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Neutron 2 and Ozone 8

Mornats

Mornats

Hobbyist
I own Neutron and Ozone 7 standard and have been watching the videos on the new versions. Some of the new features look really good from the videos.

In Neutron 2 the visual mixer looks really good to me. It's basically a visual way to tweak the panning, stereo imaging and volume of every track that has Neutron on (or in the advanced version, Mix Tap - a lightweight stereo imaging, panner and volume control). This will help my workflow immensely.

The tonal balance feature looks interesting too although I'm not sure how helpful it would be to have it analyse four broad frequency bands so you can go and tweak the balance of these.

I'm considering the upgrade to Neutron 2 standard just for the visual mixer. I never considered Neutron Advanced in version 1 as it only offered surround (which I don't use) and the ability to load each part of the chain as individual plugins which wasn't worth the cost to me. So as I'm not too bothered about the tonal balance thing, Advanced still doesn't appeal as much, although tonal balance and mix tap as additions to Advanced help a bit with the extra cost. That extra cost wasn't really justified in version 1 for me.

Ozone's new mastering assistant caught my attention, more so for its ability to analyse a reference track and suggest a mastering starting point based on that. This would help me a great deal in both time saved and my understanding of mastering. I really like the look of it so far.

One other feature in Ozone 8 that looked good but wasn't shouted about much is the ability to set a target loudness (-14LUFS for example) and have the maximiser set its threshold to hit that target. I find that I play a track, check the LUFS in YouLean, tweak the threshold, play it again and so on. This would make this step much easier for me.

In terms of Ozone Advanced, you get more from Standard than you do with Neutron. Those extra modules look nice, but it's the tape saturation that I'd really like to get my hands on.

So, in terms of upgrading I think I may grab the stand upgrades for £78 each (Time+Space). I did consider the O8N2 bundle as I can get the crossgrade for £315 but to be honest, I've only recently bought Ozone and it bugs me that I could have got the bundle for the same price if I hadn't bought Ozone (as an owner of Neutron).

I could go for the standard upgrade for Neutron and the Advanced upgrade for Ozone for a total of £233 and get the tonal balance feature in there but it won't link into Neutron. I'm not sure if that would be a problem or not. The other option would be to get a nice tape saturation as a separate plugin outside of Ozone so long as it costs less than the difference between the Ozone Standard upgrade and the Advanced.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I think I just rambled on about my thoughts on upgrading!
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Watched some of the new videos of both, and they look like a big upgrades with interesting new features. Still wondering if Neutron is useful when mixing our cinematic stuff?
 
It has some cinematic presets in there. Not many, but a few useful ones. But the presets are just starting points. The masking meter is useful for all types of music and in V2 that visual mixer would work well with arranging orchestral pieces.
 
jamwerks said:
Watched some of the new videos of both, and they look like a big upgrades with interesting new features. Still wondering if Neutron is useful when mixing our cinematic stuff?
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Neutron's not quite as 'smart' as it seems from the marketing they did last year... It's really just pulling from a few presets and moving the nodes to resonant areas in the spectrum.

It does generally make small improvements, but personally I think the presets are a more useful starting point as Neutron can't determine strings from brass from winds, whereas the presets are at least tailored toward the actual instrument family... (And considering most people adjust the settings track assistant makes you might as well just start with an appropriate preset and work backward from there...)

Interestingly it's coolest trick is one I'm pretty sure I haven't seen them market. If you insert the EQ module and turn all the EQ nodes on and then hit the learn button in the EQ module it will find resonant nodes on all bands.

This is where it's 'smart' as far as I'm concerned. It finds areas that are either harsh or full of character without having to sweep around, but doesn't make any boosts or cuts which encourages you to explore each band and make decisions using your ears.

If you want to get creative you could insert another Neutron, open an appropriate preset, and create the same overall shape, but using the frequencies 'learn' found... :2thumbs:
 
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I'm getting an upgrade price of $85 from Neutron standard to v.2 via JRR. Just not sure if that's even worth it.

What's new?
'Masking meter' - this is by far my most used feature, but what is new here? Still no attack and release for sidechaining. :crying: I see a 'soft saturation' button as well as 'stereo, phase, swap'. Is that really it?
'Visual mixer' - could come in handy, but that does require that you put Neutron on all your tracks, or at least a substantial amount of them. If it had included 3D placement, I'd be all over this. But it doesn't.
'Improved track assistant' - still not improved enough I suspect.
'Gate' - nice, but I've got plenty of those.

At the end of the day, it's a $85 upgrade for a plugin I paid $89 for. :eek:
 
I got a good deal a while back on the izotope production bundle advanced. I have received links from them to this new product package. I can get it for $400. More than I purchased the production bundle for. The videos I have seen so far are long on feeling and short on information, so I am not feeling much of a pull.

I give them credit for working to take the power of plug-ins into the future rather than slavishly strive to perfectly imitate vintage hardware devices, as so many do. There seems to be a lot of emphasis put on taking one's music and mixing and mastering it in a way that sounds 'pro' or in other words, just like everyone one else does. I think there is already some exploration of fully automated mastering, and perhaps it sound better than 50% of the mastering shops out there, for all I know (everybody with a stereo and a computer can hang out a 'mastering' shingle). Nonetheless, I am a hobbyist seeking to explore my creativity, so the notion of letting go of my listening and preferences and letting a computer algorithm make the decisions is not appealing to me.

In an isotope video about the sound spectrum matching their products did, someone asked what sort of normative goal the software had, and the isotope employee essentially dodged the question. But its the question at the core of this approach: If the software is automatically making your stuff sound like something, what is that something and how do we know is a good something to emulate?

Now as has been already observed, the ability to take one's music and have the tool analyze it and let one know how said music compares to other tracks or industry averages or the like, that is interesting and may be a very helpful tool. Is it worth $400 to me? Not right now.

I have an open mind to learn more, but this is my impression so far. I am looking forward to other people's impressions here.

Also, I note that product lifecycle management normally leads to lower prices over time as the initial prices are set to make sales to those who value the new features the most, and once they are done, the prices are lowered to get the next group. That's why I have more isotope plugins than I ever set out to get--they kept sending me sale prices that got lower until I could not resist.
 
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Publius said:
... Also, I note that product lifecycle management normally leads to lower prices over time as the initial prices are set to make sales to those who value the new features the most, and once they are done, the prices are lowered to get the next group. ...
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I think there's a second motive for this strategy. Prices are lowest two or three months before the introduction of the next major version. You get a great bargain and then almost immediately learn that you have to upgrade if you want the latest and greatest features.

I am in the same situation as Publius. They want more for the upgrade than I paid for the products in the first place. So I'm willing to wait until Ozone 9 is almost ready to upgrade from version 7 to version 8. Likewise for Neutron and RX -- always one major version behind.
 
For the people who are using Ozone already for mastering: can u receommend it? Are you getting good results?
 
I'm very new to mastering and a hobbyist composer and bought Ozone around a month or so ago. I've noticed an immediate improvement in the quality of my tracks after using Ozone. Used subtly it adds a shine that brings the sound up a level in my opinion. When doing an a/b comparison of before and after (with the ear icon ticked to balance the volume difference between the two versions) there's not a huge difference in what's going on but I've noticed better separation, less mud and more shine. Nothing like what a mastering engineer could do but I'm using my ears, not theirs. It was worth it in my opinion.

I started with Ozone Elements and that impressed me enough to know it would make a difference so I upgraded to Ozone 7 Standard. Izotope do 30 day demos of Ozone so grab it and try it out. Watch some of their videos on it too and try to get a feel for what you're doing and why you're doing it.
 
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Mornats said:
I'm very new to mastering and a hobbyist composer and bought Ozone around a month or so ago. I've noticed an immediate improvement in the quality of my tracks after using Ozone. Used subtly it adds a shine that brings the sound up a level in my opinion. When doing an a/b comparison of before and after (with the ear icon ticked to balance the volume difference between the two versions) there's not a huge difference in what's going on but I've noticed better separation, less mud and more shine. Nothing like what a mastering engineer could do but I'm using my ears, not theirs. It was worth it in my opinion.

I started with Ozone Elements and that impressed me enough to know it would make a difference so I upgraded to Ozone 7 Standard. Izotope do 30 day demos of Ozone so grab it and try it out. Watch some of their videos on it too and try to get a feel for what you're doing and why you're doing it.
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thanks a lot for your advices!!
 
Happy to help :)

By the way, I just checked the trial period and it's now 10 days instead of 30. Either that or it was 10 days previously and I misunderstood. Should be enough time to get a feel for it still anyway.

Edit: 10 day trial then it goes into demo mode and inserts silence periodically.
 
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nik said:
For the people who are using Ozone already for mastering: can u receommend it? Are you getting good results?
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Admittedly without any sort of track record or expertise, but I have the impression ozone is the equal of any other mastering product. My un-expert opinion is there are more mastering products out there than people could possibly use and that they are all likely equal in 'quality' or however one judges a compressor/limiter/ditherer with multi-band capabilities. The waves L series may have gotten there first with a great sounding product, but that firstness was a long time ago.

I have had ozone for maybe over 20 years and I always felt they brought a lot of expertise to their product. Also, I think with computers faster than they used to be, ozone can be used on a per track basis. They have some other more track oriented products which are presumably lighter on cpu usage. Ozone has a distortion adder feature which one can compare to other 'vintage mojo' emulators or 'clinical digital sound' removers.

I got all of their products with that producer pack promotion at a cheap price, and I haven't even completely figured out what all the different things do, but there seems to be a lot of overlap functionally, so one may be rewarded by reviewing their offerings and only getting one or two products.
 
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rrichard63 said:
I think there's a second motive for this strategy. Prices are lowest two or three months before the introduction of the next major version. You get a great bargain and then almost immediately learn that you have to upgrade if you want the latest and greatest features.

I am in the same situation as Publius. They want more for the upgrade than I paid for the products in the first place. So I'm willing to wait until Ozone 9 is almost ready to upgrade from version 7 to version 8. Likewise for Neutron and RX -- always one major version behind.
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Yes, I guess it was perhaps three months ago when I got the bundle. The newer product is always going to come, so I have no regrets, and as I said, I am not even sold on the latest and greatest features being a leap forward--for my needs...

Ok, gonna sound like a curmudgeon here, but I just spent some more time at the isotope web site and I am having to work a little too hard to figure out what the difference between the 7 and 8 versions are--a simple text chart of features, perhaps would help. Also, I prefer some sober narration over generic up-temp music during the 'what's new' video. Yes, very curmudgeonly. ;) It may be my 'feeling' brain that gets me to think about purchases, but my rational mind has a lot (maybe not enough ;) ) of influence on the decision.

There are three ozone product tiers. The expensive advanced option has a feature called 'use as a plug-in'. I think that means that the components of ozone can be used one at a time in a track rather than an entire ozone where you turn off the stuff you don't want to use. So, for $200 to a first time customer, the middle tier looks pretty good. OTOH, I see waves l3 'multi-maximizer' on sale for $50, so gonna need lots of good features to quadruple the price of an industry standard...

My take on ozone is that it has a different sort of GUI that takes some getting used to. I think exposes more technical information and options than the waves products, so I found it intimidating at first to use.
 
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For those interested, head over to plugindiscounts.com, they are running very interesting offers.
 
lpuser said:
For those interested, head over to plugindiscounts.com, they are running very interesting offers.
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Any idea if this is a reputable site? I always ask if somewhere is selling something cheaper than most other places.
 
These early prices are just absurd. I own everything advanced, all except RX, and they want over 400$ to upgrade? Hell, Neutron isn't even a year old!

Assume these are priced for big wigs /studios so I'll wait for better offers or just move on.. What I have is fine!

In the mean time, just purchased (broken link removed) from Eventide a new mastering tool that is amazing for under $80... Izotope better watch its back!
 
lpuser said:
For those interested, head over to plugindiscounts.com, they are running very interesting offers.
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FYI--requires you create an account with them to see prices. I see that as a scheme to gather a list of email addresses, and not gonna do it.
 
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Vastman said:
In the mean time, just purchased (broken link removed) from Eventide a new mastering tool that is amazing for under $80... Izotope better watch its back!
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Well, well. This looks and sounds interesting (demo download available as well).
Thanks for the heads up.
 
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