Zplane development has announced the release of Peel, a spectral isolator equalizer plugin that lets producers solo, mute or process single instruments or vocal performances in their audio recordings.

Peel was inspired by the Focus EQ in zplane’s music learning software deCoda, a software tool that lets musicians learn new songs in no time. The Focus EQ helps musicians isolate the parts that they want to learn.

“deCoda users really liked the Focus EQ and we started thinking we could develop it further for music production too”, says Tim Flohrer, CTO and co-owner at zplane. “The ability to solo, mute and process instruments and vocals from existing audio recordings opens up for countless creative possibilities and we can’t wait to see what music producers will do with it.”

Aside from isolating or muting sounds, Peel also has secondary outputs where the sound that’s been taken out of the mix is routed. This means producers can mute a vocal performance in a recording and route it to an audio track in their DAW for further processing: level, pan and effects without affecting the rest of the audio recording. Another example: isolate the snare from a drum loop and add reverb to the snare only.

Peel is also useful as a mix visualizer. Its spatial-frequency display will give a visual indication of many common problem areas in a mix.

Peel features

  • Spectral processing audio plugin.
  • Visually identify single instruments in a mix.
  • Mute problematic instruments.
  • Solo performances you wish to emphasize.
  • Route selected audio to external processing.
  • See your entire mix visually as a way to help identify mix problems.

Peel is available in VST/VST3, AU and AAX plugin formats, priced 39 EUR at Plugin Boutique.

More information: Zplane