In this video I’m testing two Sonible “smart” plugins that seriously speed up the boring parts of mixing: smart:gate and smart:deess. I start with a rap vocal and strip the chain back so you can hear what the plugins are actually doing. With smart:gate, the whole point is simple—clean up the gaps where the vocal should be silent, so you’re not hearing breaths, room noise, headphone bleed, and other junk between lines. What I love is how simplified it is: hit Analyze, let it listen, and you’re basically set. I do wish it had tempo sync, but if that’s my biggest gripe, that’s a win. Then I jump into smart:deess, and I’m using it like I normally work—staging. I’d rather run multiple lighter moves (two de-essers, multiple compressors, etc.) than force one plugin to do all the heavy lifting. smart:deess handles sibilance and plosives fast, and it stays natural if you watch the gain reduction and use the wet/dry for parallel control. You can also narrow in on the frequency range and audition what it’s removing, which makes dialing it in quick. Only real downside: both plugins can be a bit CPU hungry, so test them on your system.