In this on-test article, Julian Rodgers tries this innovative AI driven EQ, designed to guide the user without taking away control. Is this equaliser FAST or not?
What Is FAST Equaliser?
FAST Equaliser is an EQ designed in a collaboration between Focusrite and Sonible to deliver results quickly either for experienced users who just want to get a sound and move on, coming back to the EQ later for fine-tuning. Or as an aid to those who either lack the experience to make EQ decisions unaided or just want the results and don’t want to know the details.
One of the strengths of this approach is that FAST mode - the “easy” mode, and Detailed mode both exist within the same plugin meaning that you can get set up err.. fast, and return to it later for tweaks. I can see this being particularly useful for collaborations where the artist might choose to use FAST mode and a mix engineer might take these settings are refine the intention of FAST mode in Detailed mode.
FAST Mode
Step 1 in using FAST mode is to choose a category of instrument. if none exists then there is a Universal setting but the closer you can get the better.
Hitting the Learn button and starting playback allows the AI to analyse the incoming audio and identify the sweet spots in the audio. Flavour sliders allow you to offset the levels in these identified important bands.
It automatically finds an appropriate EQ curve for your audio. This is represented by the green trace on the EQ curve. The orange line shows the change introduced by tweaking this suggested setting.
Detailed Mode
By changing from FAST to Detailed the setting used, in FAST mode are brought into a more conventional EQ with manual control of the 5 parametric bands and a switchable cut/shelf filter at the top and bottom ends.
A spectrum analyser adds visual feedback and from here the experience is much like that of a modern DAW utility EQ. It sounds good and is flexible. If you need the extra control offered by detailed mode it’s there.
Conclusion
This is a very capable utility equaliser with some useful workflow enhancements making it ideal for use by an experienced mix engineer but, through the use of the FAST/Detailed modes remains accessible to the most inexperienced user.
Does The AI “Dumb Down” The Mixing Process?
It could but it doesn’t have to and without going into Detailed mode, where the user is provided with all the features you would expect of a modern DAW equaliser. The combination of tweaking the Flavour sliders to fine-tune the timbral shift suggested by the AI combined with the intensity slider allowing you to ‘lean into’ (or out of) the EQ shape makes this EQ surprisingly flexible before you even get to Detailed mode.
In Detailed mode, you have all the facilities you’d expect from a standard DAW EQ. it doesn’t do Dynamic EQ or EQ Matching and I wouldn’t expect it to. The Keyboard modifiers for Band Solo and Frequency Lock are particularly useful and the variety of slopes available for the high and low pass filters is suitably broad.
A suggestion for a future update would be to include the option to display musical pitches alongside frequencies as the intended users of a plugin like this is likely to include experienced musicians who are inexperienced engineers, who would be more familiar with identifying frequencies in terms of the pitch rather than frequency.
I’d also like to have seen more instrument categories to start with. In the video, I comment that ‘Keys’ could end up being used on a Piano, Rhodes, Hammond or a pad. These sounds are all very different and I’d like to see that reflected in the choice of category.
I’ll be watching the development of this category of plugins with interest. I’m sure we’ll see more plugins of this kind. Some people might object to them as de-skilling. As someone who has taught EQ to a lot of people in the past I know how useful guidance can be and I'‘d see this as exactly that - guidance, advice, help even?