Plug Away Two

So You Want to Use Plug Away Two

Plug Away Two is a signal processing workflow most people run inside their DAW when they need to isolate or strip out unwanted frequencies from a track. It was originally built as a targeted noise reduction pass, and over time the community around it expanded into a broader toolkit for stem cleaning and spectral grooming. If you have a vocal take with low-end rumble, a bass track bleeding into your drum bus, or just a mix that sounds congested around 200–400 Hz, this is the kind of thing you reach for. The core of it is a multiband gating approach combined with spectral subtraction. You set threshold zones per band, route your source through it, and the processor silences or attenuates whatever falls below or above your parameters. Unlike a regular gate, it does not just respond to amplitude — it listens to frequency content. That distinction matters because it means you can target a hum at 60 Hz without touching the fundamental of your kick drum, which is the whole point of using it in the first place. I learned this the hard way early on. I was mixing a live recording where the stage lights were buzzing right into the guitar DI. A standard multiband gate couldn't separate the buzz from the low string notes because they occupied the same frequency range. Plug Away Two let me carve out a narrow band around that buzz frequency and set the thresh hold so only the consistent tonal noise got attenuated. The real guitar notes stayed because their transient energy pushed above the threshold. It took about three passes and some manual automation, but the result was clean enough that I saved a session that otherwise would have needed re-recorded DI.

Setting It Up: The Practical Route

Start by inserting Plug Away Two on the track you want to process, not on the master bus. Place it after any EQ or compression that changes the tonal balance of the source. If you put it too early in the chain, your downstream processors will be reacting to a signal that has already been carved up, and you will end up chasing your tail trying to fix tonal shifts that the plugin caused. Once it is in place, mute everything else so you are hearing only the source. This step is important. Most people skip it and then argue with the plugin because they cannot hear what they are actually processing. Bypass it and listen to the difference. If the change is not audible, you are either being too aggressive or the problem does not exist in that track. That is useful information in itself. Set the low-frequency band first. Dial in your crossover point until the unwanted rumble or hum drops out while the musical content remains intact. Then move to the midrange bands. This is where you handle bleed, room tone, and any resonant frequencies that the rest of the mix hates. Finally, set the high-frequency band if you are dealing with hiss or sibilance. Keep the threshold values conservative at first. Aggressive settings introduce artifacts that sound worse than the original problem.

Common Pitfalls

One thing nobody warns you about: sidechain filtering. If you sidechain Plug Away Two to a different track, the gating response follows that reference track rather than the source material. This is a feature, not a bug, but people use it blindly and wonder why their vocals get chopped up whenever the snare hits. I once spent forty minutes troubleshooting a vocal mix that sounded like it was underwater because someone had routed the sidechain to the entire drum bus instead of just the close mic. The fix was switching the sidechain to a mono input from the vocal track itself and then adjusting the threshold so only the noise floor triggered the gate. Another issue is phase alignment between the bands. When the crossover points are too close together or the filter slopes are mismatched, you get comb filtering. The track sounds thin and hollow, especially on headphones. The workaround is to check the phase coherence meter built into the plugin and adjust the crossover frequencies until the phase difference is minimized. It usually means widening the gap between adjacent bands by at least one octave.

When It Fails Completely

There are situations where Plug Away Two is not the right tool. If the unwanted sound occupies the same frequency range as the content you want to keep, spectral subtraction will eat both. A vocal with breath noise during the same notes as the pitch will suffer from this. In those cases, manual editing or a different approach like spectral repair is faster and more accurate. I have seen people waste two hours trying to make Plug Away Two do something it was never designed for instead of just opening the waveform and gating it by hand. That is a twenty-minute job if you know what you are doing. It also struggles with transients. Drum overheads with cymbal bleed, piano recordings with pedal noise, acoustic guitars with finger squeaks — all of these are better handled with a traditional dynamic processor or a dedicated spectral editor. Plug Away Two was built for sustained or semi-sustained noise problems, not for transient-rich material where timing precision matters more than frequency separation.

Where to Get Plug Away Two

The plugin is available through the main audio software marketplaces and the developer's own site. There are standalone versions and a VST/AU wrapper for DAW use. Make sure you grab the latest build because the spectral subtraction algorithm was revised in version 2.1.4 to reduce the artifacting that used to happen at high threshold settings. The old version is fine for light processing, but if you are doing heavy noise reduction, the updated algorithm is noticeably cleaner. The interface is straightforward but not intuitively laid out for beginners. Spend fifteen minutes reading the manual and watching the developer's walkthrough videos before you start mixing. It will save you at least an hour of trial and error. The manual covers things like dynamic release times, look-ahead buffering, and how to set up multiple instances for different frequency ranges without stacking them unnecessarily.

Real-World Usage Notes

I use Plug Away Two almost exclusively for post-production stem cleanup and for mixing sessions where the source material is less than ideal. Field recordings, live capture, podcast interviews with AC hum — these are the scenarios where it pays off. I do not use it on well-recorded studio material because the artifacts it introduces, even at conservative settings, are audible if you listen closely. A clean recording does not need this treatment. The CPU cost is moderate. A single instance on a stereo track will cost roughly 2–3% on a modern processor. Running four instances across different tracks is where you start to notice latency during recording. If you are tracking through it in real time, bounce a reference first and process offline. That is the safer approach anyway because you get to hear the results more clearly after the fact. One thing I recommend that most tutorials skip: always A/B with the original signal at the same volume level. Our ears are tricked by loudness all the time. A processed track that sounds cleaner at higher volume is not necessarily cleaner — it just sounds louder. Match the levels and listen for the actual artifacts, not the perceived improvement. This habit alone has prevented me from ruining several mixes that would have sounded great on the first pass but terrible after further processing.

There is no one-size-fits-all preset for this tool because every source material is different. The settings that worked for my live recording will be completely wrong for a voiceover track. Start from zero and build your own curve for each source. It takes longer, but the results are consistently better than any preset can be.

Alternatives Worth Considering

If Plug Away Two does not fit your workflow, there are other tools in the same space. iZotope RX has spectral editing that handles many of the same problems with a more visual interface. FabFilter Pro-Q 3 with its dynamic EQ mode can replicate some of what Plug Away Two does for specific frequency ranges. Waves DeEsser and their Noise Gate series handle narrower tasks more efficiently. The choice depends on your budget, your DAW, and whether you prefer a visual or parameter-driven approach. I stick with Plug Away Two because it is fast, it sits well in a DAW chain, and it does one thing really well without pretending to do everything. That is the kind of tool that earns its place on your desktop. Not every mix needs it, but the ones that do will sound better for having it.