New Music Gear Monday: iZotope Neoverb AI-Powered Reverb
One of the things I’m most frequently asked is how to get reverb to blend into the mix. One of the problems that beginning mixers have is that there’s usually either too much reverb or not enough. What mixers have done forever to alleviate this is to tailor the reverb to the track with their own processing. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a reverb plugin that did that for you already? Well, your prayers have been answered thanks to the new iZotope Neoverb, the AI-powered reverb plugin that listens to your track to find the best settings.
I’ve been a big fan of both iZotope and Exponential Audio reverbs in the past, so their merger was a welcome development. The first truly new product from their union is Neoverb and it has the best of both worlds – great sounding reverb that’s smart and easy to use.
Neoverb starts with the innovative Reverb Assistant that asks you to generally determine the style, size, and tone of the verb in order to create a specialized preset that you can start from. Then it asks you to play some of the song so that it can learn the frequency response. From there it creates an input signal EQ curve (called Autocut), and then it creates a post-verb EQ by comparing the reverb signal to the dry signal (called Unmask). All this takes just a few minutes, if that.
While you can accept those curves and just move on, iZotope suggests that this is just a starting point for you to further tweak as needed. This is done from the EQ panel at the bottom of the plugin which allows you to select between the Pre EQ and Reverb EQ and tailor those curves as needed.
Reverb plugins can very from very simple to very complex and Neoverb is a combination of both. It has a large variety of parameters under the hood, but most can be controlled globally from the novel Blend Pad that allows you to blend the amount of 3 different reverb environments at the same time. Plus, Blend can be automated so the reverb can transition during a song as needed.
Neoverb is certainly a new way to think about reverb and iZotope has done a great job of pointing out how all its features work. Check out the page for more features but also some great examples of the plugin at work.
The iZotope Neoverb plugin is currently on sale at $199 ($50 off) or can be purchased as part of the Music Production Suite 4 at $599 ($400 off). You can find out more about Neoverb here, or watch the introduction video below.
