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New Plugin Boutique Freebie for Nov

Larry Shelby

By Larry Shelby
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Brian Walton

Brian Walton

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A bit of a bummer since it seems like these have been freebies over and over again at various places.

Great tools for those that don't have them.

Nectar - I personally think was the only one that didn't meet/exceede my expectations.    (I know I paid for it shortly after it came out...not sure it has been free before)

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X-53mph

X-53mph

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10 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

Nectar - I personally think was the only one that didn't meet/exceede my expectations.    (I know I paid for it shortly after it came out...not sure it has been free before)

Totally agree - it actually seemed to ruin a few of my mixes.

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Brian Walton

Brian Walton

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47 minutes ago, mibby said:

Yep, unfortunately I have all of those freebies already.

BTW, @Brian Walton - I agree with the Nectar Elements comment, but don't let the elements version throw you. The full blown Nectar 3 is a game-changing plugin.  (At least for me it was!)

If i had hopped on that $30 pricing mistake from MF....maybe...but I can't see spending anywhere close to normal upgrade prices on that one.  Maybe if  I rounded out the other upgrades first.  

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mibby

mibby

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3 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

If i had hopped on that $30 pricing mistake from MF....maybe...but I can't see spending anywhere close to normal upgrade prices on that one.  Maybe if  I rounded out the other upgrades first. 

I was on for like $49 bucks or so a couple of months ago, so if you're patient.  Seriously a good one though!

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Starship Krupa

Starship Krupa

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I'm with Brian as far as Nectar being the one I find least useful of the iZotope suites. I got in on the recent pricing mistake deal on Standard. It has the usual top notch UI and processing, but so far it hasn't gotten me anywhere I wasn't already getting with good ol' compression, EQ, and a license for Trackspacer. Also there's one of its modules that it assumes I'll always want to have turned on, and while I figured out how to bypass it, I find that annoying.

@mibby, I'd like to hear more about what you dig so much about Nectar, in the hopes that it will help me get more out of it. As with everything iZotope, I want to love it because it looks so great and I know they put a lot into making their products useful.

One of the things I've always liked about the other Ozone suites is that (despite what I had heard), you can turn on and use each of the processors individually if you like. Nectar seems to lean more toward the pre-configured. I'm sure I can get more out of it.

Nectar Elements on the other hand is of no use to me whatsoever, it's like having a handful of Cakewalk Style Dials or Waves One Knobs stuck in one UI. I don't care for single knob interfaces that don't allow me under the hood, and having 4 of them is like a box of bleah.

For anyone who doesn't already have any flavor of Ozone or Neutron, they are, even in the Elements configurations are both amazing, stunning, even. Ozone was heartbreaking at first because I had spent months learning mastering processing and just throwing its presets on my mixes blew away my best efforts. But it was also a great learning tool, because I studied what it was doing and kept at it until I could take almost any combination of paragraphic EQ, compressor, and  limiter and get results that I liked better.

Even if you already have your mixing and mastering chains dialed in, the Elements are killer for making immediate preliminary "playback mixes" that will impress the people who are recording or just hanging out in your studio.

Also, I think the current Neutron Elements comes with Visual Mixer, which if you've not tried it, is an amazing tool. Going forward, every time I have multiple background vocals to mix, I'll be putting Visual Mixer on there. I turned myself into the Moron Tabernacle Choir with it.

I'll be jumping on this in order to be able to gift the licenses to friends who are just starting out in home recording.

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mibby

mibby

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1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

Nectar Elements on the other hand is of no use to me whatsoever...

Agree. I had to overcome my "meh" feeling towards Nectar because of this.  But one of my mixing "mentors" kept saying how good it was, so I finally picked it up and started using it.  BTW, Nectar 2 was very "meh" also.  But Nectar 3....  ?

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

One of the things I've always liked about the other Ozone suites is that (despite what I had heard), you can turn on and use each of the processors individually if you like. Nectar seems to lean more toward the pre-configured. I'm sure I can get more out of it.

I emailed support about this. It would be sooo kewl to be able to use the individual pieces as separate plugins. I'm only now realizing how good the Neutron 2 plugins are separately.  I never used the plugin before because of the CPU hit. But individually, they seem a lot better.

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

I'd like to hear more about what you dig so much about Nectar, in the hopes that it will help me get more out of it.

Briefly - and generally - when I mix a vocal track, I do basic tonal and HP EQ, then leveling, then Melodyne for tuning and more leveling.  Then I go into the Nectar 3 "black box"...  I'll typically use the Assistant to get to a starting place.  I also usually ignore the AutoTuner and the Gate. 

Here's the N3 chain I used just last night:

0. Run the Assistant based on the song style.  I have yet to use the AutoTuner and wish I could delete it, same with the Gate, which I can delete. (But I just need to learn to use this one better, no doubt.)

1.  EQ - corrective, suggested by Assistant. Tweak if needed. The "Frequency Follower" on the N3 EQ is amazing! *  

* Check out a tutorial or two. It's great for getting rid of boxiness for example.

2. Peak Compressor - I add a VCA Peak Compressor here to shave of more peaks and do some leveling.

3. De-Esser - this is another one I really like. I usually just double-check the settings after setting up my 1st compressor. Such a great UI!

4. EQ - This is the Assistant's "sweetening EQ". I'll check here and see if I want to change anything, but generally it's pretty good!

5. Character Compressor (or not) - I use N3s original Assistant suggested compressor as a starting point. I never hit these as hard as N3 suggests though.

6. Reverb - I dial it waaaay back to like 3-5% just to give some fullness.

7. I almost always add a 1/4 delay to the vocal to give it some depth, also dialed way back.

That's it. I haven't really used the Harmony or other sweetening features much yet. I've got other plugins like Melda and SoundToys for those things, but they are likely pretty good.  It is also fairly CPU intensive which is why I wish they'd break up the plugins like Neutron and Ozone.

For good measure, here's the rough mix using the above.  The song: It Must Be Voodoo by West End Blend. (Tracks from Telefunken/Cambridge-MT) 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNSlGtrqbZRik-D02emqUPWwWNRQANmL/view?usp=sharing

The core sound of the vocal is Nectar 3 as I described above. I didn't even run this through Melodyne, which I WILL to help with the leveling some more because this is a HUGELY dynamic vocal.  Of course it helps that she is a totally badass singer too!

The big verb you're hearing is Hyperspace.  I'm getting more familiar with that one and wanted to do some referencing, so the reverb is a bit over the top...

 

 

Edited by mibby
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