There are now Sharp, Medium and Smooth contours selectable for each band, plus Precision, Balanced and Loose global modes, which make a big difference to the shapes of the attack and sustain of the sound.
This was by far our most-used part of Alloy 2, and we’re delighted to see it get a significant upgrade in Neutron. The star of the show, however, is the new and improved Transient Shaper module. Here we now also have Full, Defined and Clean global modes, which emphasise different parts of the spectrum before processing to give different colouration options. The Exciter Module is solid enough and has the ability to blend between four decent algorithms on an X/Y pad, and have different settings for each band. While it’s by no means a dealbreaker, but a gate can be a pretty useful tool to have in a channel strip. Visually, it’s a bit more stripped back than Alloy and Ozone, with iZotope unfortunately continuing its trend for not including noise gates as part of the achitecture of its dynamic modules. The two compressors are identical, can be run in serial, and feature Modern and Vintage modes, plus RMS, Peak and True Envelope detection, and various internal and external sidechain options. Moving on, the other three modules can have up to three bands – one less than Alloy and Ozone – but to be honest, still plenty for most mixing tasks. This is pretty powerful and easy to use, but it lacks the attack and release settings of Ozone’s Dynamic EQ module, and there’s no ratio to control how hard it’s working. Delving further, we can see that the EQ module has now been upgraded to a flexible dynamic EQ that allows you to compress or expand up to eight frequency bands, and a high/low shelf or cut. You have an EQ, two multiband compressors, a multiband Exciter, an improved Transient Shaper module, and finally, a limiter. On closer inspection, iZotope Neutron is essentially the spiritual successor to Alloy 2. It will also always turn up on time and won’t spill drinks on your mixing desk. IZotope’s latest plug-in suite contains a feature that can listen to the audio of your tracks, intelligently analyse the dynamic and spectral content, and then recommend the placement of EQ nodes, and set optimal settings for the other modules. With that in mind, we’d like to introduce you to your new assistant, iZotope Neutron Advanced. Studio assistants aren’t just useful for making coffee and comping hours of vocal takes, they also play the important role of freeing up your time to make more critical creative and technical decisions.