Muteomatic is a free utility plug-in from Sound Radix which is designed to automate the opening and closing of a talkback mic by tying it to the playback status of your DAW. It’s so simple that you might never have looked closely at it. Here’s a breakdown of everything it does;
Muteomatic - Default
Here’s the default state of Muteomatic. It’s an automatic mute switch which is open when your DAW is stopped (Fig 1) but if you hit play or record it will mute the channel it is on (Fig 2). Put this on your talkback and you’ll be able to talk to your artist between takes but will be muted during record or playback - Easy!
That is as far as most people take it. Because of this the rest of the plugin might remain unexplored.
What Else Is There To Muteomatic?
I’m not going to raise your expectations too much, it is after all a mute switch but it’s instructive to look at least a little closer. The first thing to be aware of is that the big circle isn’t just a status indicator, it’s a button.
Non-Latching Momentary Mute Switch
Whatever the current state of Muteomatic, it can be temporarily reversed by clicking on it. This is non-latching, unlike the mute switch in your DAW.
This is very like the operation of the talkback button on a monitor controller. This would be a great feature to assign to a hardware button. It deson’t seem to be mappable via MIDI but a very flexible solution would be to use Soundflow to map this control to an unused keyboard shortcut or even to a MIDI controller. I can imagine using a drum pad for talkback. Press to talk, release to mute.
Stop, Play And Record
The three buttons control the operation of Muteomatic. The right hand one will be greyed out if you are working in a DAW which doesn’t report record status.
Record Mode
In Figs 3&4 you can see how this works. The nice thing about this mode and the way in which it differs from playback mode in Figs 1&2 is that while talkback is muted during record, it remains open during playback, allowing discussion between engineer and artist when reviewing takes.
Record mode is only available in the VST version of Muteomatic. UPDATE - Record mode has been added to the AAX version in the 1.0.4 update in 2023.
Stop Mode
The leftmost button reverses the behaviour of Muteomatic. With transport stopped (Fig 5) the channel is muted, when recording or in playback the channel is open. This is useful for effects returns, particularly reverbs and delays which can get in the way of clear communication. This is something which I’d love to see working by default on live mixers. I’m sure I’m not alone in getting very irritated when effects are left on between songs at gigs. Of course there isn’t a transport to control the mute in that case but…
Remote Workflows And Muteomatic
In his article Want To Record Artists Remotely? Read This Free Article Now Tim Bran outlined an interesting use of Muteomatic in remote workflows controlling remote talkback using Audiomovers ListenTo, Teamviewer and Skype. Its an innovative use of freely available tech so check it out if you would benefit from a practical , tested remote workflow.