Lewitt releases Space Replicator Free, a virtual monitoring plugin for macOS and Windows

Developer Lewitt has released Space Replicator Free, a virtual monitoring plugin for macOS and Windows.

Lots of plugins virtually recreate the characteristics of real-life spaces for various reasons, whether it’s something like UAD’s Sound City Studios providing a touch of LA when tracking in your bedroom or a convolution reverb like NoiseRverb bringing you the reverberation profile of historic churches.

We also have plugins that replicate real-world spaces to help us create a more coherent mix in headphones.

Thanks to Lewitt, we can now add Space Replicator Free to that list.

Space Replicator Free provides virtual recreations of Studio A (Lewitt headquarters) and a typical living room with various playback devices, including three phones and two laptops.

Studio A is an ultra-high-end facility with a custom Haigner speaker system.

As impressive as that sounds, and as much as it will help you make decisions in your mix, most people are listening to music on average devices in far-from-perfect surroundings, or with in-ear headphones.

So, the living room profile with phone/laptop playback devices might be the most useful.

It’s so easy for musicians working on their first self-released project to forget about the listening experience from one device to another.

And it’s not just the difference between a space like Studio A and the average smartphone; as bedroom producers, our listening setup is likely already better than the average listener’s.

So we must listen on whatever devices we have available.

Obviously, mixing in headphones (or doing anything in headphones for an extended period) isn’t ideal, and our room probably isn’t either.

Even if you’re not a huge fan of plugins that recreate other spaces, if you’re going to be stuck in headphones anyway, it’s always worth trying anything that enhances the experience and leads to a better mix.

To avoid your headphones colouring the sound profile of your chosen room, Space Replicator Free comes with over 800 headphone profiles, so you’re likely to find yours on the list.

In addition to the two selectable rooms, you can also hear how your mix sounds on the most popular in-ear headphones.

Since people often listen to music on the go, I like the addition of in-ear headphone emulation; it could be extremely useful.

There are paid versions of Space Replicator featuring more spaces, more headphone emulations, and even live spaces: Essential costs £44 and Standard costs £89.

However, I think the free version is a good enough starting point, and even if you never upgrade, you can get plenty of use out of it.