Nectar 3 Updated to 3.9.0

[Larry Shelby]

Run the IPP to update

[GTsongwriter]

I've got a couple of iZotope plugins, like RX Standard, Vocal Doubler, and Ozone Standard.  All of their major plugins is very very very CPU hungry.  They really bog down the computer!  For that reason, I don't plan to invest any more into their software.

[Promidi]

1 hour ago, El Diablo said:

I've got a couple of iZotope plugins, like RX Standard, Vocal Doubler, and Ozone Standard.  All of their major plugins is very very very CPU hungry.  They really bog down the computer!  For that reason, I don't plan to invest any more into their software.

Ok

[iNate]

6 hours ago, El Diablo said:

I've got a couple of iZotope plugins, like RX Standard, Vocal Doubler, and Ozone Standard.  All of their major plugins is very very very CPU hungry.  They really bog down the computer!  For that reason, I don't plan to invest any more into their software.

No issues with iZotope's plug-ins on my machines.  I use them heavily.

I think maybe it's time for you to upgrade your toaster.

Also, a lot of people come to threads in this forum to do nothing but whine about off-topic details.  Can we not?

[GTsongwriter]

1 hour ago, iNate said:

No issues with iZotope's plug-ins on my machines.  I use them heavily.

I think maybe it's time for you to upgrade your toaster.

Also, a lot of people come to threads in this forum to do nothing but whine about off-topic details.  Can we not?

i7-6700HQ, 32 gb of ram, 2 TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS M.2, should be good enough?

[kitekrazy1]

7 hours ago, El Diablo said:

I've got a couple of iZotope plugins, like RX Standard, Vocal Doubler, and Ozone Standard.  All of their major plugins is very very very CPU hungry.  They really bog down the computer!  For that reason, I don't plan to invest any more into their software.

I guess that would depend on how you use them. Aren't these more for mixing and mastering? 

[dubdisciple]

9 hours ago, El Diablo said:

I've got a couple of iZotope plugins, like RX Standard, Vocal Doubler, and Ozone Standard.  All of their major plugins is very very very CPU hungry.  They really bog down the computer!  For that reason, I don't plan to invest any more into their software.

I won't gaslight you. There are so many variables across PCs that can contribute to bogging down computer. Ozone and RX are powerhouse programs that are more CPU hungry than average. I have not had noticed them to be any more CPU hungry than similar type products.  Do you use suites similar to Ozone or RX that are more efficient?

[GTsongwriter]

34 minutes ago, dubdisciple said:

I won't gaslight you. There are so many variables across PCs that can contribute to bogging down computer. Ozone and RX are powerhouse programs that are more CPU hungry than average. I have not had noticed them to be any more CPU hungry than similar type products.  Do you use suites similar to Ozone or RX that are more efficient?

Acon Acoustica Premium Edition uses much less CPU and does a much better job than RX.

I have yet to find a comparable replacement for Ozone.  I used to use Sonible Smart Limiter, Sonible Smart Balance, and HorNet Total EQ as a mastering chain, but Ozone's Assistant does a better job at mastering than myself.  I had Ozone remaster a song for me and it glued it together very nicely.  I just wish it wasn't such a hog.  I'm still searching for a replacement for Ozone that doesn't use so much CPU processing power.

[TheSteven]

6 hours ago, El Diablo said:

i7-6700HQ, 32 gb of ram, 2 TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS M.2, should be good enough?

Hi E.D. - not picking on you, just giving information.
 
CPU is probably the bottleneck.  CPU architecture has improved a lot over the last couple of years and an i7 in itself is no longer an indicator of sufficient performance.
E.G. I had a 2012 Alienware i7, 24GB RAM, 2  4TB SDD Samsung EVO drives and finally had to concede that it was outperformed by my kids newer i5 powered laptop.

I found this info googling around...
In general you will get better performance with a newer i5 vs older i7.
Older i7's (like your i7-6700HQ) were 4 cores with 8 threads. Newer i5's are either 6 cores and 6 threads or 6 cores with 12 threads.
The i5 9600K achieves better performance than the i7 7700K, and the i5 10600K achieves better performance than an i7 8700K.
UserBenchmark: Intel Core i7-6700HQ vs i7-7700K

Don't know if upgrading your CPU is an option, but in terms of bang for the buck might be worth checking out.

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by TheSteven

[Brian Walton]

8 hours ago, iNate said:

No issues with iZotope's plug-ins on my machines.  I use them heavily.

I think maybe it's time for you to upgrade your toaster.

Also, a lot of people come to threads in this forum to do nothing but whine about off-topic details.  Can we not?

Noting that a plugin is a resource hog is pretty relevant if you don't have a plugin already.  The only irrelevant point here is I'm not sure the poster even has this one.

 

I was shocked at how inefficient NeoVerb is since is it built with the very efficient EA algos.  Crazy hungry IMO.

On topic I think the full Nectar works for better than. The elements one, which the other elements programs I find quite good (though might be a bit on the inefficient side)

[Promidi]

13 hours ago, El Diablo said:

i7-6700HQ, 32 gb of ram, 2 TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS M.2, should be good enough?

If Ozone products are “very very very CPU hungry” on your system....  then something else is going on there that needs to be addressed. 

It’s less about the specs that you mentioned and more about how the PC is set up.

[Jeremy Oakes]

I would imagine this fixes the v3.8 crashing ?

J

[iNate]

19 hours ago, El Diablo said:

i7-6700HQ, 32 gb of ram, 2 TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS M.2, should be good enough?

I have a machine with an i7-7700HQ, 32GB DDR4-2400MHz RAM adn NVMe + SATA SSDs (and a GTX 1050 4GB).

So, I know what the performance is like on a machine (a bit better) than what you have.

I don't really care what you use.  It just seems odd that people with 8-9 year old Laptop CPUs are bashing products for being "CPU hungry."

Like, what did you expect?  iZotope isn't not developing products in 2020 and testing performance on CPUs from 2015.  Almost no developer does this.

Edited June 23, 2023 by iNate

[iNate]

13 hours ago, TheSteven said:

Hi E.D. - not picking on you, just giving information.
 
CPU is probably the bottleneck.  CPU architecture has improved a lot over the last couple of years and an i7 in itself is no longer an indicator of sufficient performance.
E.G. I had a 2012 Alienware i7, 24GB RAM, 2  4TB SDD Samsung EVO drives and finally had to concede that it was outperformed by my kids newer i5 powered laptop.

I found this info googling around...
In general you will get better performance with a newer i5 vs older i7.
Older i7's (like your i7-6700HQ) were 4 cores with 8 threads. Newer i5's are either 6 cores and 6 threads or 6 cores with 12 threads.
The i5 9600K achieves better performance than the i7 7700K, and the i5 10600K achieves better performance than an i7 8700K.
UserBenchmark: Intel Core i7-6700HQ vs i7-7700K

Don't know if upgrading your CPU is an option, but in terms of bang for the buck might be worth checking out.

 

It's a laptop.  It's not an option to upgrade the CPU.  When I felt my i7-7700HQ getting slow, I replaced it with a Ryzen 9 system.  That is the only option.  The only time you can just bolt a major component on, is if the machine support Thunderbolt and you have an eGPU to put a better dGPU in.

This is why getting a laptop as an ONLY machine for creative work is [generally] a bad idea.  It's better to have a stationary desktop that is more economical to keep current technologically than go for a laptop and be stuck with a machine that performs increasingly poorly as it ages without the ability to mitigate it apart from replacing the entire thing.

Those laptops were not cheap back in 2017/18, either.  So portability was likely a bigger consideration than price, but I don't think the long-term drawbacks are worth even that.

I still use laptops, but I don't expect the one I have with a 7th Gen i7 to feel good running creative software (music production, video editing, etc.).

19 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

I guess that would depend on how you use them. Aren't these more for mixing and mastering? 

Ozone = Mastering

RX = Post Production & Audio Restoration

Vocal Doubler = Mixing

Ozone will stress an old CPU when used in a Mixing Scenario at low latencies.  They add a lot of plug-in latency.  RX is for Post and Restoration and restoration algorithms are pretty much de facto CPU intensive.

Generally, when mixing you'd want to use Neutron over Ozone, and use Ozone only as a last resort.  There is a lot of overlap between them, in terms of what modules and discrete plug-ins they offer... this causes a lot of people to "go Ozone" because they think they are killing two birds with one stone.  But they aren't.  They just end up using Ozone in an inoptimal scenario and then running into problems as a result of that workflow.

NeoVerb basically runs multiple Reverbs in parallel and mixes them based on settings in the plug-in.  It also has other effects under the hood, so it isn't surprising that it uses a decent amount of CPU.

IMO, the major selling point of iZotope is the inter-plugin communication workflow that most people who buy them never use ? 

Edited June 23, 2023 by iNate

[mibby]

@El Diablo Resource hog, yes, but Nectar 3 Plus is one of my favorite Izotope plugins, if not THE favorite and is waaaaay better than the Elements version!  I like to run it on a vocal to see what it thinks the vocal needs, then I tweak from there.  But later in the mixing process or if I need it on more than a couple of tracks or if there are a lot of tracks and I'm needing more CPU, this is one of the first places I look and I'll render the track with the plugin to save some cycles. 

One of my favorite features is the Follow mode on the EQ. I almost always look there first to see where to reduce muddiness and/or boxiness in the vocal track. I like the auto Leveler on this thing too. 

But this is a very VERY good plugin IMHO and has a solid place in my mix template on LV!

-- edit ---

Forgot to mention the De-esser too!

Edited June 23, 2023 by mibby

[GTsongwriter]

The laptop is the best way to travel.  I do mixing / mastering on the road.  I had a Tower that was more powerful, but the road and vibrations of the road killed it. The laptop handles the road much better.

Since the iZotope plugins I have tend to be CPU hungry and all other newer plugins I currently own are not yet pulling so much load, I beg to differ that I would need a newer laptop.

Ozone is only used for after I have mixed down to stereo with no other plugins.  It pulls ?% CPU during it's analyzing phase and 40-50% afterwords which doesn't leave much room for any other mastering plugins.

RX is only used in parts on a track and mixed down to a new track before that track is used.  I can't use RX on a track without mixing down as it hogs allot of CPU.

Vocal Doubler is constantly using 20% CPU for whatever reason.

Just those 3 plugins from iZotope has convinced me that iZotope is a company to avoid for now, or until I get a new laptop.

[GTsongwriter]

4 minutes ago, mibby said:

@El Diablo Resource hog, yes, but Nectar 3 Plus is one of my favorite Izotope plugins, if not THE favorite and is waaaaay better than the Elements version!  I like to run it on a vocal to see what it thinks the vocal needs, then I tweak from there.  But later in the mixing process or if I need it on more than a couple of tracks or if there are a lot of tracks and I'm needing more CPU, this is one of the first places I look and I'll render the track with the plugin to save some cycles. 

One of my favorite features is the Follow mode on the EQ. I almost always look there first to see where to reduce muddiness and/or boxiness in the vocal track. I like the auto Leveler on this thing too. 

But this is a very VERY good plugin IMHO and has a solid place in my mix template on LV!

-- edit ---

Forgot to mention the De-esser too!

I have RX 10 Standard and Ozone 10 Standard and Vocal Doubler 

[GTsongwriter]

For mixing, I used Sonible Smart EQ.  It allows me to group up to six tracks, put them in 3 way layer (front, middle, back) and it automatically EQs them.  There's even auto dynamic EQ.

Is that what Nectar does?

[ALC]

I have Nectar 3 (3.3.0), but unfortunately doesn’t show an update for me.

I guess it’s really an update for Nectar 3 Plus.

Edited June 23, 2023 by ALC

[dubdisciple]

1 hour ago, El Diablo said:

For mixing, I used Sonible Smart EQ.  It allows me to group up to six tracks, put them in 3 way layer (front, middle, back) and it automatically EQs them.  There's even auto dynamic EQ.

Is that what Nectar does?

Nectar will do that but allows for more than six. It also will account for tracks with other Izotope plugins and do the same. I haven't used Smart EQ to compare workflow and effectiveness, but I find Nectar pretty intuitive.  The Izotope system does allow for limited inclusion of non-Izotope products by using Relay plugin. What can be controlled via AI are mostly along the lines of relative gain and initial mix levels, but still a nice feature.