I struggle with mixing (getting relative track volume levels correct) and mastering (the final 5% of polishing before a release).   It’s time consuming, and I’m pretty sure my ears still lack the professional touch of an audio engineer.  At the same time, I’m trying to get my production speed up and I’m not willing to pay $50-$500/track to have it professionally mixed and mastered.

What’s a Ninja to do?

Enter the O8N2 bundle featuring Neutron 2 Advanced and Ozone 8 Advanced.  I’ve spent the last week mixing and mastering my upcoming track Distant Lovers with the software.  Is it worth the $699 bundle price (Note: on sale August 2018 for $399)

Here’s the promo video:

While many of the Neutron/Ozone features I can do organically in Ableton (EQ, limiting, exciting, etc.) this bundle has some killer features that Ableon just can’t match:

1. Artificial Intelligence track assistant (Neutron) and master assistant (Ozone). Pretty darn good, and I learned some things watching the decisions it made such as when to apply compression, where to make cuts, when to make boosts, and how much to limit.  That said, some of it’s decisions didn’t make sense. For example, Neutron failed to cut the sub-100hz frequencies on a vocal track. Why leave those to muddy up my bass?
2. Auto gain match.  Louder always sounds better to our years. By using Ozone’s gain match feature you can compare the mastering changes with the original track without the loudness bias.
3. Easy referencing across multiple tracks.  Reference tracks are critical, and Ozone makes it super easy to reference up to 10 tracks.
4. Visual mixer.  Innovative system for adjusting volume and space in your mix.  It’s a little gimmicky and has some annoying limitations (see below) but I can still see myself using this.
5. Masking meter.  Great for identifying and mitigating frequency clashes across tracks.  Very useful!
6. Dynamic equalizer.  EQ that reacts to the input signal. Ableton lacks an organic tool for this, and it’s a nice choice for many mixing decisions.

Did it work as advertised?

Overall, yes, I was impressed.  The track assistant quickly provided unique recommendations for both mixing and mastering.  It could do that based on some preset choices or based on a reference track I provided.  The software was generally easy an intuitive to use.  The masking meter sped up my workflow for cutting conflicting frequencies across tracks, and the visual mixer was a fun and intuitive way of adding a sense of space to my mix.

I did have some complaints.

Major gripes:

• Stability.  I had NUMEROUS crashes and the iZotope software has always been a memory hog. I recommend at least 16gb of RAM, preferably more. Save often.

Minor gripes: 

• When I froze a track in Ableton, the visual mixer didn’t seem to function anymore for that track.
• The windows don’t resize.
• While the individual instances of Neutron or MixTap “talk” to one another across tracks, Neutron isn’t smart enough to pick up on track names forcing me to manually re-name each instance of Neutron if I want to use the visual mixer.   To add insult to injury, when I re-ordered my tracks, Ableton will automatically re-assign track numbers (I use the # sign in the track names).  With Neutron, I had to then go into the plugin and manually re-number each affected instance.

Bottom line: Is it worth “it?”

No question, download the 10-day trial and see what you think.  This is a great time to do it because it’s on sale through the end of August 2018.  At a minimum, you’ll learn something by carefully looking at the track assistant recommendations.  Use it to master your next tune and make the call.  Reading iZotope’s mixing and mastering guides is helpful.

For me, it is definitely not worth the full price ($500 for Neutron 2 Advanced and another $500 for Ozone 8 Advanced), but there are numerous discount programs that are seriously tempting:

1. Izotope offers educational discounts up to 50%, but not on bundles.
2. If you already own an iZotope product, log into your account and look for cross-grade deals.  Because I own Nectar, they’re offering me a sale & cross-grade deal of $199 for the O8N2 bundle which is a steal in my book.  This is the route I’m going.
3. If you don’t want a big up-front investment, you can get the software via Splice rent-to-own for $27.99/month for 25 months.  That totals to $699.75 which is the usual price for the bundle (still less than the retail of $1,000 for both pieces of software independently, and no interest!)

I’m still not convinced.  What are my other options?

If you want to stick with Ableton’s organic tools, you can certainly emulate some of Neutron and Ozone using stock plugins and Max for Live (M4L).  For referencing tracks, I particularly like Mix Matcher and Referencer.   For dynamic EQing you can create your own using M4L and EQ 8.  For some some AI assistance, you can consider Landr or Cloudbounce for an inexpensive, instant mastering option.

…Or just hire a professional

If you have the money and don’t want to invest the time doing it yourself, you can also send your track out to be mixed an mastered. There are lots of online services such as Soundlab  (a CD baby partner) or via a freelancer site such as Soundbetter.   There is certainly an argument to be made that you should have an unbiased set of ears mix and master your tracks.  Currently I prefer to save the money and know that my track is my creative work from start to finish. At least the instrumentals. I don’t sing. Yet.

What do you think? How do you mix and master your tracks?