My thoughts on Neutron 3 Advanced

Guitargodgt

New member
So I recently picked up this gem with the sale. This isn't any kind of endorsement or anything like that, just wanted to share my experience with it in case anyone was thinking about it.

All of the modules are excellent in my opinion.

The EQ is one of the nicest I have used (and that includes pro-q3), you can easily switch tracks from within the plug and see how things are interacting with each other. All bands can turned into active dynamic points (kind of like waves F6 plugin) or just stay static and you can reference anywhere in the frequency spectrum as to how the dynamic point works. So say a boost at 1k can have it's dynamic information taken from 200Hz. It's a 12 band eq.

Scultor is apparently the new kid but I never owned older versions of Nuetron so I have no reference. To be honest I can't really explain accurately what it does but what it does is good when it's good. Izotope says it's a spectral shaper. I have found it works good to tame some of the harsh in overhead tracks and push other things like piano to the front without introducing frequencies that tend to mask other things like voice and guitar.

The other modules: I pretty much like everything but exciter and the reason I don't care for exciter is I'm not into the distortion it introduces (and I am aware that's the idea behind the module). It's "warmth" that I'm just not into. The compressor, transient shaper and gate are all really nice though. I appreciate having UI that lets me know what's happening with the gate and compressor especially.

Ok now for the stuff I have had no luck with or think is just bad:

All of the "automatic" features. All of them. The worst one is the one that you pay extra to get. Mix assistant has been just bad. Track assistant has been around a 1 in 5 just ok.

Mix assistant is where you strap izotope's plugin (relay) across all your tracks (no buses), 0 your faders, and put mix assistant on the master bus. Click mix assistant button, select all the tracks, select some to focus on (like main vocal lines or lead guitar parts) and let it do it's thing. The thing is I've tried this on multiple projects and ever time I have given it a go it's been so far off I might as well not have bothered. You can of course adjust things, but I also have found I don't care for how izotope automatically summed things together either. Also, once you commit you can't come back to this screen to make adjustments. You would have to redo the whole workflow again if you wanted to make changes to their balance. At this point I've pretty much resigned this feature to the garbage.

Track assistant can be good, but again since it's a track by track thing the results are a mixed bag. Most of the time I do it, get done and go "not even close." Sometimes it's not bad and can be tweaked a little to what I'm after. But again most of the time it's a dud.


The last thought I have is visual mixer. Visual mixer is a plugin that puts all tracks in a grid GUI so you can mix pan and gain on a grid and moving things L and R and louder and softer is done in one move. Some people might like this, but again it's so foreign to how I normally mix that I am just not into it. Visually it's not what I want to see when I'm mixing.
 
I got Neutron 2 in a bundle when I upgraded from Ozone5. I use it for EQ because of the ability to see other tracks (which also have Neutron 2) and visually see the masking that might be affecting the mix.

I don’t use the other features but do use the exciter sometimes because it offers a wide range of colors in a single plug.
 
I have all the 2 stuff and i honestly mostly just use it for either stuff that needs real surgery and i do cloud "masters" with Ozone8. Not that its bad but it just hasn't clicked for me in mixing.
 
I got Neutron 2 in a bundle when I upgraded from Ozone5. I use it for EQ because of the ability to see other tracks (which also have Neutron 2) and visually see the masking that might be affecting the mix.

I don’t use the other features but do use the exciter sometimes because it offers a wide range of colors in a single plug.

Yeah I wasn't sure if the eq had changed or not from previous versions. From your post it sounds like it hasn't unless the whole dynamic thing is new.
 
I have all the 2 stuff and i honestly mostly just use it for either stuff that needs real surgery and i do cloud "masters" with Ozone8. Not that its bad but it just hasn't clicked for me in mixing.

Yeah I have not moved to Ozone 8 yet. Still on 7. I probably will grab it at some point, sort of hoping they do a good sale on black Friday and it makes it worth my while to upgrade. I would love to go from 7 standard to 8 advance for a decent price.
 
Further comment

Good to have your take on the Mix Assistant. I was reading an article yesterday claiming it had relieved the author of eight hours work on every mix. I was sceptical, even though the prospect was tempting.

We have Ozone 8 and love it, by the way. When one product works it's tempting to assume that other products from the same manufacturer will be just as effective. And anything that promises to reduce the hard graft of delivering a solid mix demands consideration. But your comments reiterate what I've read on GearSlutz, so I guess the positive reviews have either been marketing or a specific type of track that does respond well to Neutron's processing.
 
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I actually just picked up Ozone 8 advanced this month as the sale was hard to pass up ($99 to upgrade from 7 standard).

I haven't put enough time into it to have an opinion yet though.
 
I'm guessing 9 is just around the corner with these prices. At least I hope that's what's going on!

I use Ozone 8 a lot, but just for the EQ (combined with Neutron 2 EQ) and Maximizer. It's nice to have a view across each track and the final mix to see where stuff might be piling up. And, of course, you can stare at Tonal Balance and see if it makes sense. (I've been lazy about setting up my own balances, but that is probably useful.)

A lot of what I do is very quick mixes of entire (live) sets of music for folks to review and pick a song or two from, so it's not critical I get everything right for what might be a pretty different mix of songs. When I have a single or two then I'll turn on the EQ and maybe play with the dynamic EQ in the pseudo-mastering phase.

P.S. I do use its dithering, too, when I'm bouncing down.
 
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