The year is 2029. You’ve finished your song. The arrangement is just right. You balance your levels. Now it’s time to turn it over to the AI mixing bot. You press analyse. In 2 minutes (you don’t have the fastest studio computer still) the AI mix bot has EQ’d, compressed and added some spatial effects to your mix and it sounds … good, I guess.
Rise Of The AI Mixing Plugins
Intelligent or AI mixing plugins are proliferating the market in 2024. It’s a trend, and like ChatGPT or Bard, results may vary.
If you’ve ever used an AI chat bot and really examined it’s responses, it seems incredible at first glance but then sometimes it starts sounding a bit kooky and weird or worse, vanilla and without personality.
However, if you use it as it was intended and you learn how to utilise it for your workflow, it can be a powerful tool that takes some of the tediousness out of tasks. It can also be an interesting way to get some new inspiration.
AI audio plugins are no different and some are better than others. I haven’t used all of them but there are some that are made extremely well and I utilise them in my workflow regularly.
Sonible EQ4
When I’m mixing and mastering songs I’m working with a wide variety of recorded material from people with varying degrees of ability. This means that the sounds they’ve recorded aren’t always great and need some help.
Enter Sonible EQ4. The handy thing about this plugin is that you can give it a ballpark, you want to be in. I often use this on bass guitar as it gets me where I need to be very quickly. Select the “bass” spectral response, analyse and it will create a suitable EQ curve for a solo bass instrument (taking into account how this should fit into the mix, all things being equal).
Is this the only EQ processing I use, definitely not. Does it get it right every time, nope. You still need to know what is right and what will work in the context of the mix.
What Sonible EQ4 is doing for me is setting up an average bass sound that I can then further process. I’m using it to smooth out the idiosyncrasies and get me in the ballpark before I start to mix.
Sonible EQ has many other super handy AI and non-AI features but you still need to know how EQ works and what works within the context of a mix.
Sonible Smart Limiter
There has been a definite trend in AI mastering in the last 5 years. I’ve tried it myself and whilst the results were acceptable (if the mix was solid), I found it lacked the finesse you want when it comes to something like mastering.
I think there is a place for services like LANDR and Plugin Alliance’s automated mastering services but my personal preference is to have human ears make the decisions.
Despite this, I have found a place for AI in my mastering chain in the form of Sonible’s Smart Limiter. How am I using it.
I still have a mastering chain prior to smart limiter where I’m making conscious decisions about the tonal balance and compression characteristic of the master, I’ll even use multiband limiting or clipping prior to Smart Limiter.
Once the master is ready for the final limiter, this is where AI comes into play. I’ll choose an appropriate genre and let it analyse the loudest section of the song which also has a wide frequency spectrum and let it do its thing.
The only parameter I change (usually) is the gain to bring it up to a suitable loudness BUT I’m also very aware of the feedback I’m getting from the plugin as well as what I’m hearing. I will often tweak master chain plugins or go back to the mix for some judicious limiting if I need to.
I see this as a “second opinion” of sorts based on an averaging of masters in specific genres. There is still thinking going on. There are still creative decisions and Smart Limiter has its place in the process. If I don’t like what it’s done, I’ll tweak things.
The Takeaway: Being wary of new tech and avoiding it can be just as flawed as wholeheartedly embracing it without consideration. AI audio plugins are tools just like any other audio tool. Let’s face it, they’re probably more intuitive than a preset on a standard audio plugin so you’re going to be ahead in that regard.
The bottom line, you still need to know what works and what doesn’t and if you’re not sure that’s not something a plugin can fix. The issue is your skill. This is always going to be the case BUT this is something you can improve.
If you’ve got any other AI mixing plugins you think I should check out please leave a comment as I’m keen to explore the subject more in future posts.
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