Producer Spotlight - Have You Always Wanted A Mix Assistant? Well Now You Have One, Meet Smooth Operator

Much like their other plugins, Baby Audio‘s Smooth Operator makes things just a bit easier, faster, and efficient. They fuse together complementary functions that can be easily tweaked to achieve incredible results that are intuitive and inspire creativity. Whether you use an onboard preset or experiment on your own, you will get fantastic results quickly.

So if you are looking to get that extra sparkle out of a vocal or liven up a synth lead, Smooth Operator will give you those subtle yet vibrant vibes that separate the pros from amateurs.

Get Smooth Operator HERE

Check out Baby Audio’s other Plugins:

Spaced Out

Super VHS

Comeback Kid

Before we get into the overview, check out this free sample pack from Baby Audio x NU.WAV – Free.

Baby Audio x nu.wav sample pack – Get It FREE HERE

Get your weekend started with 100mb worth of sonic goodness. Baby Audio has teamed up with NYC-collective nu.wav to release a free pack of loops, combining their sound design skills with our plugins.

The pack consists of 23 colorful and hypnotic loops, carefully crafted – and processed with BABY Audio plugins – to give you fresh musical ideas. Use them as song-starters, then warp and mangle them into your own thing!

You’ve always wanted a mix assistant, now you’ve got one!

Smooth Operator combines equalization, spectral compression, and resonance suppression into a singular creative experience that’s instant and intuitive. Use it to perfect your tonal balance and add a touch of “HiFi.”

Baby Audio’s spectral detection algorithm adapts to your audio 44,100 times per second and automatically eliminates fatigued frequencies. This gives you complete control to shape your signal and bring out more definition.

Some of the things this Baby can do…(had to, sorry)

Brings out clarity and smoothness across instruments, vocals, and mix busses.
Allows for creative tone-shaping without artifacts or harsh resonances.

An intelligent algorithm that automatically detects and resolves fatigued frequencies.
An alternative to EQ, compression, and resonance suppression in one unified workflow.

Seeing (and hearing is believing)

Workflow. How does this thing work?

1- Pull the middle circle down to increase the effect level. Smooth Operator automatically attacks the most dominant/fatigued frequencies first, even with a straight curve.

2- Move the four outer nodes to shape the tonal response. Preserve frequency areas by moving the nodes up, or remove frequency content by pulling them down. Use your mouse wheel or trackpad scroll to adjust the Q.

3- FOCUS controls how surgical Smooth Operator gets. At 100%, each frequency spike is processed independently. Lower focus values will give you a broader, more balanced response.

4- Engage SOLO to audition different parts of the frequency spectrum separately during node hover-over.

5- Engage SIDE CHAIN mode to duck your signal with the frequency balance of another track in your mix. This feature could have been a plugin in its own right(!) It allows you to create a hyper-surgical side-chain effect where the exact frequency make-up of a lead track can be used for ducking a secondary track.

What is spectral processing?

The easiest way to understand Spectral Processing is to think of it as manipulating the building blocks that make up a digital signal – rather than the actual signal. Baby Audio’s algorithm uses Fast Fourier Transform – or FFT – to break the incoming audio into tiny particles, which are analyzed and processed separately before being put back together again. This process happens in realtime and allows for a much more surgical approach to resonance detection and rebalancing than what would be possible with traditional audio effects.

While most spectral tools focus on audio restoration, these guys wanted Smooth Operator to be all about creative expression. The plugin is meant for shaping your tone. Use it to compress, EQ, and ‘purify’ in one simple process – and know that Smooth Operator has your back when it comes to automatically eliminating artifacts.