Neyrinck Spill – Surround Mixing Plug-In for Pro Tools Neyrinck

Spill makes it fast and easy to adjust channel levels on surround audio and bus tracks, just like the “spill” feature found on high-end digital film consoles. Spill plug-in is the one essential high-end film console feature everyone working in surround will want to get their hands on. It is available as an AAX Native, DSP and AudioSuite plug-in for Pro Tools. Spill AAX plug-in also includes the V-Control Pro Bundle with V-Console, V-Panner and V-PlugIn apps.

Get Control of Your Pro Tools Surround Tracks with Spill
The Spill AAX plug-in can be inserted on any multi-channel Pro Tools track, aux or master, from stereo to 7.1 format. Finally there is now a way to control the individual channels in a multi-channel track that are spilled onto the plug-in’s faders. Channel levels can then be adjusted – for 7.1 the plug-in has 8 faders, meters and gain values.

Spill can be controlled from Neyrinck’s V-PlugIn app for iPhones and iPads as part of the V-Control Pro System. Avid’s EUCON controllers, such as Pro Tools S6, Pro Tools S3 and Pro Tools Dock, can also control spill adding this valuable feature to these control surfaces.

Group Channels for Fast and Accurate Adjustments
Channels in the Spill plug-in can be grouped together for fast and easy control, very useful for pairing L/R or the surround channels. Simply click the channel designation above the fader to add or remove that channel from the group.

The grouping is relative, with the relative levels of the faders locked when they are added to the group. This makes it easy to set an offset and then group multiple faders together. Moving any fader in the group adjusts the levels of all faders in the group. Hold down Command key on Mac, or Alt on a PC, for fine fader adjustment mode for precise control.

Perfect for Final Mix, Pre-dubs and Sound Design
Re-recording mixer and sound supervisor, Tom Marks, persuaded Paul Neyrinck of the importance of designing the plug-in, “Spill is applicable to both re-recording and editorial but is mainly geared towards final mixing, that’s where this plugin is huge”
“In very busy sound effects sequences, you can quickly adjust a specific channel(s) of a pre-dub such as L and R. This clears space for music or to get the sound effects to poke through. Bring up the surrounds or lower the center channel when given multi-channel stems for the score.”

Controlling the Surround Channels
Tom Marks also likes Spill for its ability to control surround channels, “There are also applications on a global level. For example, if you start a mix in a smaller room and move to a large dub stage, you may need to make global adjustments on the surround or LFE levels. Also when doing near-field home video versions, you’ll have to make adjustments to your stems which Spill is perfect for.”

The AudioSuite version is very useful for editorial where individual clip surround channels may need adjustment throughout the clip. For larger sessions and final mix, the AAX DSP version is perfect for reducing latency and providing powerful control of all groups.

Control Spill from Avid S6 and S3
Although the S6 control surface can spill out VCA groups it cannot spill and control individual channels of a multi-channel track or bus.
The Spill plug-in now allows engineers to access this feature from the S6, either from the channelstrip knobs or across 8 channelstrips with Expand Mode. The ‘Sel’ button allows channels to be added or removed from the group. The first knob ‘In’ button acts as bypass.
The S3 can also control Spill from the knobs. Plus you can flip the knobs to the faders making it even easier to control your spilled channels.

Control Spill from iPads and iPhones with V-PlugIn
Spill is the first plug-in to support the powerful new V-PlugIn App for super-fast access to tracks and their plug-ins from iPads and iPhones. V-PlugIn app is part of the V-Control Pro Bundle and is included with the Spill plug-in. The V-PlugIn App shows a list of tracks using Spill so a user can just tap the track name and have instant access to channel levels without needing to open a plug-in window on the computer. Channels can be grouped/un-grouped simply by touching the channel designation above the faders.