AI - Will it Replace Real Mixing/Mastering Engineers?
With technology progressing exponentially, AI has taken on many important roles within our industries. Although many experts suggest that AI will only augment human intelligence (see here), is it capable of replacing us mixing & mastering engineers?
Rise of the Online Mastering Services
Instant, quick & cheap mastering services have risen in popularity over recent years. With the ever-growing abundance of bedroom musicians (and tighter budgets), services such as LANDR, eMastered & CloudBounce offer their own unique algorithms to analyse your music and master them to your chosen presets.
Although many seasoned veterans in the industry may scoff at the idea of a computer algorithm mastering good quality music, this comparison video below tests the difference between some of the different platforms. Please give it a watch!
Well… what did you think of the comparisons?
For me, the human mastered mix definitely was punchier and had more depth to the low-end. HOWEVER, are these subtle differences really that worth it for the bedroom musician on a budget? I’m not quite sure myself really - as always it depends ! (rubbish conclusion I know).
The mix used in this comparison video was really well done, so the mastering processes really did not have to do much at all. The SoundCloud service however was very tinny so I would not recommend that… however the others were much closer to the human master track and had their own subtle characteristics.
One very valid point mentioned in the video is that the mastering engineer is a seperate set of very well trained ears, so if your mix is lacking in any department the mastering engineer can have a stern phone call with whoever mixed the track. If the mix sucks, no amount of mastering will save it. Likewise if the arrangement sucks, no amount of mixing will save it ! Whoops, there’s another topic for a future blog post …
So What About Mixing?
Fortunately for our jobs, mixing is a much more involved process which does not only require technical skills, but many creative ones too.
Although I believe that robots won’t be able to usurp our mixing careers any time soon, advancements in AI by Ozone have really opened the gates to who can create a decent mix with their Neutron 3 intelligent audio assistant technology.
This plugin can analyse your instrument tracks and apply appropriate eq, compression, saturation and even balance the volumes between the tracks to create a decent mix (see below).
In this video, Neutron does a good job at analysing resonant and clashing frequencies and created a mix that has good balance and depth. A very good starting point, however I feel like this tool can only be used to augment the mix engineer, rather than replace them.
Without proper monitoring to hear the changes or the knowledge to know what Neutron 3 is doing to your audio, Neutron 3 still will not be able to replace a seasoned caffeinated & depressed mix engineer. I believe that this plugin can be used as a very valuable learning tool for beginners however.
The best mix engineers are always using automation to change the ebb and flow of the music, or to highlight certain areas of the mix (see here for just one example from thousands of educational videos out there), which right now seems a bit too complicated for AI to handle.
On the other hand technology is progressing so quickly, maybe this will come about fast enough for me to regret the last paragraph! Please let me know what you think down below!
Thanks for having a read, see you on the next post :)
