March 2004, Modena, Italy – In occasion of the 2004 Musik Messe IK Multimedia is proud to officially disclose the information about T-RackS® VS, its unique analog-modeling mastering plug-in for Roland® VS hard-disk recording systems.

T-RackS® VS will be able to run on the new VS8F-3 Roland® expansion board just announced, which will expand the possibility of Roland® VS hard-Disk recording systems by allowing users to load 3rd party plug-ins.

T-RackS® VS will be a suite of 2 plug-ins: DYNAMIC and EQUALIZER both physically modeled after rare vintage hardware devices and offering that typical analog sounds which has made T-rackS® a standard as a mastering software.


The T-RackS® VS DYNAMIC plug-in will offer a mastering tube compressor, a multi-band limiter and soft-clipping output stage, while the DYNAMIC will offer a 6-band stereo analog equalizer with the possibility to process the two stereo channels independently. Both will be able to work with frequencies of 44Khz-48Khz and can be used as a suite of mastering or as independent plug-in for track compression and EQing.

Features

The DYNAMIC plug-in will offer the following controls:

Compressor

• Comp Drive: sets the compressor drive. from - 18 dB to + 18 dB
• Sidechain Filter: sets the cutoff frequency of the high pass filter that the T-RackS® compressor uses to filter the keying signal from 30 Hz to 250 Hz, log scale.
• Attack: sets the average attack time for the compressor from 10 ms to 80 ms.
• Release: sets the average release time for the compressor from 30 ms to 1.4 s.
• Ratio: sets the ratio of the compressor (actually it sets the behavior of the algorithm in a way similar to adjusting "ratio" on a conventional compressor) from 1:1.5 to 1:5.
• Stereo Image: adjusts the width of the stereo image, ranges from -5.0 to +5.0 dB
• Comp Out: sets the "makeup" level for the compressor module from -18 dB to + 18 dB.
• An analog VU-Meter will indicate the amount of gain reduction

Limiter

• Limit Drive: sets the amount of signal that's fed to the Limiter module from -18 dB to + 18 dB- Threshold: sets internal bands limiters thresholds, three knobs, one for each band. Ranges from
• 12 dB to +12 dB.
• Level: sets internal bands limiters output levels, three knobs, one for each band. Ranges from -18 dB to +18 dB.
• Crossover low: adjusts the frequency split points between low and mid bands from 30 Hz to 2 kHz.
• Crossover high: adjusts the frequency split points between mid and high bands from 1 kHz to 20 kHz.
• Release: adjusts the release time for the three bands together from 100 ms to approx 1.8 s.
• Overload: adjusts the processing balance between limiting and clipping from -5 dB to +5 dB.
• An analog VU-Meter will indicate the amount of gain reduction

Soft-clipping stage

• Clipping: Adjust the curve of the soft clipping. Ranges from -12 dB to 0 dB. -12 dB means very soft curve, 0 dB means totally hard clipping.
• Out: it adjust the INPUT of the clipper. Ranges from -15 dB to +15 dB.

In the DYNAMIC the meter will consists of three LED bars. L&R meters show the peak level at the output of the whole processor. The RMS meter shows the L&R channels average loudness.

The EQUALIZER plug-in will offer the following controls:

• High Pass Filter: from OFF to 5 Khz
• Low (F): Low shelving filter frequency from 30 to 800 Hz.
• LowMid (F): Low-mid peaking filter frequency from 30 Hz to 6 KHz.
• HighMid (F): High-mid peaking filter frequency from 200 Hz to 20 KHz
• High (F): High shelving filter frequency dial from 750 Hz to 10 KHz.
• Low Pass Filter: from 200 Hz to OFF.
• EQ Controls, bands gain: same for all 4 bands (Low, LowMid, HighMid, High). From –15.0 to +15.0 dB. Can be toggled to can be toggled between +/- 7.5 dB or +/- 15 dB.
• Push buttons enable / disable the single EQ bands.
• A scope-like display will show the frequency response resulting by the effect of all the bands.

Price and availability

The T-RackS® VS mastering plug-in suite will be available by Q2 and will have a MSRP of $/Euro 299.

About IK Multimedia

IK Multimedia, is a music software company directly operating in four countries, founded in 1996 for the purpose of developing software designed to enable people to listen, play and produce music using revolutionary new digital instruments which are powerful and easy to use .AmpliTube™, T-Racks®, GrooveMaker® and SampleTank® are trademarks property of IK Multimedia Production srl. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.