Sonible pure:unmask

Can it really be this quick and easy to tackle masking in your mix?

Regular readers will know that I reviewed Sonible’s pure:EQ plug‑in in SOS December 2023 and was really impressed. Sonible’s ‘pure’ concept takes elements of the AI‑based processing found in their flagship ‘smart’ series of plug‑ins and distills things down into a much simpler, easy‑to‑use format. In fact, the user experience is almost fool‑proof, and relatively routine but usually time‑consuming tasks such as EQ (pure:EQ), compression (pure:comp), limiting (pure:limit) and reverb (pure:verb) can be dealt with speedily and effectively. The company has now added pure:unmask to this series. A similarly streamlined plug‑in, this one’s primary function is to tackle the problem of elements in your mix being unhelpfully masked by others.

Masking is a phenomenon that occurs when two audio sources contain overlapping frequency content, and the louder one obscures the other in that part of the spectrum.

Masking is a phenomenon that occurs when two audio sources contain overlapping frequency content, and the louder one obscures the other in that part of the spectrum. It can lead to an inconsistency in tone, or sometimes to sounds seeming to drop out of a mix altogether. Ideally, you’d find a way to tuck one sound out of the way of the other, so that both can do what the song requires.

For example, you might want a bass guitar to dip out the way of a kick drum, or a bed of guitars and keyboards to make way for a lead vocal. While you can do this with EQ to some extent, a more sophisticated tactic is to route a signal from the high‑priority track (such as a lead vocal) into the side‑chain input of a compressor or dynamic EQ on the lower‑priority track, so the latter only makes way when both instruments are playing.

Listen & Learn

Sonible pure:unmask attempts to automate the second of these options. Once installed as an insert effect on the lower‑priority track, and with the side‑chain routing configured from your higher‑priority track (a fairly straightforward process in most DAWs now), pure:unmask applies its AI‑based decision‑making to configure some spectral processing which, in essence, produces results akin to dynamic EQ, with overlapping frequencies in the lower‑priority track being ducked, ensuring that the main event retains its clarity, and that there’s minimum ‘damage’ to the lower‑priority track when there’s nothing going on in the other one.

Having set up the side‑chain routing, the large green button is used to trigger an initial ‘listen and learn’ process, through which the plug‑in evaluates a short section of both audio signals. You can give this process a nudge in the right direction by selecting a profile type from the drop‑down list — this identifies the nature of the high‑priority signal and has profiles for vocals, speech, guitar, bass, drums, kick and Universal, which is a catch‑all for other audio types.

Once the learning’s done, pure:unmask configures itself and, fingers crossed, on playback you should hear that extra bit of clarity in your higher‑priority sound. The central portion of the GUI indicates what’s happening, with the spectrum of both tracks being displayed along with the spectral ducking being applied, and the changes to the lower‑priority track as a result.

That may well be ‘job done’, but you have some options to finesse the result if needed. Most importantly, you can adjust the amount of unmasking being applied, but you also can define the resolution of the spectral processing, the frequency range over which it’s applied, and the attack/release times — all useful options that don’t overcomplicate things.

pure:unmask is a simple and effective problem solver: in practice it just works.

Let It Shine!

Like all the pure series plug‑ins, pure:unmask is a simple and effective problem solver: in practice it just works. If you have a really complex combination of audio signals that need their tonal balances untangling, you’ll perhaps want a more sophisticated toolset, but for pretty much all routine unmasking jobs this is an excellent time‑saving tool. The price is sensible too and, if you manage to pick up the whole pure bundle in one of Sonible’s sale events, I’d say it’s an absolute steal.