Comparison
AI DAW, AI mixing service or AI plug-in: what each one does
Software that uses AI for mixing and mastering comes in three kinds. A service takes audio you send it and returns a finished mix or master. A plug-in sits on one track or on the master inside your DAW and sets itself from what it hears. An AI DAW has an engineer that operates the whole session and that you direct in words.
The three kinds
| AI mixing or mastering service | AI plug-in | AI DAW | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | A website or app outside your DAW | Inside your DAW, on one track or the master | It is the DAW |
| What you give it | A stereo file, or exported stems | The audio passing through that one slot | The session itself |
| What it changes | It returns new audio | Its own settings | Any control in the session: faders, routing, devices, clips, automation |
| How you direct it | Options such as genre, loudness or a reference | A learn or assist button, then its knobs | Requests in plain language, and the controls themselves |
| After it has run | You download the result | You adjust that plug-in | Every change is on the session's own controls, to adjust or undo |
What a service suits
A service suits a finished production that needs a mix or a master with no further work from you: a demo, a batch of tracks, a release when there is no engineer. You get a result in minutes. What you do not get, in most cases, is a session you can open and change. If the vocal is 1 dB too quiet, the remedy is to run it again with different options.
What a plug-in suits
A plug-in assistant suits someone who already mixes in a DAW and wants a faster starting point for one job, such as an EQ curve for a vocal or a mastering chain for the mix bus. It hears only the audio in its own slot, so it cannot decide that the guitar should make room for the vocal, or move a fader on another track.
What an AI DAW suits
An AI DAW suits work that is still in progress. The engineer can read the whole session, so it can treat a mix as relationships between tracks: which track masks which, what the bus is doing, how the chorus compares with the verse. And because it changes the session's own controls, its work is where yours is. You can take over at any point.
It also covers jobs that are not mixing: writing a drum part, comping takes, routing a send, exporting stems.
Where Zammoth sits
Zammoth is the third kind: a DAW for Apple silicon Macs with an engineer built in.
- The engineer can run 292 of the application's 322 commands.
- It works from measurements: loudness, true peak, spectrum in eight bands, stereo correlation, masking between pairs of tracks, timing, pitch. Audio is not sent anywhere. Analysis and rendering run on the Mac.
- In a mix run its moves are bounded: at most 6 dB of level change per pass, at most 6 dB of EQ boost, and a master ceiling no higher than −1 dBTP. A pass that measures worse than the one before is reverted.
- Each request is undone in one step.
- It runs on Anthropic's Claude models through your own API key.
What Zammoth does not do: it does not run on Windows, Linux or Intel Macs, it is not a plug-in for another DAW, and its engineer needs an internet connection and an Anthropic API key. Everything else in the application works without either.
Choosing
- You have a finished song and want a master today: a mastering service.
- You mix in a DAW you know and want a quicker start on one track: a plug-in assistant.
- You want to produce and mix in one application and direct the work in words: an AI DAW.
Zammoth is a DAW for Apple silicon Macs with an AI audio engineer built in. The beta opens soon.
Join the beta