Mixing & Mastering // Gullfoss vs. Neutron & Ozone

I haven't used Neutron, but I have used gullfoss. I assume Neutron has some usefullness, but I don't think any software has the capability to put together a good mix for you at this time.

Good luck with mixing. I find it fascinating, and also (like composing sometimes) frustrating.

 

I'm new to it as well. I can tell you my experice with it. I know there are a lot of profesisonals who use Neutron and Ozone so it's good software. There are various other mastering suits that are good too. The mix has to be good or the mastering won't be any good. Neutron is made to more help the mix. It has a function that will listen to your mix and set levels enough to give you mastering headroom. I think that's a nice feature. It won't make a perfect mix for you. From there you have to tweak the levels individually yourself. I bet with rock music it does a good job but if you have orchestra music I don't think the neutron mix assistant works good other than setting initial levels for mastering headroom. Still setting the headroom levels is really helpful and a lot easier than trying to lower down the tracks manually.

Neutron can also automatically add some other plug ins like eq, satuation and compression. The auto helper thing can add those for you but it's hit or miss, you have to adjust those from there. I think the ozone machine learning is decent. It will use various plug ins to increase the loudness of the mix and get it to the standards for streaming or whatever format you need. It still need tweaks but often what I find is the issues I have usually go back to the mix. Izotope has the suite on sale a lot lately. I also have Gullfoss. If you want something to mix and master with Neutron and Ozone are what you want. Gullfoss is a really nice eq but it needs to be used very lightly because it has a tendancy to take something out of the mix too if you set it too high. It's more like a polish. I like a little bit of it on the master. Individual tracks I like the smart eq. It has really good presets and the machine learing on it is really good.

You could argue that these smart tools are crutches and don't help you get better. You could possibly improve your own skills faster by just messing around with a suite that doesn't have smart learning, and reading a lot of books. In my opinion though the machine learning, especially if you see how it is working and what it is trying to do can also be helpful. The smart eq has some presets on it like a violin curve for example. You can see the curve and listen to what it does to the sound. I run the machine learning on the smart eq and it usually give a similar curve for the preset though sometimes shifted because the instrument is lower or higher, or tries to slightly bring out or take out some areas more or less but the curve is usually similar to the preset. I find that kind of thing interesting.

I think I'm getting better but it takes a lot of trial and error, reading, and if you can getting feedback. Practicing wrong is kinda bad and I've done too much of that. Some things that seem like obvious choices are sometimes the opposite of what you should actually do. At least with orchestral music you don't have to pan, and if it's well orchestrated, things sit in their own space more or less. I think my main issues are more with orchestration than the mix usually. (but my mixing needs a lot of work don't get me wrong) Once that's fixed the mix gets better just automatically.

I think the machine learning stuff can get you a reasonable sounding master and I'm glad this kind of tech exists.

 

The Izotope suite is great. You won't regret getting it. Did you get a subscription to Groove 3 with it? I did when I got mine. It has lots of videos on mixing specifically with ozone and neutron.