Baby Audio has been on a tear this year, first with Comeback Kid, then Parallel Aggressor. Today, they’ve released their most ambitious plugin yet with Spaced Out. This delay and reverb plugin combines modulation FX into a chain that would rival Travis Scott’s entire FX Chain, all in one window.
Getting Spacey
Like every other Baby Audio plugin, Spaced Out isn’t a one-for-one digital replica of a particular piece of vintage hardware, but it retains the best parts of gear they like. The folks at Baby Audio set out to make their ideal version of the infamous Space Echo. Of course, just a delay plugin wasn’t enough and somehow, over 50 effects ended up in the mix. The result is a boundless playground of modulated delays and chaotic reverbs.
Interface
With a plugin pushing over 50 effects, you’d expect the interface to be a complete disaster of sub-menus, dropdowns, and a manual that would give Microsoft’s Terms of Service a run for its money. Don’t worry, Spaced Out knows you don’t have time to take a college course on a plugin so they’ve integrated all controls into three main sections of the interface. Everything is right where you need it, with most controls combined into logical combinations.
What We Liked
Taking loads of effects and stuffing them into one window could have easily gone wrong and sounded very wrong, but Baby Audio has found the blueprint. Once you learn the interface, you can create effect combinations that would take massive chains of plugins and busses, saving you time, countless faders, and plugin windows.
Sonically, Spaced Out is spectacular. You’d think this much reverb and delay on a track would completely wash the source audio out, but Baby Audio has performed a lot of behind-the-scenes trickery to keep the effects perfectly seated in the track. The echoes engine fills a huge void missing in the delay plugin space. They’ve accomplished what usually would take a delay plugin and a lot of automation. There is a layer of magic that combining delay and reverb in one plugin can only accomplish and Spaced Out has it in spades.
What We'd Like to See
While there isn’t anything sonically wrong at all with Spaced Out, I feel there are a few little functional additions I’d like to see. I don’t like that you have to click and drag the dot in the reverb matrix and mixer X/Y. I’d like to be able to click a random area in the circle and the dot move there. I’d also like a way to easily automate the position of the reverb matrix and the mixer X/Y. You could create some even crazier FX if you could randomly change the blend of each element. I’d even take a button that randomly moved the controls around on its own.
In Conclusion
Spaced Out is easily my favourite plugin of 2020. I don’t have much else to say because I want to get back to see how this can bring new life into tracks. Bye!
Original Source: Everythingrecording
