iZotope Intros Free Spectral Shaping Plugin Neutrino

iZotope has introduced Neutrino, a free spectral shaping effect for Mac & Windows.

The plugin features four modes – voice, instrument, bass, and drums – designed to let you improve the balance of your mixes, without sacrificing dynamics.

iZotope offers these suggestions for using Neutrino:

  1. Use it everywhere. Neutrino is meant to be used on many individual tracks, submixes or stems, not your master track. In many digital audio workstations, you can add a plug-in to all tracks at once by holding down the Option key and inserting Neutrino. Neutrino has been optimized to use very little CPU power, so you can comfortably use it on all the tracks in your session without a problem.
  2. Try it at the end of your signal chain. You can instantiate Neutrino anywhere in your signal chain to get the sound you want, but try starting with it at the end of your signal chain, in the same way that you might use an analog summing emulation.
  3. Set the mode and starting points for each track. Now go through each instance of Neutrino and choose the respective mode (Voice, Instrument, Bass, Drums). Then set both the amount and detail controls to 25% as a starting point. You can come back and tweak these later, but it’s important to adjust these when listening in the context of the full mix, as opposed to individually with each track soloed.
  4. Audition them all at once. In many workstations, you can bypass all the instances of a plug-in across one lane of insert slots by holding Option + Command on a Mac, or Control + ALT on a PC and clicking on one of the plug-in instances. Listen to how Neutrino subtly influences the mix.
  5. Make adjustments in groups. To make finer adjustments, listen to tracks in groups, like all the drums or guitars together. Make small adjustments across the group. The Detail control adjusts the granularity of processing across the frequency spectrum. Because Neutrino is constantly listening and adjusting to the incoming signal, changes made on the Detail knob may take a second to adjust, so we suggest that you make a small adjustment, pause, then listen to the effect it’s had on your signal. Fast adjustments, especially to extremes of the control, may not be heard immediately as Neutrino catches up. The Amount control adjusts how much of Neutrino’s dynamic processing is applied. Sometimes it can be advantageous to bring the Amount knob up to 75-100%, make some slow, small adjustments to the Detail knob so you can distinctly hear their effect, and then bring the Amount knob back down until they become subtle again.

Pricing and Availability

Neutrino is available as a free download for Mac & Windows. Creating an account on the site with a valid email address is required to download the plugin.

17 thoughts on “iZotope Intros Free Spectral Shaping Plugin Neutrino

      1. its pretty subtle yeh – the subtitles clue you in, though

        sounds like it makes the upper end transients pop out a tiny bit more

        not sure its worth it for the DSP

    1. Downloaded it. I hear about 1 gnat’s ass difference between zero and fully on. The detail knob makes about 2 g.a. units difference. That’s the voice one, on clean spoken words. For other instruments, can’t really say other than “extremely subtle” at best.

  1. I think people are being a bit harsh on this; Yes, the difference is very subtle (/imperceptible, in some circumstances), but, listening to the demo, through a cheap audio interface and relatively cheap headphones, there was still a difference (wouldn’t like to say what, but I could pick the bypassed versions from non-bypassed blind most of the time). It does improve the sound a little, and hell, it’s free. Stop complaining.

    1. I agree. The criticism seems pretty harsh. There was clearly a difference between the bypassed signal and the processed signal when listened to on a set of studio monitors. The processed signal was crisper and more focused.

      iZotope has been making excellent limiters, eq’s, distortion plugins for years.
      I’m still a big fan of Trash (2).
      If any company could bundle eq’ing, compression, and harmonic exciter into an easy-to-use package it’s their a good candidate. Hopefully this is light on CPU as they are promising.
      At the end of the day it’s a free plugin. I’m going to give it a try.

  2. Whats the use of “enhanced clarity” if you don`t know what it`s doing exactly?
    Most people will say something sounds better even as soon as you throw a limiter on a track and reduce gain by 1-2 db.
    Why don`t they bring out a “make the track more popular” one-knob plugin or “make it deeper and don`t tell me how you did it!”

    Come on people. Not everything is worth a try just because it is Free

    1. Have you tried it? I was quite impressed. Their web site explains what’s going on: Automatic multiband compression across a high number of different frequency bands.

  3. This is great! And there’s quite lot of a difference when you insert it on every channel/group on an already mixed tune. I did it on an over-arranged rock piece and that added a lot of clarity to the overall mix. With both dials fully on in every instance it was even to much detail, but when dialed accordingly it worked like magic.

  4. I think I made the first little comment about it being so subtle as to be unnoticeable yesterday…for some reason, the comment was deleted.

    Did I offend someone? I thought I was pretty lighthearted about it all, really.

    I messed around with it. It is subtle, but it does add a little soft saturation, the audio equivalent to film grain video editing plugin filters. I do think there are a few ways to achieve a similar effect, but Izotope does this kind of thing fairly often in one and done plugins. Try it, tweak it a little with a couple of buttons, done. If you like the effect, certainly no harm done.

    I am not ungrateful for a little freebie. No strings attached. I am not as grateful for having my comments slashed, however.

  5. It would have been smart and more helpful if they had chose audio with more problems. It’s one thing to take the output of a drum machine and apply subtle multi-band (“spectral”) limiting. Quite another to take a drum set recording by a $#!++`/ mic in a $#!++`/ room.

    Let’s hear that plugin polish some turds!

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