Is Sknote Mattertone sufficient or is Izotope Alloy 2 the way to go?

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I quite like what Sknote Mattertone can do for shaping sounds. It's one of the few 'frequency specific' tone shapers along with Alloy 2. I've heard people say that Alloy is the closest you'll get to a hardware unit that does transient shaping. I can get Alloy 2 for about $50 more than Mattertone, so it's not a hugh different for me either way. I like the straight forward simplicity of Matterone (no distractions), but I've heard that the Attack settings come up a little short for shaping. Was looking for opinions on which to choose. I just bought Ozone 5/6, but heard things like the exciter in Alloy is different than Ozone. So maybe there's some overlap, but not completely. The main thing I heard that Alloy seems to do that Mattertone doesn't is target specific tonal areas with crossovers, where it seems Mattertone has limited ranges.

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I don't have Mattertone but am trying Alloy2 at the moment and I am quite impressed with the transient section, but that might be because I've never used multiband transient before.
If you are only interested in the transient shaping it seems like some overkill as Alloy (as a "Channel strip") can do much more. You'll have to demo there.

At the current price i think I'll get Alloy just for the multiband transient and the multiband exciter (EQ and compressor are quite fine, for the limiter I have absolutely no use in a channel), for multiband things there's also Melda stuff (MultibandTransient and MultibandSaturator) but they're not cheaper and Alloy has a way better GUI.
stikygum wrote: I've heard people say that Alloy is the closest you'll get to a hardware unit that does transient shaping
There are multiband transient designer in hardware? Really?

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Alloy 2 is an interesting beast. The transient and EQ is excellent but the rest, especially the deesser is just average in my opinion.

My solution for multi band transient shaping is different again therefore.

I use blue cat's mb-7 mixer, which can split the signal into 7 bands with various crossover steepness choices.
Therefore, i can use the transient shaper of my choice (spl in my case) in a multi band fashion with great simplicity and get all the benefits of the mb7 on top.

So i do recommend checking that out as a solution also.

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Well, as I seem to have missed the Alloy sale and I am not paying $150 for it, I have to go another route.
TheoM wrote: I use blue cat's mb-7 mixer, which can split the signal into 7 bands with various crossover steepness choices.
Therefore, i can use the transient shaper of my choice (spl in my case) in a multi band fashion with great simplicity and get all the benefits of the mb7 on top.
Nice idea, but MB-7 mixer is slightly too expensive for me at the moment. Maybe Metaplugin although I don't like the handling.

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Something to be aware of with Mattertone is that it only goes down to 100hz, so you can't tweak any frequencies below that.

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Yeah, the Elysia Nvelope is dual band.
TheoM wrote: I use blue cat's mb-7 mixer, which can split the signal into 7 bands with various crossover steepness choices.
Therefore, i can use the transient shaper of my choice (spl in my case) in a multi band fashion with great simplicity and get all the benefits of the mb7 on top.

So i do recommend checking that out as a solution also.
The MB-7 looks very useful for separating out bands. It would be nice to have transient shaping all in one tool, but it is nice that gives you the freedom to choose any transient shaper. How do you like the UA Transient Designer? I was thinking it's not as flexible with transients as Alloy is.

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I don't know if this will help the OP, but I quite like MatterTone and made a review of it some time ago.
http://reviewrevival.weebly.com/reviewe ... ne-matters
Thanks & God Bless,
Bro. Charles
Reviewer's Revival Blogsite | Facebook

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SKNote plugins all sound great, unfortunately they had serious CPU issues (Spikes) and other bugs with me personally, I had nearly the entire collection because they do sound good, but no updates came along, and when they did you had to email the developer to get them because there is no way to just log in to the site and get the latest version or anything, that combo with the spikes and bugs that i had made me sell them.
Duh

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iZotope Alloy 2 is $75 at jrrshop.com. It offers a fantastic toolset. Excellent transient shaping. A no brainier at that price. Buy it and run like you stole it.
Bitwig Certified Trainer

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I'm so close to pressing that button, but I'm researching MB-7 and it looks really good. Trying to see if pairing another transient shaper with it will be better than Alloy 2 or not.

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There must be a second version of this plug it might come soon with better attack and stuff . Sknote snap is interesting tool too.

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Protocols expert did a video on the alloy 2 transient shaper.

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bill45 wrote:Protocols expert did a video on the alloy 2 transient shaper.
They cover the transient shaper in depth here. Good review of the entire plugin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW1_oeYI0BQ

Like I said before, this is a steal at $75, as in a no brainer. Buy it. :)
Bitwig Certified Trainer

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Alloy 2 is definitely worth getting I say :)

My default Ableton tracks open with Slate VCC and Alloy 2 on and whilst I often use other things for creative changes (like delays or weird FX), it's the most used plugin by far.

It's very nice to have one plugin open rather than some crazy chain. I don't know about you guys, but sometimes looking at a project with all these plugins everywhere makes me loose focus a bit - especially when you have a mix that you're not happy with and have to delve back into what you did in the first place to makes changes.

It's high quality and very flexible with the multiband options etc. I did a shoot out between the Alloy 2 exciter and Fab Filter Saturn (which was my hands down go-to distortion plugin) and decided Alloy was a bit nicer in general terms (with the exception of the Warm Tube setting on Saturn if bringing out some transient detail on a kick drum... but having said that, with Alloy you can combine transient shaping and saturation together, so that's probably more powerful too :)).

Lastly, because you have so many of the most used tools in one place and using it for most tasks, I've learnt the plugin in more detail than I have with others. I haven't just reached for the next plugin in my folder that might do the next job. So it's as much a benefit to workflow and really understanding your tool kit as much as it is about the quality of the EQ, Transient, Exciter etc

Hope that helps!

P.S. Can you tell I'm a fan?

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billcarroll wrote:iZotope Alloy 2 is $75 at jrrshop.com. It offers a fantastic toolset. Excellent transient shaping. A no brainier at that price. Buy it and run like you stole it.
Thanks for making me look at jrrshop again, I noticed now that you have to add it to the cart for getting the discount. Didn't knew that before...

I just have tested it for a little while and have to agree with stevemac, it's nice to have pretty much everything in one window and the combination of multiband transient shaping and multiband saturation is really cool (actually the reason I bought it and worth the current price alone).
Only things I don't like are some really small font sizes and that changing some values while playback produces noise/glitches (e.g. bypassing modules or moving the crossover frequency).

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