{"id":3828,"date":"2017-10-06T17:34:46","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T21:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/?p=3828"},"modified":"2026-01-14T15:38:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T20:38:36","slug":"mixing-with-neutron-2-drums-bass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/mixing-with-neutron-2-drums-bass\/","title":{"rendered":"Mixing with Neutron 2: Drums and Bass"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post is part of a series on Mixing with Neutron 2 Standard. If you missed a tutorial, click on one of the topics below to catch up:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mixing vocals<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Mixing drums & bass<\/li>\n
  3. Mixing synths<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Neutron 3 Advanced<\/strong><\/a>, the latest version of iZotope\u2019s mixing suite, offers even more powerful features \u2014 check out the guide here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n

    The drums and the bass of a track form its foundation, its backbone.\u00a0 If you can get the drum and bass<\/a> elements in a mix to work together, you’re halfway there in getting a mix that sounds professional.<\/p>\n

    Here are some tips for using Neutron 2 to process your drums and bass.<\/p>\n

    One thing to note: from here on out, we’re going to use the shorthand Neutron 2 to refer to the Standard<\/b> version<\/b> of the plugin, not the advanced version of the plugin.<\/p>\n

    Mixing drums with Neutron 2
    \n<\/span><\/h2>\n

    \"izotope-neutron2-track-assistant\"<\/p>\n

    Whenever mixing with Neutron 2, I recommend using the\u00a0Track Assistant<\/strong> to get you started with initial processor settings. It’s an extremely useful tool for getting to a good starting point for your mix. Once the Track Assistant has worked its magic, you can dive in to work yours.<\/p>\n

    1. Kick drum<\/strong><\/h3>\n
      \n
    • Use the Exciter to give the low end of the kick drum that extra oomph.<\/li>\n
    • You can also use the Exciter to give an 808 kick drum some needed detail at the top end so that it can stick out in mixes.<\/li>\n
    • Use multiband compression after the Exciter to make sure the low end is in control.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      2. Snare drum<\/strong><\/h3>\n
        \n
      • To give your snare a bit more edge and bite, try using the Exciter in retro mode and driving around 2-6Khz.<\/li>\n
      • The transient shaper is great for all drum instruments, but it can really help bring a dead\u00a0sounding snare to life. I recommend just using a single band for transient shaping the snare to get that punchy-thick sound.<\/li>\n
      • Similarly, if you think that a snare in your track has too much punch, you can use the transient shaper to reduce the attack of these samples.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        3. Toms<\/strong><\/h3>\n
          \n
        • Acoustic toms often suffer from microphone\u00a0bleed. To rectify that, insert the Neutron 2 gate and adjust the threshold accordingly to only open when the tom hits. This can clean up the sound of the toms significantly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          4. Overheads<\/strong><\/h3>\n
            \n
          • Using the EQ module, you can apply a gentle high-pass filter to clean up the low end of overheads.<\/li>\n
          • Using a shelf band, you can apply some high shelf from around 5Khz to add some smooth sizzle to bring out the qualities of cymbal hits in the overhead mics.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

            5. Drum buss
            \n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

            \"izotope-neutron2-compressor\"<\/p>\n

              \n
            • Neutron 2 can work wonders on a drum buss.<\/li>\n
            • One of my favorite tricks is to activate the vintage mode compressor to “glue” all the drum elements together.<\/li>\n
            • In vintage mode, set the compressor detector type to RMS and adjust each band so that the gain reduction for each band is no more than -5dB. This will glue everything nicely giving you a pretty fat drum sound.<\/li>\n
            • You can also put a transient shaper across the drum buss to help with giving your overall drum kit that extra punch.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

              Neutron 2 on bass<\/span><\/h2>\n

              There are a lot of things you can do with Neutron 2 on a bass track, but in this piece I’m going to single out one extremely useful tool\u00a0when working with bass and drum tracks together.<\/p>\n

              Neutron 2’s EQ masking feature<\/strong><\/h3>\n

              \"izotope-neutron-2-masking-eq\"<\/p>\n

              Have you had trouble getting the bass and kick drum to sit well together? Often both instruments will be fighting for space in a mix. This phenomenon — when two instruments have similar spectral content in certain frequencies and cover each other up — is called “frequency masking”.<\/p>\n

              We can easily see if there are masking frequencies between the kick and bass by loading an instance of Neutron 2 in both the kick and bass track and using the\u00a0masking<\/strong> tool in Neutron 2’s EQ module.<\/p>\n

              Let’s go through the steps:<\/p>\n

                \n
              1. Open the instance of Neutron 2 on the kick track and navigate to the EQ module.<\/li>\n
              2. Turn on masking<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
              3. Now select Bass (or whatever you named your bass track) and you should see the bass EQ curve appear at the bottom of the kick drum EQ curve.<\/li>\n
              4. You have full control of the bass EQ curve and any changes made to the curve will also apply to the Neutron 2 instance on the bass plugin. Isn’t that cool?<\/li>\n
              5. Now press play on your DAW and slowly increase the sensitivity slider. Neutron 2 will show red bars at the top of the EQ curves if there are masking frequencies.<\/li>\n
              6. Once the masking frequencies are identified, you can choose to either cut the particular masking frequency on either the bass or kick EQ.<\/li>\n
              7. You will start to see that the red bars will disappear once you cut those masking frequencies<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                The masking EQ feature is an excellent tool to let your kick and bass play nice. Be mindful that there wouldn’t be 100% zero masking frequencies. But a careful and considered reduction in masking frequencies will definitely increase clarity in your mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                This blog post is part of a series on Mixing with Neutron 2 Standard. If you missed a tutorial, click on one of the topics…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":3843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1698,1696],"tags":[348,159,1615,1644,1473],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMixing with Neutron 2: Drums and Bass - Blog | Splice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this article, we discuss how you can get better drum and bass sounds using Neutron 2's powerful mixing processors.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/mixing-with-neutron-2-drums-bass\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mixing with Neutron 2: Drums and Bass - 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