faSmartAlign

Smart ARA Drum Phase Alignment Plugin

faSmartAlign is an automatic phase alignment plugin with ARA support for drums, guitars and any multi‑mic recording. It analyzes the timing relationships between all your microphones or layers, then locks them into phase‑coherent alignment in a single intelligent pass – no more endless manual nudging, polarity guessing or zoom‑level surgery.

Stop Fighting Your Timing. Start Controlling It.

Most engineers accept micro timing errors as “good enough,” then wonder why their drums feel blurry, their guitars don’t quite punch and their mixes collapse the moment they hit a bus compressor. faSmartAlign goes after those invisible problems by tightening the acoustic relationships between your close mics, overheads, rooms, cabs, DIs and ambience tracks, so your balances suddenly feel obvious instead of fragile.

Built on a Proven Engine — Supercharged for Drums

Under the hood, faSmartAlign uses the same alignment engine that powers faGuitarAlign for complex guitar setups – expanded with ARA support and a modern Time Delay Estimation core for full multi‑track sessions. On top of that foundation, it adds dedicated drum intelligence that understands typical kits, overhead‑focused workflows and real‑world studio rooms, giving you instantly tighter kicks, snares, toms and cymbals without killing their character.

Instrument Intelligence for Real-World Workflows

faSmartAlign understands that a kick is not a cymbal and a snare is not a tom. Its instrument‑aware design lets it treat each element according to its role: punch and definition for kicks, crack and body for snares, natural decay for toms and airy sustain for cymbals.

Whether you are aligning a classic rock kit, dense metal drums, complex percussion setups or multi‑mic piano and orchestral recordings, the same engine gives you a coherent, musical starting point in a fraction of the time of manual editing.

One Tool for Every Multi-Mic Challenge

While it shines on drum kits and percussion, faSmartAlign is designed as a general‑purpose multi‑mic fixer for your entire studio. Use it to line up DI and amp on bass, dual‑mic guitar cabs, multi‑mic acoustic guitars, pianos, choirs, orchestral percussion or any recording where “just a few milliseconds” of smear are holding the sound back. Align everything in seconds, then reach for EQ, compression and saturation knowing the foundation is finally doing what you think it is.

Are You Still Doing It the Hard Way?

In the end there are two kinds of engineers: those who keep wrestling with timing and phase by hand, and those who let specialized tools handle the micro‑alignment so they can pour energy into tone, arrangement and emotion. faSmartAlign is built for the second group – the ones who want modern, punchy drums and multi‑mic recordings that hold up under scrutiny and still hit hard on the first listen.