iZotope Neutron Review

Neutron is the latest piece of mixing software developed by iZotope. Described as ‘A smarter way to mix’, it is a channel strip effect with five effects – an EQ, two multi-band compressors, a transient shaper, an exciter and a limiter.

What sets it apart from other similar plugins on the market are three innovative features – the Track Assistant, the Masking Meter and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to load the plugin on each track in a project and control multiple instances simultaneously, no internal patching or virtual wiring required.

The Review

The UI has a clean, minimal look to it and is rather easy to navigate. The menu bar at the top hosts a number of useful features such as the preset menu, Track Assistant, options, undo, and the very handy rename option which makes it easy to identify a particular instance of the plugin. Unfortunately, the user interface isn’t scalable.

The EQ, exciter, transient shaper and 2 compressors each have their own panel with individual bypass, preset and mix controls. It is possible to change the order of the panels simply via drag and drop. The control parameters are shown below each effect. The limiter is positioned on the right of the interface, with the neutrino spectral shaping mode shown in the bottom right corner. Incidentally, iZotope has already released a freeware plugin based on this spectral shaping module, albeit with a more streamlined interface and conveniently called Neutrino.

The equalizer module is a 12-band static/dynamic EQ with a range of filter types. It doesn’t have attack and release settings and there’s no ratio control, but it’s very capable even without these. We particularly liked the inclusion of the side-chain mode which can be a particularly handy option for putting a busy mix under control.

The two compressors offer a range of vintage and modern compression modes, along with extensive multi-band control and per band side-chaining. The transient shaper module features a range of contours (Sharp, Medium, and Smooth) and modes (Precise, Balanced, Loose), as well as single and multi-band processing. The exciter comes with three XY pads which blend between different algorithms, allowing for a range of saturation effects. The limiter module has three algorithms ,each with three modes capable of producing anything from clean and transparent gain reduction to brick wall limiting.

Whilst Neutron comes bundled with a large number of presets for different instruments, iZotope are keen to stress that these are really meant as starting points or learning tools. This is especially important to bear in mind because the Track Assistant tool effectively creates a custom preset as a starting point. It does this by analyzing between four and ten seconds of the track and suggests an optimal signal flow as well as settings for EQ and effects. It can detect different types of instruments and has subtle, medium and aggressive modes. The screenshot at the top of this page shows the outcome of the analysis applied to a drum loop. It’s important to remember that the analysis takes place on a short section of audio, so the user needs to use a representative section of the track and be prepared to compromise if there are dramatic changes in sound further down the timeline.

The Masking Meter allows the user to compare two tracks and identify frequency clashes between mix elements such as kick and bass tracks, or piano and vocal tracks, for example. This is also where the third innovative feature called “Inverse Link” comes into play, making it possible to link two different instances of Neutron (loaded on separate tracks) and control them both at the same time. Any adjustments made are automatically applied to both Neutron instances, so that the EQ cuts a particular frequency on one track and automatically boost it on the other. Just imagine how much time this can save during a long mixing session.

Neutron is not entirely perfect, though. The biggest drawback I’ve found is its rather high CPU appetite. Whilst I haven’t got a top spec laptop – a dual core 2 GHz machine with 8 GB of RAM (which is normally adequate for my music making requirements), using Neutron in Hollyhock II overloaded the CPU with only three instances. Rendering a track to audio stems and loading into MuLab 7 didn’t fare much better, as I was still only able to load three or four instances of Neutron. This is disappointing, as you need a high powered machine in order to get the most out of this otherwise excellent mixing utility.

The Verdict

Neutron is available in Basic and Standard versions. The only difference between the two is that the advanced version features surround sound and offers the included effects as separate plugins, in addition to the main channel strip plugin. These separate plugins don’t come with Track Assistant or Masking Meter functionality, though, as those are reserved for the main channel strip effect. If you really like the effects and would like to be able to use them separately in your projects, then the Advanced version would be worth paying extra for.

For someone just starting out in mixing and mastering, Neutron feels intuitive and easy to use. The great thing about Neutron, though, is that it’s not designed to be simply a magic fix, that you load and forget. On the contrary, it can be customized in many ways, whereas the settings suggested by the Track Assistant feature provide a very good starting point.

More info: iZotope Neutron ($249 Standard, $349 Advanced)

Last Updated on November 7, 2016 by Tomislav Zlatic.