I have this great (and expensive) hobby of composing electronic, ambient, new age music and I use only virtual instruments. I own a lot of instruments and I am a sound dependent. When I try a demo instrument and find out a few good sounds I buy that instrument. I do not create my own sounds. I like when I am impressed by the sound because that way it gives me the inspiration. I could say the same for the mixing and mastering. Probably I am not the first user who would like to find an “Automatic Mixplug 5”, a plugin that could analyse a group of audio tracks and effect the mixing alone by itself. I am not an expert in mixing and I am never satisfied with the EQing and compression that I obtain by myself.
I understand the difficulty in realization of an automatic plugin but maybe the technology already exists. There are software developers that produced automatic EQs that analyse an audio track and apply the EQ upon a comparison to a target audio track. It would be possible to have a huge library of targets in order to find a match with the source and effect an automatic EQ and compression. Ok, I know that the same audio track can be EQed and compressed in different ways that depend of the rest of the tracks in the mix. But such plug in could offer few options to choose from: rock mix, ambient mix, pop mix etc… We already have something like this with the presets but I think of something more automatic. I would like to apply a plug in to a track and say “analyse”, “find something similar in your library” and “propose the available EQs and compressions”. These available EQs and compressions are supposed to be chosen form existing huge archives made by professional sound engineers. So what is left to do ? Only to adjust the levels and pans. Ah yes, the mastering. Don’t we have an automatic mastering plugin yet?