I mentioned Sonible’s Smart:EQ 3 in my post about my top 3 plugins for Q3, 2023. I’ve been using it for nearly 2 years now and it has been a helpful addition to my mixing and mastering workflow.
The Problem With EQ Presets
Presets for EQs are an interesting concept and I’ve always thought they were a little silly. If I’m mixing a female vocal and I choose the “female vox 1” preset and think that this will fit this vocal I’m deluded.
The person who made the preset was working with a completely different vocal. That vocal was recorded on a completely different microphone. The vocalist they created the preset might have been singing in a more nasal tone and so they needed to notch some of that out.
Before you set fire to this blog post in the comments. I get that EQ presets can point you in the right direction and are not completely useless BUT I think we can agree there are a lot of variables that they don’t take into account. The very reason EQ exists is to equalise a unique sound source.
Enter AI Equalisers
Imagine you sat down and listened to 100 snare drums recorded and mixed beautifully. Imagine that you were able to remember the basic EQ curve of these snare recordings. Do you think you might have an advantage when it comes to EQing a snare?
If you know the basics of AI, this is what it does well. Takes data points and finds patterns etc. (that is a very basic view but it’ll work for this post).
How I Use AI EQ
The Sonible Smart:EQ 3 is like having an assistant that can listen to that snare or vocal and can give you an EQ curve that will get you in the ballpark.
I find it really helpful when I’m sent files for mixing and I want to “correct” the less than perfect recordings. I can have it “listen” to a bass part and give me a ballpark EQ so I can start to work with a more accurate representation of the sound. You still need to use your ears, you still need to think about other processing and what that will do to the EQ. BUT it’s much smarter than an EQ preset.
There is a lot more to say about this EQ and I’ll do some follow up posts to this one.
The Takeaway: Dig into AI tools, they are really good at doing grunt work. Sometimes they do whacky things. But in the end the 5 minutes it saves you 5 times over a mixing session is 25 minutes extra you can focus on making more creative mixes. Or maybe you’ll get an extra 25 mins to grab a coffee and cinnamon scroll.
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