTER SECTION

Your master section... You can see the afformentioned 'oscilloscope' screen, and it really works a treat to show the eq bands and shapes you are creating... The final master out has excellent metering capabilities as does the whole software individual sections...



Outlined in RED, is the Soft-clipping stage - where you can apply HARD or SOFT clipping with a nice variable clipping shape selector for a faster or smoother shelf... There's a Saturation switch & control... and a Mono switch... everything you need... This section really works.. as T-Racks says in the website: "Easily increase gain with no compression or limiting artifacts (unless you want them!)"... And it really works... final 'hottening' can happen here.

Below that is the transport and other controls for setting a Fade IN & OUT point - Click on the FADE IN or FADE OUT button, and these mini-panels open where you can set your times in seconds & fractions of a second.....



After setting your fades they can be heard in realtime if you have set the options page to listen in realtime, & the fades can be rendered in with the final file when you hit the 'PROCESS' button...




Loop feature

There's also a loop feature on the Transport bar which is handy.. When you click LOOP 'ON' a green line apears over the top of the horizontal 'time-line' and you can grab the start & end and move them to create whatever loop area you like, while the Time display changes to show the start & end time... ok!...


Snapshots



You can 'TAKE' a SNAPSHOT & quickly select 'Snapshots' of your entire RACK-SETTINGS which you can quickly flip between by selecting from available 'SNAPSHOTS' you have recorded as a 'TAKE' on the SNAPSHOTS bar - All you do is set everything how you want the sound to be, and press TAKE button.. This causes the next un-lit green TAKE button to illuminate. You then click on any created Snapshots on the lit green button and the whole rack resets itself to those settings! - As a great touch, the controls 'soft-fade' to their new positions which looks well cool ! :) - Handily this toolbar can be dragged around to locate it anywhere you like which is a nice touch.


Markers



When you arrive at a section you want to mark, (or on the fly), you can drop markers by hitting the MARK button and on the time-view a marker with a time appears to the right ..... it's simplicity to use... Each new created 'Marker' drops a little black triangle on the timeline, and when you click the Transport '>>' Forward, or '<<' Back controls it hops down or up the markers one by one... simple & effective for marking time-points along the track for analysis and comparison... It's easy therefore to do quick flipping between sections of the file to test additions to your rack settings to compare between for example a place where a fat sub-bass drops into the track and a section of breakdown etc... Markers can be hi-lighted & dragged along the time-line once created, and deleted with the DEL key after hi-lighting.



You have a open/closeable CPU meter, and there is various settings for 'OPTIONS'...



Here you make settings for buffers... which colour scheme/skin to use, wether dithering is applied for Hi-end files down to CD-Standard and a selection for wether the processing you apply is heard in REAL TIME, 'in-place' as you work...






So... to sum up on T-RACKS ??.. Well, first off, the sound REALLY is AMAZING!!!.... and the price compares massivly well with getting the same setup with seperate s/w plugs from other manufacturer's... You might think you prefer to apply your processing in place in your stereo editor... But, trust me.. check this s/w out because it is storming mate!.. You can get your mixes hot as hell & really really loud & pumping if that's what you want!!.. otherwise for those who work with material using greater dynamic range such as bare hiphop & garage, you can work down from 'super-hot' to get steamingly upfront but breathing red-hot mixes to compete with the stuff on CD, or go for 'smooth and warming' settings and you get lovely warm 'phat' yet still dynamic sound....

Further to that, it has excellent built in 'mouse-over' help which pop's up on the black outer area next to the T-Rack when the Question-Mark icon on the lower toolbar is illuminated... very handy!

The T-RACKS valve-sound modelling really gives life even if you HAVE drasticaly reduced dynamic range.. that's the thing.... because the 'valve' sound gives you some breathing... It's terribly effective therefore, and even with no Eq applied, simply loading in an old mix and flicking in the stereo comp' or Limiter, then raising the drive control, brings INSTANT warmth or up-frontness to your stereo file...

I can be real scathing of products, but if they are good you HAVE to give them props equaly... T-RACKS seem to have hit it off here just right.. they've choosen a market area and gone for it where there is few competitor products outside of plugins requiring a host... I'd say T-Racks is a superb product given the price & should be mentioned far more when people get down to discussing mastering, and the fact it's available as RTAS really helps it's image in this area I think!....

If you do ANY style of dance and especialy garage, RnB & Hiphop cuts cos it'll give you a real edge over your competitors when that sound busts out of the speakers!...Also, if you make ANY type of ambient dubs or dub sound again T-RACKS add's instant 70's Yard-sound valve pump all the way up to a real 'Jah Shaka' all-valve rig sound on CD!! - (try it with some added 'vinyl sound' FREE from Isotope first on your track, then export it to T-RACK for a 100% authentic 'yard-plate' on Cd sound!!... It should create an awesome 'cassic vinyl' sound on CD!... If anything this product is made for us budget PC studio people - Just be careful with the bass-end with that valve-sound if mastering for vinyl tho cos T-Racks ramps some serious bass guy!!!.. But the handy 'SNAPSHOTS' allows you to setup various 'bass-end' setups going from more to less and render off one of each so your mastering engineer has a choice of cuts to work from.

Final word ... Honestly, given the price I'd give it 10/10 & URGE you to try it.. I'm hooked!..... I'll DEFINATELY be getting this on my PC asap!







++STOP PRESS++ - Word reaches us today that T-RACKS will soon be updated to work as either a stand-alone rack system, or as standard s/w plugin for use INSIDE your favourite mastering s/w ... not only that, but better still, the new version will allow ANY seperate part of T-RACKS to be split off and used as a stand-alone plug!!... so you can use the WHOLE rack in say WAVELAB or SFORGE etc... or, just use the valve EQ or Comp etc in your favourite sequencer in the mix!! - wonderful!... my prayers are answered, because one thing that struck me when trying T-RACKS was how great it'd be to get the same FX for use in a sequencer whilst creating the composition... anyways keep your eye's open for that update!!





Adendum 24/9/03 - T-RACKS is also available for RTAS & HTDM Pro-Tools and is being developed for Audio-Units & MAS for MAC. It is already available as DX plugin for Windows.













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User Comments

Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: jonkb
Email: Email supplied but hidden
www.mp3.com/prg
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 13-Mar-02

I've been using T-racks for a long time.. I use it as my all in one mastering tool. It gives your tracks edge :)

Another nice thing about T-racks is the great presets.

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: pp
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 19-Mar-02

Why does the audio come out of the Mac speaker? I can't fix this problem. B/W G3 400Mhz, 256ram OS 8.6 Logic Platinum 4.7

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: Thelemite
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 24-Mar-02

This rack rocks. I was never a pro at mastering but 15 minutes with T-Racks and I was doing a pretty good job. Provided I'm still not a pro but I can give my tracks the boost they need and make it sound like I'm good at it. T-Racks is the one tool I can't do without anymore.

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: PP
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 12-Apr-02

Can any one help me figure out how to get the audio out of my Audiowerk 8 sound card? I'm using t-racks and i don't see any settings for audio output. B/W G3 400mhz Os 8.6, 256mb ram

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: k
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 12-Apr-02

it uses whichever device/port is selected in windows control-panel multi-media as the 'preferred' soundcard OUT device. So select your required Audiowerk driver there.

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: PP
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 13-Apr-02

My system is a manintosh. I don't think that applies on a mac. Any other ideas?

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: k
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 13-Apr-02

ah! - mac - dunno - try the pc music forum cos it's about where mac sets it's audio settings then i guess, and i aint a mac user.

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: NC
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 23-Apr-02

This is the bollocks! Particularly if you are lazy. You can feed your tune into it, apply one of the nice "suite" presets and it'll come out hot and banging. Seems to improve the stereo imaging too. Love the vintage mastering ones.

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: alastair
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 13-Jun-03

Hi
I am running protools 002 LE with a
Powerbook. My mixes are done in 24
bits and 96khz sample rate. Can I
master at 96khz with the T-rack?
Thank you for your input.

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: simon ho
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 27-Sep-03

will the T-Racks support Mac OSX under
Audio Unit?

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Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: admin
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 27-Sep-03

they are working on OSX versions, available soon. For more, mail the company

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Last added comment

Product:  IK Multimedia - T-Racks 24
Name: obie
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 16-Oct-19

file

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