Recording - April 2021 - 16

-Review by Bill Stunt

Baby Audio
Spaced Out
Down the rabbit hole of time and space
The rapidly growing Baby Audio plugin line delivers
sophisticated audio processing controlled in simple,
intuitive GUIs. Advancing this paradigm is Spaced Out, a
time-based effects plugin that emulates signal processing
chains comingling delay, reverb, modulation, and more.
Available in light or dark skins, there are over fifty different
effects modeled in Spaced Out. Incredibly, everything is
pre-arranged under the hood and presented in three main
sections containing just a handful of controls.

Step right up

Dominating the left side of the display is the Echoes (delay) section. There's a 4x4 grid arranged into a 16-step delay sequencer.
Each box is a delay tap that is synced to the tempo of your DAW.
This delay mode can be set to straight, x2, dotted, or triplets.
Taps are turned on by clicking in a square; a circle indicates
that it's active. A second click engages a filter, indicated by a
smaller circle; filtered delays are less accented.
Delays are further tweaked by a set of controls below the
grid. Intensity controls both the sustain and the feedback of the
delays. Dimension adds stereo effects to the delay. You can
toggle from Off through to Ultra Wide and Motion (auto-pan).
The four-button Texture control adds modulations, filters, saturation, and bit crushing effects. Each Texture has an informative
tag: Clean, Lo-Fi, Hazy, Wonky Tape, etc. (you can tell that
the designers have more than a passing familiarity with funky
analog delay units). Reverse flips the direction of the delays
for a deliciously psychedelic effect. Rounding out the Echoes
controls is a set of high and low pass filters.

Go boldly

Space (reverb) dominates the right side of the interface. There
are four reverb types available. Vacuum is an ambience-type
reverb. Small and Medium Space are self-descriptive, and Outer
Space results in otherworldly reverbs of extended length.
A circular set of X/Y controls lets you set and blend the reverb
length and types along with the amount of various modulation
effects. The modulations: Trippy, Alien, and Lush, are pretty selfdescriptive. Secondary controls include Pre-Delay, Stardust
16 RECORDING April 2021

(a shimmery high-end enhancer), Mellow (high and low pass
filters), and Cleanup, which affects the reverb's density. Finally,
there is a Width control.
In the middle of it all is the mixer section. Again, an X/Y
joystick-type controller gives you control of the wet/dry balance as well as the balance between the Echoes and Space
sections-very clever.
Below this, you have controls for Ducking the effects when
the dry signal is dominant, tempo sync, Lift-Off (invokes midside processing), compression, EQ, and who knows what else
Baby Audio has thrown in there-these work together to literally
lift the sound quality.

Space Cowboy

Like my experience with previous Baby Audio plugins, this
one is a joy and it's dead simple to use. To start, I found that
turning off the reverb and using only the Echoes step sequencer
gave me a quick understanding of what Echoes and its associated controls do. Then you're off to the cosmic rodeo. There
are tons of curated presets that you'll want to explore to get you
conversant. There's even a randomizing feature for when you
need some inspiration.
I've always loved trippy time-based effects. I love them on
languid guitars and lead lines. I love dub-style drums and percussion. I love more controlled yet still dense and complex vocal and keyboard processing. Usually, I need to chain plugins
and construct complex signal paths to generate these kinds of
effects. Spaced Out makes it simple, and it provides results that
are both different and, to my chagrin, often better than I've
obtained using my own effects processing alchemy.
Spaced Out is pure ear candy! You may find yourself, like
me, wandering down rabbit holes of exploration and experimentation. It'll be worth it though-and now you've been
warned, warned, warned, warned, warned, warned, warned,
warned, warned, warned, warned, warned...
Price: $69
More From: babyaud.io

http://www.babyaud.io

Recording - April 2021

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