iZotope Neutron Mix Assistant - What is the ideal/correct configuration?

  • Thread starter Thread starter UltimateOutsidr
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UltimateOutsidr

UltimateOutsidr

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I own iZotope Neutron 3 Advanced, and I have never gotten the Mix Assistant to work. (I can get it to analyze my song and pick its defaults; but the faders don't actually do anything, and bypassing reveals no difference.) So I am clearly missing something. I have read the product documentation and watched a number of official and third-party tutorials, but none of them explain what I'm seeing.

MY CONFIGURATION
  • I am currently running Cubase Pro 14 on Windows 10.
  • I put the main Neutron 3 plugin (the one I think they call the mothership?) on my master bus.
  • I insert the Relay plugin on every channel I want Mix Assistant to consider.
  • I run the Mix Assistant wizard and let it listen to the track. When it reaches the end, it shows me the five faders.
  • I can also, at this point, re-classify any tracks it misclassified.
  • But every time I do this, the resulting faders (focus, drums, etc) actually do nothing; moving them in any direction has no effect on what I hear. Bypassing the plugin also makes no difference.
MY QUESTIONS
  • The Neutron 3 documentation just says "put Neutron 3 on an audio track." Just any audio track? Shouldn't it be on the master bus for this? How would you hear balancing changes to the mix unless you put it on your master? Why don't they specify this?
  • Does the Mix Assistant assume you're working with multitracks or stems? Which is it more suited for?
  • The instructions say that the Relay plugin should be the first insert on every track. This doesn't make sense to me if the track has like compressors and distortion plugins on it, as those can alter both the sound and loudness of that track. Is the implication that you should only be using this on already produced-and-exported multitracks or stems?
  • Any idea why, if I have Neutron 3 on my master bus and have completed the Mix Assistant wizard, I would not be able to hear any difference when adjusting the faders it produces?
 
I don’t like Neutron at all for mixing - it (to me) produces a very fake and artificial mix.
 
It needs a clean feed from each channel so it can analyse and then do it's stuff. From the video it seems to be good for fixing poor mixes, which surely is what we are all trying to learn how to do better each time. Letting it do it and trusting it is something I can't get into.
 
Sorry it's been a while since I returned to this thread. I had watched that video that Steenamaroo linked before, but what I hadn't done yet is download the project templates linked in that video's description. After re-watching the video and loading up their project template, I am confident I set things up correctly. I believe that Neutron 3's Mix Assistant does not work properly with Cubase 14. I clearly have it set up the way that they intended. It just doesn't affect the audio.

Also, when I read between the lines of their meager documentation and that video, it does appear that Mix Assistant is meant to support multitracks (versus stems or "live" DAW tracks)- however, there's also an assumption that they are finished multitracks (with effects and other processing burned in), and this tool is meant to be used at the very end of the mixing process.

I was really just curious to see how Neutron's balancing tech compared with my own technique (I set levels against pink noise and then adjust to taste), and I'm not going to pay for an upgrade to Neutron 5 just to see if it fixes my problem.

I appreciate the responses.
 
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