Baby Audio has released a new, enhanced version of the popular Smooth Operator Pro plugin. To celebrate this latest release, the developer is offering a $50 discount for a limited time.
Smooth Operator Pro is normally $129, but during the intro sale, it’s $79. Owners of the original version can upgrade to Smooth Operator Pro for $29.
Smooth Operator Pro is available in 64-bit AU, VST, VST3, and AAX formats for macOS (10.11 and higher) and Windows (10 and higher).
If you’re not familiar with the original Smooth Operator, it’s a tool that helps you achieve a cleaner mix by removing harshness, muddiness, and unwanted frequency energy from your tracks.
If you are familiar with the original plugin, you’ll notice that Smooth Operator Pro offers more direct control over various elements via the global setting panel.
Baby Audio talks about surgical control of your sound at a DNA level through spectral processing, manipulating individual particles that make up a signal rather than the signal as a whole.
As far as dynamic resonance suppression goes, Smooth Operator Pro offers a few features that could lead to a cleaner sound without the side effects that often come with traditional EQ/compression tools.
The large knob on the left controls the global threshold and determines the extent the plugin will process the incoming signal. You then have six elements with adjustable parameters: Setup, Focus, Comp, Imaging, SC (sidechain), and Output.
From the Setup tab, you can select from two unique frequency distribution algorithms: Even and Skew. Even provides a fairly neutral profile, and Skew offers a more pronounced effect.
In the same tab, you have Lo/Hi Preserve controls that allow anything below/above the cutoff to pass through the plugin unprocessed.
In the short time I’ve spent with the plugin, I really like these preservation controls; they were particularly useful with some bass and synth-heavy beats, improving clarity without sacrificing the impact of the low end.
Another interesting feature that helps maintain the character of your audio, and perhaps the most significant update from the original plugin, is the ability to add custom processing nodes anywhere on the spectrum.
You can create a unique dynamic profile per node, overriding the global settings. You might not need to go so deep every time, but precision control with so much depth, rather than a blanket effect over everything, is more efficient than loading multiple instances of a plugin to tackle different areas.
Smooth Operator Pro improves the overall performance and sound quality of the original plugin. However, while the six elements that make up the global settings and their parameters are pretty self-explanatory, there are a few standout additions.
For example, Focus is where you select the detection style for the spectral peak reduction (Peak or RMS) that suits your material best. What I like most here is the Isolation control; it determines how much of the area surrounding a node is processed.
Controlling how the processing impacts surrounding areas makes for a more natural sound and, again, helps maintain the desired character.
Another good example is the sympathetic approach to sidechaining. Rather than simply ducking one source when the other is active, Smooth Operator Pro considers the frequency content of the external sidechain input in more detail. It attenuates the processed signal only in areas that clash with the external signal, creating a smoother and more natural response.
Smooth Operator Pro is an improvement over the original plugin, but more importantly, it’s a tool that delivers precision processing without a convoluted workflow or the need for supreme technical know-how. It makes something good sound better and quickly; it’s easy to like!
Admittedly, I love most things Baby Audio, but if you’re not on the bandwagon yet, check out the free Warp vari-speed pitch effect taken from Transit 2.
Check out the deal: Smooth Operator Pro ($50 off for a limited time – $79)
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