But version 3 was a major release, and from there on the history is much easier to track. It was not until I got to version 3, introduced in late 2008, before I managed to pick up the trail once again. Using google, I could not find a single reference to it anywhere on the web. If there was a version 2 of T-Tracks, its introduction must have been very subdued. It only operated in an autonomous, stand-alone mode. Its purpose was mastering only, and it had only three processors: an EQ, a tube compressor and a limiter, plus it offered a rudimentary metering capability. Naturally, it was quite primitive by today’s standards. Let’s start by taking a brief look back to see how we got here.

As such, we’ll primarily be looking at T-Racks 5 as a mastering tool, which was its initial raison d’être. I will spend a little time discussing four new plug-ins that are part of the release, but we’ll mostly be concerned with the framework.

However, I am going to focus here on mainly the framework aspect of T-Racks 5. T-Racks 5 has components of use in all phases of the music production process, and most of these components are plug-in modules that can be individually used inside all major DAWs in both the PC and Mac worlds. This article looks at T-Racks 5, a recently-released new incarnation of one of the flagship product collections from IK Multimedia (hereafter IKM).

How did they do? The results are … ahem … sweet! They’ve upped their game once again with version 5.

T-Racks is IK Multimedia’s signature mixing/mastering suite.

Tracks 5