Using Sonible's Smart EQ 3 to Improve Your Mixes

Tutorial | May 05, 2021

In this video, I showed what the new Smart EQ 3 plug-in from Sonible from Austria can do. I tested it out on my own track called Craft and went through how to use it for drums, bass, and the master. I showed how to apply different profiles and manual EQ, as well as how to use the grouping feature to make sure the tracks work well together. I also mentioned that Smart EQ 3 is aware of the context EQing and prioritizes certain things over others. Lastly, I suggested that users try out the trial version to get a feel for the plug-in, and if they like it, to purchase it.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon

Questions & Answers #

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is the difference between Smart EQ version 2 and 3? #

The main difference between Smart EQ version 2 and 3 is the ability to use profiles. It is now possible to dial in different profiles such as drums, bass, lead, etc. to get the sound you want. Additionally, version 3 offers dynamic parameter changes, manual EQ settings, and the ability to save your own custom profiles.

What are the benefits of using the grouping function in Smart EQ 3? #

The grouping function in Smart EQ 3 allows you to group different tracks together and apply the same EQ settings to them. This is useful for creating a cohesive sound across multiple tracks and ensuring that all tracks are working together in harmony. Additionally, the grouping function allows you to control the impact of the cross channel processing, which is useful for creating separation between different instruments.

What kind of EQ settings can Smart EQ 3 create? #

Smart EQ 3 can create a range of EQ settings, including dynamic parameter changes, manual EQ settings, and custom profiles. Additionally, it can create a curve that can be adjusted to fit the frequency content of the track.

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00.000] So Sonible from Austria just released their new plug-in version for smart EQ. It's now a smart EQ version 3
[00:07.380] And we have a lot of new features and it gave me a license over the weekend to test out the new features
[00:13.240] And I want to give you in this video a short little rundown
[00:17.040] What it's all about how it works and how you can maybe apply it to your own tracks. So stay tuned
[00:23.160] So this is my tune on my project called craft
[00:26.600] Yeah, I just released this recently on my channel. I can watch it if you actually click to my profile and
[00:32.720] And watch it and I want to use this project to show you
[00:37.360] Maybe some things in the smart EQ. So let's listen to the tune first how it sounds without all the smart EQ's applied
[01:07.440] So okay, maybe we start your with the drums and maybe apply your some smart EQ to the drums smart EQ 3. That's what we need
[01:16.640] And the first step is as always analyzing the signal. So
[01:22.720] Let's hit record here and it waits for input. So if there's no content on the track or on the channel
[01:29.240] It doesn't analyze. So it waits for input. So this is now the curve here for the drums and we can dial in your the strength of this
[01:57.440] Curve with this small little thing here, or maybe just drag this here, but I prefer to actually drag this
[02:07.280] You can also narrow down here the frequency range of the filter
[02:11.840] So if you just want to apply this profile to a certain range, you can do that or just dial in here maybe 60. Okay
[02:20.600] So this sounds nice, but at the moment, I'm using here a universal
[02:43.160] Universal profile, but you can dial in here maybe factorial profiles
[02:47.560] So this looks a bit different now, so let's do that maybe start your with strength zero
[03:17.560] So it sounds a bit more cleared up. It's you know, removed your sum of the
[03:32.920] Multi frequencies. It's okay, I think you can also dial in your dynamic parameter, which changes then the profile over time
[03:41.160] Because your side in the beginning that the analyzing part is or the analyzing phase is not that long
[03:47.800] So when you have a lot of things changing over time, it's maybe better to dial in the dynamic parameter a bit and this looks like this
[04:18.680] Yeah, it's a bit better
[04:21.160] But you have to be aware this dysfunction draws a bit of CPU power as you can see at the top when it does in
[04:30.200] It does something here to the CPU load so be aware of that
[04:34.840] So if you have a lot of these smart cues on different channels
[04:39.800] You can easily kill your CPU
[04:43.720] So be aware of that
[04:45.720] Um, I think it's better now with this version. I used the beta version over the weekend and it was not so good
[04:52.440] But this uh, this is yet a one point over version. It's it's much better now
[04:58.520] I think it will be better in the future too
[05:01.720] But you have maybe tried out the demo version or the tri-version and try it out for yourself on your CPU
[05:07.800] So what else can we do now? We have analyzed the signal we are using here at different profile. We are using drums, which is nice
[05:22.200] And then we have applied here um this filter curve to our material we dialed in your dynamic parameters
[05:29.960] So it changes over time or adapt to the frequency content
[05:34.280] And we can also dial in here a manual EQ by just double clicking which create bands
[05:43.560] And yeah, you can dial in your own things here your own taste basically
[05:49.880] And if you like how it sounds you can then go over here and save your own profiles like this
[05:58.280] I need to say maybe um
[06:00.280] Um, five drums for instance
[06:05.000] And then it asks you if you want to apply this new profile to your um
[06:10.440] Yeah, do your drums or to your content and say yes and then the manual EQ is removed and it's completely
[06:17.320] um converged with uh
[06:20.040] Or combined with the profile into your manual EQ
[06:24.120] So it's it's one thing basically and you have a new profile and you can use it on whatever you want
[06:29.400] um
[06:31.880] So yeah, that's that for the switch back here to um drums
[06:38.040] And
[06:39.720] That's that in dynamic. Okay, this is fine. So now maybe switch over to bass here
[06:45.240] So we have also bass line
[06:50.120] It's just a big fat re-space with a low pass on it. So maybe um
[06:54.520] I'm going for a smart EQ 3 and let's see what it does
[06:59.880] To this material maybe switch it to
[07:02.920] profile space
[07:05.240] There this and analyze the signal
[07:15.320] And there we have it we have too much bass as you can see here
[07:18.840] He wants to remove nearly all the bass, but it's fine
[07:21.720] Maybe dial in dynamic and see what it does
[07:40.120] Okay, um
[07:42.120] So now maybe let's look at the join or at the grouping function here
[07:46.200] We can join now a group here at the top left. So let's click that and maybe call it um
[07:53.880] crafty
[07:55.320] um
[07:56.520] Hit return and now we have these three
[08:00.840] Areas here and our bass in the middle area L2
[08:06.280] And maybe we add your our drums to it and we can do this from this
[08:11.640] Of this instance here. So we have now the drums and the bass
[08:17.080] drums is in L1 and bass is in L2, but I want to
[08:20.760] Actually track the drums here because L1 and L2 have
[08:25.640] Meaning it's basically the layer and you can see a layer one lead smart EQ 3 will try to keep tracks in this layer in the limelight
[08:34.200] So it tries to put it up front. It's maybe something for your lead sounds for your lead um
[08:39.560] uh
[08:41.880] Lead tracks or maybe vocals or something you want to have up front, right and L2 here is
[08:49.000] uh support tracks in this layer will plant well with the other tracks and may take the lead when there are no spectral
[08:55.160] collages with tracks in layer one
[08:58.120] so um
[08:59.480] If you have maybe a vocal or pop track then you put
[09:02.840] probably the vocals up in here
[09:04.840] and uh drums and bass and the rest in here and maybe some effects in L3 because L3 is
[09:12.200] background
[09:13.320] everything in the background some
[09:15.560] noises here on their sweeps maybe something like this and um
[09:20.120] um smart EQ 3 knows exactly what to do with these um
[09:23.560] um instances so maybe listen to these two tunes now to get our how this sounds
[09:37.400] um maybe bypass
[10:07.400] um
[10:18.520] So the um the signal or these two signals sound much better together and you can see i have here
[10:24.440] a crew impact knob or uh slider or control where you can control the impact level of the cross
[10:33.240] channel processing so it influences basically how much a smart EQ 3
[10:39.240] uh uses the information from one channel and the other channel and tries to come up with the
[10:46.200] you know separation of frequencies for both but what what kind of separation would be best i guess
[10:53.080] um and you can dial this in pretty easily here also bypass all so you can
[10:57.800] um completely remove all two um instances at the same time and see and look
[11:04.680] how it sounds without and um this is pretty nice actually
[11:17.880] oh yeah you can also turn off your to cross um channel processing so um when you turn this off
[11:24.920] basically every channel uh smart EQ accuse individually without looking to the other channels
[11:33.560] so this is also nice and also analyze here
[11:45.480] okay nice so um also on the top you can see we have this group graph t l1 uh is mtl2 we have to
[12:01.720] base and the drums now and maybe switch all what to the music channel here
[12:31.720] um
[12:33.720] So, this is without all the Smart EQ 3.
[13:03.520] Instances here.
[13:28.120] And we feel small of external just some noise.
[13:31.520] I don't think we need to apply some smart settings.
[13:37.120] Maybe we'll put a smart EQ at the master again, let's see how this works.
[14:07.120] And I don't join the group here with the master because I think it's not really
[14:26.440] twice to put the master in the same group as your tracks below the master because then
[14:34.600] I think you have like, you know, EQing twice in some cases and also maybe at the drum
[14:45.240] base or drums group tries to cut out some frequencies from the master and then on the master
[14:54.120] you have to EQ at the same time.
[14:55.600] So I don't think it makes sense to join the group here with the master EQ.
[15:00.960] So I leave the Smart EQ 3 on the master or separate and just use the grouping function
[15:06.800] for all the tracks or the buses below the master.
[15:11.360] So this makes the most sense for me.
[15:34.680] So I think it sounds nice with all the plugin instances on the tracks itself.
[15:41.440] So I would say Smart EQ 3 does a nice job with the EQing.
[15:46.160] I think it's a nice step up from version 2 to having an EQ being aware of the context
[15:55.560] EQing stuff.
[15:56.560] So it knows what's going on in the bass, it knows what's going on on the FX channel
[16:01.920] and it knows how to react and prioritize certain things over others.
[16:07.120] So I think it's a nice feature to have in an EQ.
[16:12.080] What I miss though is something like gain compensation where when you apply EQ settings or dynamic
[16:20.760] settings it changes the level and maybe a gain compensation auto gain compensation would
[16:29.000] be nice.
[16:30.480] Much, much better would be some kind of auto gain where you set in maybe a reference value
[16:38.680] maybe minus 12 loves and then the EQ tries to bring up the volume or EQs in that way
[16:44.240] that we have exactly this volume at the end.
[16:48.560] This would be nice.
[16:50.240] Also in my mastering process I use pink noise as a reference curve a lot and I think it
[16:56.920] would be nice to have some kind of reference analyzer inside Smart EQ to see where we are
[17:03.920] in relation to the pink noise curve or maybe the 4.5 dB per octave curve or maybe even
[17:13.920] have a slider where we can change the weighting of the applied EQ in relation to pink noise.
[17:21.880] This would be pretty beneficial I think for the Smart EQ.
[17:25.920] Okay, yeah that's it for me I think for this video I want to just give you a small little
[17:32.640] show or preview of what you can do with the Smart EQ, how it looks, how it works and how
[17:37.360] it sounds and I think you should maybe try it out for yourself there's actually a tri-version
[17:44.160] on the website, the links in the description below of course.
[17:47.920] And you can try it out for yourself and maybe give them feedback or maybe if you like it
[17:52.760] just buy it.
[17:56.200] So yeah that's it for this video, thanks for watching, leave some questions in the
[18:00.240] comments below, subscribe to the channel, leave a thumbs up if you liked the video and
[18:04.800] I'll see you in the next one, see you and bye.