Many musicians and engineers know iZotope primarily for their Ozone mastering bundle. Widely regarded as offering one of the best cost/benefit ratios among mastering plug-ins, Ozone has enjoyed a great deal of success. If you know Ozone, you know absolutely nothing about Alloy, iZotope’s new mix-oriented plug-in suite.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. The interfaces of the two plug-ins are quite similar, with the same basic window layout and plug-in manager. Both of them offer a variety of different modules and a user-configurable signal flow. If you’re color-blind, they probably look very similar, but Alloy is much more attractive, eschewing the electric green scheme of its stablemate (see Fig. 1). If you can use Ozone, you’ll feel right at home operating Alloy.

FIG. 1: Alloy’s UI betrays its debt to Ozone, albeit with a more attractive color scheme.

However, if you have a good idea of what Ozone sounds like, you’ll find Alloy to be a whole new ballgame. iZotope intends for Alloy to be to mixing what Ozone has become to mastering. They have succeeded in building a suite of plug-ins one can use to bring color and character to a mix, and I can’t imagine reaching for Alloy for mastering.

Vital Stats
Alloy comprises six modules: EQ, exciter, transient shaper, dynamics, de-esser, and limiter. All modules but the EQ and limiter can operate in multiband mode, with three configurable bands. The order of the six modules is completely configurable—you can even arrange the two dynamics processors in parallel (see Fig. 2). It’s too bad the module buttons along the bottom of the main screen don’t shuffle to reflect the current signal flow.

FIG. 2: The order of processors in Alloy is completely configurable.

The controls of individual modules are utilitarian. iZotope will not win prizes for the beauty of the rectangular sliders and generic font, but they deserve credit for an efficient design, and I’ll take efficiency any day. My first reaction to the interface was that I did not find it intuitive, but after working with Alloy for a while, I can’t really remember why. If you should have a similar first impression, be patient—your patience will be rewarded.

Alloy features unlimited undo/redo with the ability to save and switch between four points. This makes it easy to compare the tweaks you just made to your starting point 38 steps earlier, then save both of those points for comparison down the line. The undo queue is saved when you exit the program and is immediately available—including saved points—when you next start Alloy.

Alloy offers detailed input and output meters that can display peak and/or RMS, with configurable peak hold and integration time. Their default range of 60 dB can be zoomed to either 40 or 100 dB. The meters and their associated input/output faders can be switched between global and module-specific modes.

Each module displays a graph of the spectrum of Alloy’s final output so you can see what’s happening to the signal. This, too, is configurable, with five different window types, variable window size and overlap, and even the ability to show octaves on the display.

One of the most interesting and potentially useful features of Alloy’s interface is the Macro page (see Fig. 3). This allows you to park key controls from individual modules on a single screen for ultra-efficient editing. You can even create custom macro faders that can be mapped simultaneously to multiple controls. You could, for example, create a single fader that raises compressor make-up gain as it lowers the threshold. You can restrict the range, invert the polarity (by setting the range in reverse), and choose from four different control curves. The same fader can even control parameters from different modules. Custom macro faders automatically appear in the preset manager, so when you call up a preset its macro faders are immediately available.

FIG. 3: The Macro page contains the key controls from Alloy’s various processors, including custom MacroFaders that can control multiple parameters simultaneously.

Modules
The EQ module offers eight overlapping bands, each of which can be set to one of seven different filter types, including bell, high shelf, low shelf, highpass, sharp highpass, lowpass, and sharp lowpass. The slopes of the highpass/lowpass filters are not published, but I’d estimate them at 6 dB/oct and 24 dB/oct. All eight bands are fully parametric.

As is becoming ever more common, the EQ displays a curve with nodes that you can simply grab and drag to the desired shape. As soon as you click on a node, a pair of brackets appear that you can drag to adjust the band’s Q (see Fig. 4). Click on a band while holding the Alt (Opt) key to engage the very useful “Alt solo” mode, which is a steep bandpass filter that allows you to focus on fine-tuning that band’s center frequency. The EQ features “soft saturation” to emulate the overdrive behavior of an analog EQ.

FIG. 4: Alloy’s EQ controls are simple and direct. Drag a node up, down, left, and right; drag its handles to vary the band’s Q.

The exciter module provides a simple X-Y grid that varies brightness against odd/even harmonics. A “spectrum meter” at the top of the window purports to show what frequencies are being affected, providing an interesting way to visualize the results. I was about to give up on the exciter—everything I tried just sounded distorted—until I tried it on a bass DI, to which it gave just the right edge to cut through the mix without sounding out of place. I also managed to age an electric piano patch with some pronounced odd-order overdrive. It was easier to get interesting results from the exciter’s width parameter, especially in multiband mode, where I could apply the widening more subtly.

The transient shaper also proved easier to abuse than to use tastefully. For drastically altering a percussion loop, it might be just the trick. The best use I found for it on acoustic drums was to remove the attack from a kick, preserving just its sustain, so I could layer it with a more pointed kick sample. In this application, it worked quite well.

The dynamics module offers two processors, each of which includes both a gate/expander and a compressor. The compressor ratio goes to 50:1, so it could just as easily be labeled a “compressor/limiter.” The two processors can be placed independently in the order of modules, or they can be placed in parallel. When operating in parallel and in multiband mode, the two dynamics processors share the same crossovers in order to avoid phase discrepancies. The dynamics feature a “vintage” mode that emulates an opto-compressor, and they also feature both hard and soft (but not variable) knee operation, sidechaining, and auto make-up gain.

In multiband mode, each band has its own sidechain. The sidechain can be fed by an external source, such as a bus or input, or by any band (see Fig. 5). You could use this to duck the mid-range of a loop every time the kick hits or to tame a competing low-mid within a stem whenever the male vocal is present. Given two dynamics processors with three bands each, each of which has a separate sidechain, the possibilities for unique solutions or creative mangling are extensive.

FIG. 5: Alloy’s two dynamics processors feature extraordinarily flexible sidechain routing.

The de-esser is straightforward and effective, offering broadband or focused modes of operation. The limiter can operate in brickwall or soft mode. In brickwall mode, it allows you to set a precise ceiling (“margin”). In either mode, its operation is not transparent, but then if you want a mastering limiter, buy Ozone instead. If you like the sound of limiting as a tonal effect, this module gives you that option. Included in the limiter module is the ability to rotate or invert phase and to filter DC offset.

Quite the Character
Alloy’s included presets do a good job of showing its wide sonic range and the power of its macro implementation. However, many of them immediately clip on any signal with peaks above -6 dBFS or so, and most of them make the signal immediately louder, a clever way to add gut-level “wow” factor. (iZotope tells us there was no hype intended, and furthermore that they don’t find the problem as widespread as I did. At any rate, it’s always a good idea to watch your levels when auditioning presets.) Nevertheless, the ability to create custom channel strips and processor chain presets is one of Alloy’s best features. Especially in a host such as Pro Tools that does not yet allow for effects-chain presets, this makes Alloy a great tool to reach for when efficiency counts.

The only objective complaint I can level against Alloy is that I hear distortion while moving many of its controls. This distortion is plainly visible when I run a test tone through Alloy, and there’s really no reason it should occur (iZotope attributes this to “zippering” of the controls as they are adjusted, not audio distortion per se).

A New Mixture
Alloy is a powerful plug-in suite, and for $249 direct download (I’ve found it for $225 from other vendors), it’s a great bargain if you like what it does for you.

This brings me to the hardest part of the review, because while I admire Alloy for its power, depth, and flexibility, I don’t always like its sound. In what Alloy calls soft saturation, excitation, vintage compression, and limiting, I hear too much plain old distortion. Don’t get me wrong—I can still find plenty of ways to use Alloy to make great sounds, but it’s not going to be my first-call plug-in. I’m willing to bet that what I hear as distortion others will hear as color, though, so you owe it to yourself to take advantage of iZotope ’s ten-day unrestricted free trial and be your own judge. If you like it, you’ll probably like it a lot.

Pros: Six processors in one, with configurable signal flow. Flexible sidechaining. Powerful macro presets. Immensely useful undo history. Good value. Adds colorful distortion.
Cons: Adds colorful distortion. Too many presets clip.

Brian Smithers is a musician, engineer, and educator in central Florida. He has been a regular contributor to Electronic Musician for more than a decade.