'Allo 'Allo - Alloy!

Like others here, I get the Izo newsletter, well I would 'cos I signed up for it. And when I see any new addition to Izo's paddock I take a serious look at its early, pre-race form.

Having been greatly impressed with IzoRx, I subsequently take more than a passing interest in what new offerings are coming forth from this stable. I do get the feeling that here is a comany rolling-out a long-term business plan. I do like that.

Being a late-comer to this biz, it is essential for this particular bloke he uses stuff that just works - Izotope keeps doing that. A Company of much Pedigree!

Grazie

I echo your thoughts totally, Spot and Grazie.

Haven't had time to check out Alloy yet - I'm going through a crazy busy time, worked through the last two weekends - not complaining!

Does someone have a clear idea of what this new package offers over and above the magnificent Rx ?

This package is an FX package, seems to have many things rolled into one for one click mastering etc which makes it a totally different beast to Rx.

Bob.

How is it different from Ozone?

It's very different than Ozone.

Ozone is for mastering - it's more of a "use once on the end of the signal chain" - it's high quality, but resource intensive relatve to things - lots of CPU processing, and thus latency etc. It's awesome, but you don't want to use lots and lots of them on a multitrack recording..

Alloy is designed for using on channel strips - the idea is you use it on all the tracks of the multitrack, except your master buss - that's where Ozone comes into play.
Alloy is therefore designed to be friendlier on the CPU, has zero latency, is a little more lightweight and designed to be used on lots of channels.

It's also VST2 and VST3 (for those that are interested), and as all things iZo these days - native 32 and 64bit flavours.
The macro section makes it really useful to adjust several parameters within one screen, without flitting between each module.

How would you define the difference between a track, a bus and a channel strip

This is the first I've heard of Alloy. I must have missed it in Izotope's last newsletter, if it was in there?

It looks impressive. I just recently upgraded to Ozone 4 and might might just have to take them up on that $129 offer for Ozone users.

One thing I'd like to know though, does the side chaining feature work in Vegas?

This looks like a great plugin. I've used Ozone alot, so it's nice to have a similar track plugin.

Regarding SideChain: see "Routing Sidechain Signals" under Graph and Sidechain in the Alloy help file.

To access SideChain in Alloy, go to the Dynamics module, and click on the little chain icon in the upper left of the compression graph. This opens the SideChain dialog, where you can select an "external" source as trigger signal for gating or compression for Dynamics 1 or 2 tabs.

The help file has the following cryptic explanation of where the "external" signal comes from:

Inside of your host application, with the use of busses, sends or aux tracks, 

you will need to send the audio signal you would like to serve as your sidechain 

trigger, to the audio track that Alloy is inserted upon. ...



As each audio host application is different, please refer to your host’s help 

documentation for instructions on how to route audio to Alloy.

I haven't worked with the new routing possibilities in Vegas 9, but as far as I know, you can't send an aux signal to a track. Maybe this is possible if Alloy is used in an FX Bus. ??? Does anyone know?

Regarding use of Alloy sidechaining in Acid Pro 7 or Vegas Pro 9, I got the following answer from iZotope support:

"Acid Pro does not currently support sidechain routing in its audio tracks."

Although not stated, it surely applies to Vegas, too.

You can do sidechaining in Vegas.
Well you can force Vegas to do it. Say you wanted to duck or gate a vocal track with a drum. Route vocals to channel 1 of a stereo buss, route drum to channel 2 of the same buss. Apply say compression to the buss and select only channel 1 of the output of the buss. Keep vocal below knee of the compressor and the drum above the knee. The drum hits will now cause the vocals to duck. Adjust attack and decay to taste.

This is much easier to pull off with a free VST plug that lets you route or select the channels in a stereo pair.

Certainly it's not as easily done as it can be in apps that do support sidechaining out of the box.

Bob.

. .and here is what Alloy can do for you!

Amazing people those Izotopers!![/link]

Grazie

Hi Bob,

Idea is excellent - I'm trying to achieve this effect follow your instruction but have some problems (maybe this is just language issue). Could You describe it more preciselly ? What I'm doing is :

1) creating two audio track (one with drums and two with vocal)
2) inserting BUS A
3) righ click on vocal audio and select channel/left
4) righ click on drums audio and select channel/right
5) redirecting outup of vocal track from master to BUS A
6) redirecting output of drums track from master to BUS A
7) inserting Express FX Dynamix Effect Plug In to BUS A
8) playing with treshold and levels of truck

It should give me effect as you have described ... but there is no effect :-(
Could You help me ? Where is the mistake ?

Best regards,

Sounds like you've got the right idea.
The trick that you might be missing or I may have failed to describe is you would need to get the drum channel high enough in level to hit the compressors knee causing it to reduce gain. At the same time you need the vocal track below the knee so it is not compressed, just gain reduced. Of course the drum track coming out of the compressor is going to be heavily compressed, you simply discard that channel.

If you have Wave Hammer you might find that easier to work with as it has per channel input and output meters and a gain reduction meter. The standard track compressor should work as well.
If you can't get it to work I'll see if I can build a ,veg and email it to you.

BTW, this is not my idea. I got it from the audio forum from years ago.

Bob.