IAR has begun a new series of seminars for its students by partnering with IK Multimedia, a leading music production software company. IK has an extensive catalog of innovative products amateur and professional musicians and producers use to create their art. On Thursday, March 26th, IK presented students and guests with their mastering software package, T-RackS. The powerful tool allows users to now master their own music without having to spend money and time on mastering houses. Northeast Manager, Tony Grund, showed off the features of the product and said, “Mastering houses are great if you want to send your final product and are ready to press a lot of CDs. But for single tracks or demos, that’s not effective and that’s where T-RackS comes in. It’s quick and affordable.” Tony showed students the full range of mastering techniques through T-RackS internal processors including Fairchild, Pultec EQ, Compressor, Phase EQ, and the Brickwall limiter. Tony showed how the processors could be aligned to create different sounds and related that Metallica’s new album, Death Magnetic, which has been criticized as being ‘too loud’ is a result of cranking up brickwall limiting in the mastering process.

Students were shown how to use T-RackS to compare their tracks to commercial tracks to emulate sounds or compare the mastered versions to the un-mastered and Tony remarked, “Have you ever recorded a track in Pro Tools, bounced it down and then played it for your friend in the stereo and it’s softer then everything else? That’s because it has not been mastered.” At the end of the seminar students were given demo copies of T-Racks and offered additional discounts on the full version. For those who were not at the seminar, anyone can download a free 10-day trial version from IK’s website, T-Racks.