$60, safariaudio.com

The secret to top-notch sonics rarely lies in a single plugin. Selecting multiple, complimentary audio effects and chaining them in sequence for maximum impact – this is the real art of mixing.

How you actually achieve this alchemy has always been slightly mysterious. Producers spend years perfecting a ‘signature’ vocal chain, and many mastering engineers closely guard what goes on their mix bus. For those just starting out, the whole thing can be overwhelming. Meaw Chain, the latest release from Safari Audio, sets out to change this. Armed with AI, it can analyse your audio and give you a suitable chain of plugins based on text prompts.

So, should we rejoice that a core part of music production has been made more accessible? Or is ‘vibe mixing’ a paint-by-numbers game, offering more novelty than utility?

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This is actually the second AI creation from Safari Audio. The first foray, Meaw Assist, functions as an in-DAW chatbot that can listen to your track and offer production or mix advice. Meaw Chain builds on those foundations but adds a plugin wrapper, allowing it to host VST3, AU, and AAX formats.

Upon first use, I am greeted by a salmon pink interface and a short quiz intended to gauge my level of experience, the kind of projects I am working with, and what I’d like Meaw Chain to focus on: creative ideas and inspiration, technical feedback and fixes, or a bit of both. Next up is a quick scan of my installed plugins and then I’m off to the races.

In plain language I’m able to describe what kind of sound I’m looking for—in this case ‘dark but punchy drums’—and, with only a second or two of processing time, Meaw Chain presents me with a bespoke chain of audio effects matching my criteria. Happily, each generated chain is accompanied by a text explanation that details what changes have been made to the audio and why.

Results from my initial prompts are heavy handed to say the least, but I can’t pretend I’m not impressed by the seamlessness of the process and how easy it is to tweak the chain with a few follow-up requests. For even better results, Meaw Chain can analyse a track’s audio, allowing future prompts to be contextualised against this analysis.

Safari Audio is first and foremost a plugin maker, offering a respectable range of audio processing and effects which serve as a strong starting point to see what Meaw Chain can do. However, the developers have wisely chosen not to limit Meaw Chain to its own plugins, and, at time of writing, it supports 130 third-party plugins from makers such as Arturia, FabFilter, iZotope, SSL, Soundtoys, Universal Audio and more.

I will say that, left to its own devices, Meaw Chain has a tendency to prioritise plugins from the Safari Audio lineup in the chains it generates. You can, however, direct Meaw Chain to use or exclude individual plugins, or to draw only from certain developers, which is a nice touch.

But the real surprise is Meaw Chain’s ability to manipulate parameters within plugins from any developer. The chains that it generates aren’t using a plugin’s supplied presets, instead, parameters are dynamically changed to fit a prompt – meaning users can zero in on individual controls and ask for changes. Of course, you can also expand a plugin’s window and move a dial using the cursor, but, really, where’s the fun in that?

There are limitations to all this. A few times I ask for a specific parameter change only to be told that the parameter can not be accessed. At other times, Meaw Chain seems to get overlapping parameters confused. For example, a request to make my dark and punchy drum chain a bit brighter resulted in boosted high frequencies and a low pass filter.

It should also be said that Meaw Chain paints with a broad brush. The more specific and detailed you want to be, the less sense this workflow makes as repeated prompting is hardly more efficient than just doing things by hand.

However, if you just want to quickly try out ideas, it can be powerful. Each new plugin chain you generate is stored in your chat history, meaning you can build up a set of variations and then A/B them to compare results. Not only that but you can also access the full history of conversations you’ve had with Meaw Chain across any project or DAW – turning it effectively into an ever-evolving bank of presets that can be reused or tweaked to fit each new mix.

However, the more I consider what Meaw Chain is truly useful for, and who it’s useful for, the more thorny my questions get.

To make the most of Meaw Chain, I would argue that you need to have a decent store of third-party plugins – and therein lies a paradox. The people who will benefit the most from Meaw Chain are likely to be those still learning the finer points of music production — these users are also less likely to have invested in a wide selection of tools. On the other hand, if you are an experienced bedroom producer or a studio professional with lots of audio plugins at your disposal, then do you really need the kind of simplified mix assistance Meaw Chain offers?

That said, this is a fascinating and genuinely cool implementation of AI in a music production context. Yes, the results it gives you work better as starting points, and it doesn’t offer the kind of specificity needed to get a mix up to a professional standard, but as the number of third-party plugins Meaw Chain supports continues to grow, as its audio analysis increases in quality. As its ability to manipulate specific parameters attains higher fidelity, we might just see mixing via prompts become the new normal.

Key features

• AI-assisted plugin chain builder
• Chat-centred user interface generates plugin chains via text prompts
• Hosts Safari Audio and third-party plugins
• 130 third-party plugins supported from major developers
• VST3, AU and AAX formats

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