iZotope

Ever wanted to learn how to master your own tracks? Well, you’re in luck. In Point Blank’s latest masterclass, they sat down with Dan D’Ascenzo from iZotope to demonstrate how you can use iZotope’s Ozone 9 to master your music for maximum impact.

iZotope and Native Instruments recently announced a merger under a new umbrella company and to celebrate they’re offering you the chance to download two of their plugins for free. NI are offering up Hybrid Keys, a Kontakt instrument full of keyboards, synths, pads, mallets and more. It also features a flexible GUI that can morph between sample layers creating unique synth tones. 

Native Instruments and iZotope have joined forces to create an umbrella group focussed on "new creative possibilities for musicians, producers, and audio engineers".  The new allegiance will see both companies continue to operate under their own brands, with no structural changes to either organisation. The new group is backed by Francisco Partners, who acquired EMH Partner's majority shares in NI back in January this year.

iZotope has announced a new plugin called Neoverb that ‘listens’ to your mix and adjusts its settings in real-time to better fit the space into your track. According to iZotope, the plugin uses ‘AI-powered’ EQs to automatically shape the pre- and post-EQ on your reverb and Reverb Assistant lets you input characteristics like ‘airy’, ‘bright’ etc, and then ‘listens’ to your track and creates a natural sounding reverb that sits in the mix.

iZotope have updated their popular mastering plugin Ozone, featuring a revolutionary new Master Assistant aimed at simplifying the mastering process. By analysing the sonic content of your track Master Assistant aims to give you a head start by suggesting certain aspects of the track that need work, and certain processes that could be applied.

iZotope are makers of some pretty cool plugins, and now they’re offering a free audio mixing masterclass taught by award-winning engineer and producer, Enrique Gonzalez Müller (Kronos Quartet, Nine Inch Nails, Los Amigos Invisibles, Jason Newsted) and Mastering Engineer, Professor and Director of Education at iZotope, Jonathan Wyner. 

In the new, five-part series of online video tutorials, they’ll outline 10 tips for developing good habits as a mixer, while Enrique demonstrates by mixing a song by indie garage rockers, The Rare Occasions.

At the basic level Nectar 2 is pretty simple to use. Producers open an instance of Nectar 2 either directly on top of the vocal channel or as an auxiliary channel (in the DAW) for vocals to be routed to for treatment. At the most basic and easiest level, treatment comes in the form of a number of presets that are designed to enhance or fix vocal takes, from adding FX, harmony and warping, or fixing bad pitch via the auto pitch functions.