I decided on a whim, let’s key up smart:comp with the bussed out kick and snare, and see where it goes.This is a continuation post to this discussion. I was expecting to make sacrifices, to load up the tedium of automation curves on the gain, manipulate clippers for maximum loudness – you get the gist of it. I placed this on a client mix for an intensely heavy drum and bass song, the bass and drums encompassing almost the entire frequency spectrum. Rightfully so even, I usually think of this sort of processing as a bit of a smoke and mirrors situation, but I was so very wrong with this. If I told you offhand that I have a compressor that not only ducks the kick and snare on a distorted Reese, but does it cleanly with zero pumping, zero distortion, and remains clear as a bell in a mix, you’d probably call me a liar. These work just fine, but I’m leaning towards smart:comp more, especially for bass processing. I’m used to EQing these away, but also in times of laziness I rely on tools like Trackspacer and Soothe to also clear the path. This really opened the whole thing up even wider for me, with the ability to tilt the signal, make it darker, more distorted, or ultimately duck away clashing frequencies on very dense elements in a mix. After engaging the learn parameter, smart:comp opens up spectral controls and allows you to blend these in over the traditional compression. I have been proven very wrong here, however. I usually give a little side-eye to heavy reliance on spectral manipulation with some of these smart tools. Controls for attack and release modifiers here aren’t quite as robust overall, but they’re present and provide even more flexibility. My favorite part overall is being able to adjust the parameters for the attack and release, which remind me heavily of my favorite compressor of recent memory, Tone Project’s Unisum. General parameters are uniform, if you’re familiar with something like Pro-C, using smart:comp is like meeting an old friend. I have had this on heavily slammed mixes, namely while working with some harder drum and bass material, and it handles this duty ably. The key difference here is that there have been painstaking efforts to keep the signal clean and clear. Now, on the mix bus, I’ve found I only really have to adjust the attack a hair, but it does a fine job of suggesting some gentle leveling that remains transparent.īehind analog warmth, I often see the words transparent tossed around for compressors and equalizers not meant to be emulating a certain archetype or specific piece of equipment, and Sonible’s marketing in this realm is no different. After a short snippet of audio is processed, smart:comp automatically sets it to where it thinks it would best. There are some additional features, however, that make this a bit of a killer app.Īt the upper most quadrant of the UI there is a large green button and a dropdown menu, selecting any of the many profiles from the drop-down menu sort of tempers what the AI is expecting of the audio, with the green button engaging the smart processing. There are controls for the knee, threshold, attack, release, and ratio, as you would expect from any software compressor – in 2022 at least. The thing that immediately sticks out about the UI is that everything is right there on a single page for you to see.
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