I've had Alloy in my folder, for a good year now at least, It's set up on a send chanel as template set every time I load Ableton.
Everything you need is set up just like Ozone (Izotopes mastering plugin)so I have no problems navigating around, experimenting and tweeking it's control.
The plugin come's with some neat features, most noticeable for me are the mid side and multiband options in the compressor, de-esser and transient designer.
Less is more with Alloy, I try not to overdo any hard settings with the use of macro's and presets, it's quite easy with drums to add more processing than is needeed, but Alloy does a stirling job of quickening my work flow, with all the tools at close hand and options that make you think about what your doing.
I'm guessing Alloy works well with vocal's, samples and synths, just more recently I'm trying to use it for control over synths and samplers, as I feel it's has a good set of eq, and spacial control in components such as the exciter, to add spank and air to the sound stage.
That being said, sometimes you could be forgiven for thinking that components such as the exciter aren't really doing much, but with Alloy the idea seems to be a dynamic of at least 2 or more of the modules turned on, so you compencate by not overdoing the sound wet level in any particular chanel.
But on the whole more punchy material is where Alloy stands out, multiband compression and transient shaping really helping in this area.
Latency is low, very low considering the sum of it's parts, I feel quite happy to work with Alloy as just an Eq or shaper on a audio chanel in Ableton with out any big consideriation about it's impact on the set I'm building.
Cost will be the biggest problem I think for the ameture musician like me it's current price is a bit steep, however, even though that's not a plus point for your pocket, the tools in it won't be expected to be outgrown by your ability any time soon, and for me I'm still learning about some of it's more prominent features, let alone it's deeper processing capacity.
All in all, Izotope has a good demo policy set up, so you should really give it a go, if your need's are moving from fun to functional in a plugin.
I would make this a serious contender, as Eq, Compressor, Exciter, Limiter, transient shaper and De-esser plugins as quality individual plugins, don't come in cheap from any software designers, so it's worth a quick calculation.
Alloy is a keeper, and one of the most important tools in my box.
