Hey there, Geoff Manchester from iZotope. In
this video we're continuing our exploration of lesser-known or hidden features in our tools.
To catch up on previous videos we've done around Nectar Pro, RX Pro for Music, and Ozone Pro.
You can check a nested playlist here on youtube. Now, Neutron is to mixing what Ozone is
to mastering. It's an intelligent, modular channel strip that's designed to help you with
virtually any mixing task. Before we get started, if you haven't tried Neutron Pro, you can get
it for free in a trial of Music Production Suite Pro at iZotope.com and that way you'll have it
up in front of you with this video to help you with the educational process. Without further ado,
let's jump into 10 hidden features in Neutron Pro. The Masking Meter in Neutron Pro may come as
no surprise for long time users of the product. That being said, in my trainings, and travels,
and in talking to customers and users, I still find that people don't know about the
Masking Meter. Or, they know a little bit about it, but not enough to take full advantage of its
power. So let's break down, first how to find it in Neutron Pro, and then how to take advantage of
it in your next mix. When Neutron is used on two or more tracks in your digital audio workstation,
Masking Meter uses inter-plug-in communication to show you areas in the EQ where one
track clashes with another. You can use the masking meter between two individual tracks,
an individual track and a bus, between two buses; the choice is yours. Once you've got two Neutrons
set up, you'll spot the masking meter icon here. When you click open this drop down
menu, Neutron Pro will look for the other iZotope plugins in your session. To
keep things simple, I placed another Neutron on the bass track so it populates for me here
in the menu. By clicking on that track, the interface of the EQ changes a little. Now we can
see new controls. At the bottom of the EQ window, we have these two tabs. The first represents the
Neutron we're currently using, our kick, and the second, represents the Neutron on the other track,
our bass. I can toggle between them, like this. Let's explore what we're seeing. The
orange trace represents the frequency energy of the track on the other Neutron.
The intermittent orange flashes represent where masking might be occurring between
my two tracks. If I want even more help perceiving masking, I can
increase the sensitivity. Now, these pink columns will emerge giving
me a histogram of masking over time. So now that we understand what we're seeing, we
can take action. Based on where these flashes show up, I can decide to cut energy out of one track
so that the other track isn't clashing with it in that particular energy range. Let's say I want to
remove energy from the corresponding track so that it doesn't interfere with the intelligibility of
my main kick track here. Thanks to inter-plug-in communication, I don't have to open up the
other Neutron Pro's EQ. And that's because I can tap to it over here and make that dip. Now, it
might look like I'm performing this cut on the kick track, but it's actually remote controlling
the bass' EQ track all from the main EQ track on my kick track. To prove it, I'll open up the
bass track's EQ and you can see that that dip carried over. In fact, as I make more moves, you
can see that I'm remote controlling the bass' EQ. If you want to make specific boosts
and cuts, you can use the inverse link. Now, a boost on one track will trigger a cut in
the corresponding track in that specific area. You can always use the bypass EQ to see what
effect your EQ masking work has had on your mix by toggling it on and off here. By helping
you to quickly find and remove these clashes, Masking Meter gets you a
balanced mix faster than ever. The EQ in Neutron is a powerful tool. You've
got dynamic EQ bands, side chaining, unmasking, and more. But what many people don't know is that
there's a soft saturation tool which is there to give you analog warmth when you need it. Soft
saturation adds harmonic excitement to the signal. It's not like the exciter, however, which
tries to emulate tubes tape and other sounds. This excitement is fashioned on a
classic British console equalizer, which means to expect a delicate
helping of sonic enhancement. So consider enabling it to add even more warmth to
a bass line, or tone to a rhythm guitar. Ideally, to get the best of soft saturation, you'll want
to be making boosts rather than cuts. And you can always toggle the icon off and on to hear the
difference that soft saturation imparts on a mix. iZotope's tools have always been assistive in
nature. Take our compressors and EQs, which offer rich vibrant visual information to see what
you're EQ'ing or compressing against the sound source in real time with spectral information,
or the AI powered assistants that listen and then give you a great starting point. Well, did
you know that there is a micro assistive tool in the EQ that will settle the EQ nodes over areas
of sonic importance where you might want to dip or cut energy from? You'll notice this little
EQ Learn toggle at the top right of the module. EQ Learn helps you to quickly locate
frequency areas of interest such as harshness, resonance, and more, so you know where to
start cutting. To get the process started, make sure some audio is playing on a track you're
going to EQ, then press the EQ Learn toggle. Now, you'll see the nodes move around as
they listen for areas of sonic importance. After some time, they'll settle and
you can consider their resting spots— places where you might want to cut by pulling
down a node in static or dynamic mode. Now, be sure to listen back to your moves either by
engaging and then disengaging the individual nodes themselves or by bypassing the module
altogether. Remember, assistive tools are here to help by offering a suggestion; it's up to
you to make the final decision using your ears. A relatively new feature in Neutron Pro might
have escaped your attention. It's called: Oscilloscope. And it's a novel way to see how
compression affects your sound source. Let me show you where to find it and how it works. You
can activate the Oscilloscope view with a button at the top of Neutron's compressor. Now you'll see
the oscilloscope meter. It's a meter that appears as a scrolling visualization of a waveform.
You can use this view to see the effects your compression settings are having as you make
adjustments in real time. You can use it on a single source, like a kick drum, to see how your
compression settings are affecting its waveform. Or, you can use Oscilloscope view
to dial in your perfect side chain as you're better able to visualize
your kick and bass together to see your compression as settings
are applied to each as you side chain. Sculptor is a powerful combination of equalization
and compression bundled together in a technology, in a process, known as spectral shaping. But what
many people don't know, is that there's a lot of hidden features within the module itself.
Let me show you a few of them. Many people already know how to get started with sculptor.
Just instantiate it on the sound source you're working on, go to the profile that matches your
source, and then adjust the parameters to taste. But what some people don't realize, is that
you can omit parts of the frequency domain from spectral shaping using the built-in bands.
To focus the processing on one area over another, just drag out these bands to protect certain
portions from processing. So if you like what sculptor is doing to the low end more than
the high end, drag the slider out like this. And another hidden workflow in sculptor
is the ability to use different profiles on different sound sources in
creative and unexpected ways. For example, try a guitar profile on a snare drum, or a vocal profile on a
piano, and see what happens. The exciter module in Neutron Pro is there
to give you blend-able flavors of saturation. But what some people don't realize, is that
there are ways you can really tailor and customize the enhancement of the saturation in
your mix. Saturation can add complex harmonic information over top of what you've recorded.
That could be a good thing or a bad thing, which is why you've got this filter to
protect the high end from saturation. The post filter applies gentle shelving for
attenuation and is displayed as a high shelf icon overlaid on the multiband spectrum
view. You can drag the post filter node to adjust the frequency and gain of the filter.
The post filter will affect the entire wet signal which can help adjust, attenuate, and tame
the exciter module's high frequency response. The limiter is one of the most lesser known
features in Neutron Pro. Let's take a moment to go over all of its flavors and parameters so you
can really get acquainted with this powerful tool. Above the input and output meters you'll
find the limiter and its controls. Click here to enable the BS 1770 compliant true peak
limiter to process digital loudness maximization of your output signal, while preventing true
peak overflows across all of your mono, stereo, and surround (more on that later) channels. You'll
see a couple things when you enable the limiter. When the limiter is actively limiting audio,
you'll see the amount of gain reduction shown in orange from the top of the meter. The output
gain slider, here, acts as the limiter input gain when the limiter is enabled. Slide up or
down to increase the loudness of your audio, up to 10 db of additional input gain to the
limiter without affecting the true peak level. Let's go over the styles. You can choose from
one of three character options for more direct control over the adaptive, transparent nature of
the limiting algorithm. If you choose 'clear', the limiter will respond more quickly in order to
better present fast-moving transient material in the mix. Smooth is the most common, best sounding
middle ground between 'clear' and 'thick.' It's the most appropriate algorithm for the majority of
program material, including vocals and dialogue. If you choose 'thick,' the limiter
will respond to audio more slowly— useful for louder, slower moving sounds like
a big explosion sound effect, or a bass, or low frequency swell where you wouldn't want
an aggressive limiter to break up the sound. Just like Ozone, Neutron has
different algorithms you can choose for how the limiter behaves. You can choose
to optimize a limiter in three different ways: IRC II, which has a transparent sonic
quality, IRC LL, which is low latency, and the third, Hard, which has a sonic
quality typical of a brick wall limiter. If you've seen our hidden features video on Ozone
Pro, then this technique might not be so hidden to you. It's about how to tweak the multi-band
compressors in Neutron Pro so that they respond and behave a little bit differently depending
on the frequency information coming in. When you open up the detection circuit filter
in the compressor module in Neutron Pro, you can adjust the frequency response of the
detection circuit so that it is more or less sensitive to specific frequencies. This is really
helpful if you want to prevent low frequencies from triggering the compressor to work harder
than it needs to, often causing a pumping effect. Parallel processing is a great way
to get the best of both worlds: a blended wet and dry signal that you can dial
in to taste. Did you know that in Neutron Pro, you have a totally streamlined parallel processing
method with just one slider. Let me show you how it works. Parallel processing can happen at
the module level here by adjusting the slider. That's it. No parameter routing required. This
means you can really balance guitar levels with one compressor and crush them, tastefully,
with another compressor, dialing in that crush sound to taste. Add sheen and sparkle
to keys with sculptor or the EQ, with extreme settings in the upper mids, and high end, and
then blend them in subtly with the mix sliders. The possibilities are endless. And you can also
find mixed sliders across our other products in Music Production Suite Pro like Nectar
Pro, Ozone Pro, and Vocal Synth Pro. Many people who use Neutron Pro are
probably mixing music. But if you do any post-production work, there's a trove of
hidden functionality for you within Neutron Pro. For example, Neutron Pro has tons of post
focused presets and offers up to 7.1 support. Let's dig in a little deeper. If you head to
the preset menu, you'll see that Neutron Pro is stocked with presets for post-production dialogue,
master track, music, production elements, and sound effects. You can preview these effects
in real time as you scroll past them. So whether you're working on a movie trailer, or foley
enhancement, Neutron Pro has you covered. Thank you so much for watching. I
really hope that these now apparent, tips, and techniques, and tricks, will be
genuinely helpful to you in your next mix. As ever head to izotope.com to get more
free educational content and to download a free trial of Music Production Suite
Pro. Thanks for watching and take care.
