There are tons of audio plugins on the market that emulate vintage hardware. A few companies buck that trend by taking a modern approach – vintage in sound when called for, but with modern processing approaches and interface design. Austria’s sonible is a front runner in this space, offering innovative design coupled with what they call Sonic Intelligence. In short that’s their approach to artificial intelligence in audio plugins.
The latest in sonible’s ‘smart:’ product line is smart:chain, which is a combination of effects integrated into a single plugin. However, it goes far beyond traditional console channel strip plugins, such as the classic SSL 4K emulations. When you apply multiple instances of smart:chain to individual tracks, each of those tracks appear inside all of the smart:chain interfaces. Open a single instance of smart:chain and you can access and control the settings for any other smart:chain insert. Using smart:chain broadly across your entire mix almost makes it like a DAW within your DAW by providing central session control.
Start by analyzing the track. This enables smart:chain to automatically create its best match for the settings to apply to that track. You can give it a head start by selecting the closest option for track type, such as Drums-Kick or Guitar-Electric. Otherwise, leave in on Universal and let the plugin’s analysis make the best fit. Play the track and hit the big green button. Let it run until the analysis is complete. Do this for each and every track to which you’ve applied smart:chain. This provides a starting point for the mix. Once the yellow exclamation mark icon next to the track name disappears, learning has been completed.
Seven processing modules in a single chain
As a combo plugin, smart:chain features seven basic processes that flow in this order: Gate, Equalizer, De-Esser/De-Harsher, Input Rider, Compressor, Saturator, and Clipper. If you look at the center of the interface, the flow of these modules is left-to-right across the top and then left-to-right again across the bottom set. When you run the analysis pass, each function is automatically optimized for that track. You can enable/disable any individual process, as well as manually tweak the settings. However, you cannot change the processing order like some other channel strip plugins. Depending on the module, there are additional speed and style settings, like aggressive, smooth, fast, slow, etc. The De-Harsher control is selected for any instrument type, but then automatically switches to the De-Esser mode for vocal tracks.
Most of these effects are pretty straightforward and operate like other individual sonible plugins. So, the equalizer section works like smart:EQ 4 and the compressor like smart:comp 3 – each with a similar set of controls. The equalizer might require some more explanation, as it’s different from other digital EQs. In fact, if you’ve used the Logic Pro Mastering Assistant, the type of EQ curve derived there will look similar to the one in smart:chain.
After analysis, the result is an EQ curve with a number of small boosts and dips throughout. The intent is to improve the clarity of the track, rather than broadly boost or attenuate bass, midrange, or treble. You can globally increase or the decrease the intensity of those volume changes by pulling the blue line up or down. There’s also a warm-to-bright slider on the left, which creates a tilt-shift change in the angle of the EQ curve. Finally, double-click into the EQ graph to add manual points, in order to modify the affected section of the curve.
Group control
If that were all, then smart:chain would simply be another plugin with a collection of integrated effects. That would make it similar to a plugin like iZotope’s Ozone. But smart:chain is much more than that, because it includes a group function – what sonible dubs ‘connected mixing’.
As I stated above, any tracks with a smart:chain insert appear in the interface along the left side. You can click the ‘manage groups’ button to switch to the groups page. Here you create groups and drag the individual tracks into them, such as all vocals or all guitars. However, the number of tracks per group is limited. Modern rock recordings often feature more drum tracks than will fit into a single group, so you might have to create and organize Drums 1, Drums 2, etc. Same for any other set of instruments with a large number of tracks.
Back in the main interface, the new groups appear as named tabs above the equalizer section. Scroll left or right to see and access any of these tabs. You’ll also find a new sidebar on the left with Front, Middle, and Back sections. This is what sonible calls ‘intelligent depth staging’. Moving a track within the group from one section to the other changes the intensity of the EQ curve, with Front being the most accentuated. According to sonible, spreading your tracks across these three sections impacts the dimensionality of the sound by establishing separation, clarity, and a sense of depth across the mix. For instance, lead vocals would be in the Front section, but background singers would move to the Middle or even Back section.
Auto Leveling to balance the total mix
Finally, there is an Auto Leveling control. Turn it on and pick the genre – Pop, Blues, Rock, Rap, and more. According to the user guide, “Auto Leveling analyzes relationships between learned smart:chain instances and creates a genre-aware rough balance across the project. It is designed to eliminate repetitive gain staging at the start of a mix, not to replace the final balance decisions of the engineer.”
When Auto Leveling is engaged, volume control sliders appear below the Auto Leveling control and on each of the group tabs. Groups are not track stacks, instrument stems, or sub groups in the same way as your DAW would create. However, by adjusting mix sliders for each group along with the overall, these do function much the same as VCA groups in some DAWs. However, you cannot apply any further processing within smart:chain to any of the groups. In other words, you can’t add EQ or compression to the group as a whole unit within smart:chain. If your tracks have been routed into stems of similar instruments and onward into a mix bus, then there’s no reason you can’t add other plugin effects in addition to smart:chain. At a minimum, you would probably still insert reverb effects and mix bus compression/limiting.
Is it for you?
After working with smart:chain for a bit on several different mixes, it strikes me that using it extensively requires modifying your workflow. For one thing, you are applying a common set of effects across the entire mix. It’s not the same as inserting vintage API emulations across drums, SSL emulations onto your guitars, and Neve emulations across everything else. So if you decide to only work with smart:chain, then get the hang of it before diving in.
Remember that the analysis data has to go somewhere. Logic Pro stored it inside of the project file. The song mix using standard plugins was 54.5 MB in size. The exact same project using only smart:chain effects for all tracks ballooned to 1.18 GB. That’s not unreasonable, but worth considering.
Just to be clear, you don’t necessarily need to use it everywhere. For example, maybe it makes the most sense for your mix to only use it on the drum kit tracks. There is no absolute rule as to how you should use it. I generally found it to work well, however, it did lock up Logic Pro on me at least once in a 41-track mix. But then that’s on an Intel iMac and these days I should probably be running an Apple Silicon Mac.
Nevertheless, like all of sonible’s plugins, smart:chain is a solid product that performs well. It’s hard to say whether or not it will make you a faster or better mixer. It’s a different way of working and that takes some time to get used to.
sonible smart:chain installation is easy and the standard plugin formats are supported. Licensing is via activation code or iLok. A fully-functional 30-day trial is available to test before your buy. sonible is currently offering an introductory discount.
©2026 Oliver Peters
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