Izotope Neutron (help needed): problem with mutual external sidechaining

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(I use Reaper)

I sincerely hope to be wrong, and my knowledge about the subject is limited, but here's my situation:

1-I have a bass and a guitar that I want to mutually 'unmask'

2-I want to use the EQ with "dynamic+ext. sidechain" mode, because it sounds alot more organic than a static EQ, and a better option than "dynamic+internal sidechain" since I dont want to duck stuff in my guitar if the bass is not playing and conversely

3- So I basically want to put conversely in sidechain the 2 instruments:
a) When bass play (ext. sc), the guitar duck at 120Hz
b) When guitar plays (ext. sc), the Bass duck around 2Khz

*Now here comes the conflict: **only 1 of the 2 instruments accepts ext. sidechain**, the other instrument's dynamic EQ bands remain stationary; it's actually not allowed to make the 2 instruments conversely sidechain each other, I guess because of feedback loop.

So how to set neutron or Reaper to get what I want and make tracks properly communicate? That's really disappointing...

From what I understand, at worst *specific bands* (not full-range) could stop moving if any conflicts occur or better, find a compromise (Maybe prioritize one instrument over the other depending on the frequency area (specific-band), generating at worst a little bit of latency to process)

Conflict example:
a) If I want the guitar to duck the bass at 2Khz, and conversely request from the bass to duck the guitar at 2Khz. Not allowing this seems to me logical; but why cant I duck the guitar at 120hz from the bass input, and conversely duck the bass at 2k from guitar input?

Why Neutron could not apply pre-processing 'HP/LP/BP' cut in areas where conflict may appear, avoiding easily risks of loop?

b) Harmonic content: if I duck guitar at 120hz from bass, I think there could be changes in the harmonics content.

Could someone help? Is there a way around? Otherwise Neutron as from what I understand is not as "revolutionary" as it claims. Thank you!

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So I'm assuming you're using Reaper's sends to send each track to channel 3/4 of the target track?

If so, and it is not working, I'd try to duplicate one of them (e.g. bass), and send THAT to the other one (e.g. guitar) pre-fader while keeping its fader volume at zero. This track should not be receiving any sidechain from the guitar and its purpose is purely to feed the guitar's SC.

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Yes, 3/4 from each track.

About duplicating: it works with Melda MAutoDynamicEq when I send "bass" to an aux track, and use it pre-fader to sidechain the guitar (which is sidechaining bass directly). But I prefer to have only 2 track instead of 3, because if I want to sidechain guitar with vocal, kick, lead guitar etc. it is non-sense from an ergonomic point of view to create *aux tracks* for each.

But Neutron wont let me do it and with track duplication, I wont be able to work in realtime (unless I bounce each time I do slight change on track fx chain)

In what sending the signal from the bass *as is* to an aux *pre-fader*, then making it *external sidechain* for one or two band in neutron is in pratice any different from sending it directly? Why would Melda/Reaper let me send the aux track as 'ext sc' and not the original one?

I thought Neutron was about making tracks communicate with each others; mutual sidechaining is I think the way to go for organic mixes, which would be a real revolution in my opinion; so as for Neutron as it is now it's no revolution for me if it can only make a 'dominant' track in mutual sidechaining while muting the other.

If only Melda had 'masking' and 'reverse link'.

Otherwise I guess I wont have choice to choose a dominant track (guitar OR bass) instead of dominant frequency ranges ([guitar 2k vs bass], AND [bass 120hz vs guitar]), and later bounce to multiple stems to make Neutron act as it should. . .. ? ...

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Am I missing something? Can somebody explain to me why it's not possible? Thank you

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I've never tried this kind of thing tbh.. have you contacted Izotope support?

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Message sent yesterday; waiting for reply

But Bouroki, do you understand why this kind of approach can be interesting in alot of context over "internal-sc dyn-eq" or "static eq"?

It seems to me to be the best and the easiest, most organic way to approach a mix. I must be missing something about technical issues as I say, otherwise I don't understand why no vst or DAW (from what I know) offers this option

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Would 2 instances enable you to do this? Is that possible?
Also Waves Factories Track Spacer with one instance on each, side chained to the other at the relevant frequencies would do this .. I think.

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astramistil wrote:Message sent yesterday; waiting for reply

But Bouroki, do you understand why this kind of approach can be interesting in alot of context over "internal-sc dyn-eq" or "static eq"?

It seems to me to be the best and the easiest, most organic way to approach a mix. I must be missing something about technical issues as I say, otherwise I don't understand why no vst or DAW (from what I know) offers this option
Sure it could be interesting but I'd see it as a technique to be used in conjuction with everything else rather than "instead" of everything else. Nothing in mixing is black or white - it's a very very tough & draining process, and the ear has the tendency to defy all logic and prefer one solution over the other even if in theory it would have seemed less than ideal.

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