The Best iZotope Plugins For Modern Metal Mixes

When you’re staring down a 100-track metal session, sorting through your plugin folder is the last thing you want to do. iZotope makes some of the most powerful and popular plugins on the market, but the question is always the same: which ones actually matter for getting a heavy, polished, and aggressive mix?

Let’s cut the crap. Your mix isn't going to magically sound like a Will Putney record just because you bought the same plugins he uses. The truth is, for general jobs like basic EQ or compression, your stock plugins are probably fine. A cut at 400 Hz on a Pro-Q 3 isn't fundamentally different from a cut at 400 Hz on your DAW's stock EQ. Where it does matter is when you need a specialized tool to solve a specific, nagging problem.

That’s where iZotope really shines. They build problem-solver plugins. This isn’t a list of “must-have” tools you need to buy to be a pro. This is a breakdown of the best iZotope plugins and the specific jobs they crush in a modern metal production workflow.

Ozone: More Than Just a Mastering Swiss Army Knife

Yeah, Ozone is marketed as the all-in-one mastering suite, and it’s a beast for that. But thinking of it as just a master bus tool is a huge mistake. Many of its modules are absolute secret weapons on individual tracks and buses.

The whole suite can look intimidating, and if a plugin’s GUI slows you down, don’t use it. But if you’re willing to dig in, there are some gold nuggets here for metal mixers.

Using The Maximizer for Aggressive Loudness

The Ozone Maximizer is a legendary limiter. For metal, you need loudness, but you also need to retain punch. The IRC IV (Intelligent Release Control) modes are fantastic for this.

Actionable Tip: On your master bus, try the IRC IV Modern mode. It’s designed to preserve transients and detail, even when you’re pushing it hard. Start with the Character slider around 2.0-4.0 and the Transient Emphasis around 25-40%. This helps the kick and snare snap through the wall of guitars without turning the whole mix into a distorted sausage.

Using The Imager for Width (Carefully)

Stereo width is huge in modern metal, especially with synth layers and wide rhythm guitars. The Ozone Imager is one of the best for this, but be careful. Pushing things too wide can introduce serious phase problems that make your mix fall apart in mono.

Actionable Tip: Put the Imager on a guitar bus. Instead of using the main stereoize fader, which can get weird fast, try focusing on specific bands. For example, add a touch of width to the 2kHz-10kHz range to make the "air" and pick attack of the guitars feel wider, while keeping the low-mid fundamentals solid and centered. Always check your mix in mono after.

Tame Harshness with Dynamic EQ

This is one of those problem-solver modules. Got cymbals that are painfully harsh only when the drummer lays into them? Or a guitar tone with a fizzy "shelf" of nastiness around 8kHz that only jumps out on palm mutes? A static EQ cut can make them sound dull.

Ozone's Dynamic EQ lets you cut those frequencies only when they cross a certain threshold. It’s like a de-esser for any instrument. This is a game-changer for cleaning up guitars and overheads. If you want to dive deeper into static EQ moves first, our guide to EQing metal guitars is a great place to start.

Neutron: The Ultimate Channel Strip for Tweakers

If Ozone is the master bus king, Neutron is the channel strip workhorse. Again, are its EQ and Compressor modules "better" than your favorites? Maybe not. But the package and its intelligent features save you time and offer unique tonal shaping options.

Sculptor: The "WTF Is This?" Module That Just Works

Sculptor is a spectral shaper. Think of it as an AI-powered EQ with hundreds of tiny bands that analyzes your audio and compares it to a target profile, then nudges your track in that direction.

Forget the presets. Just load it up, choose a general instrument profile (like "Drums – Punchy" for a snare), and slowly dial in the amount. It's brilliant for adding a little bit of that "something" you can’t quite get with EQ. Use it subtly to add body to a thin bass DI or attack to a kick drum.

Transient Shaper: The Key to Punchy Drums

A transient shaper is non-negotiable for modern metal drums. Neutron’s is killer. You can add crack to a snare, separate the beater click from the boom on a kick, or tame the overbearing room sound on toms.

Actionable Tip: On your snare top mic, set the Transient Shaper to "Precise" mode. Add a few dB of Attack with a medium-to-fast release to make the stick hit really pop. On your tom bus, you can do the opposite: use it to reduce the Sustain, tightening up the decay so the toms are punchy and don't muddy up the mix. Once they're shaped, getting them to sit right often involves some clever compression, which we cover in our metal compression secrets guide.

RX: The Un-Sexy Plugin That Will Save Your Mixes

RX isn't glamorous. It doesn't add "phatness" or "warmth." It's an audio repair suite, and it may be the most valuable plugin iZotope makes, especially if you’re working with home-recorded tracks. A great mix starts with great recordings, and RX cleans up the stuff that can ruin them.

Guitar De-noise

Every metal guitarist knows the struggle. You dial in a sick high-gain tone, but it comes with a tidal wave of hiss and hum. Guitar De-noise is scarily good at removing that noise without destroying your tone's top-end and character. It can be the difference between a professional-sounding DI and an amateur mess.

De-bleed

Recording a live drum kit? Hi-hat bleed in the snare mic is the enemy. It limits how much you can compress and EQ your snare before the hi-hats become a splashy nightmare. RX’s De-bleed module can analyze your snare and hi-hat tracks and magically remove the bleed from the snare. It’s an absolute lifesaver.

Mouth De-click

Listen to a raw vocal track—especially an aggressive one. You'll hear all sorts of little clicks, pops, and lip smacks. Manually editing them out is a soul-crushing waste of time. Mouth De-click cleans them up with one pass. Run this on your vocals before you even think about compression or EQ.

So, Do You Need to Buy All These?

Hell no. Remember, gear acquisition syndrome is real for plugins, too. We’ve all bought a plugin hoping it would be a magic bullet, only to find our mixes still sound the same. Why? Because the tool is never as important as the person using it.

When you see one of the Nail The Mix instructors like Jens Bogren or Nolly Getgood use a dozen different EQs, it's not because each one has a magic frequency. It's because they have skills honed over thousands of hours. Their ears are so trained they can hear that last 0.5% difference, but they could get 99.5% of the way there with nothing but stock plugins.

Using the same tools as a top chef doesn't mean you can cook like them. It’s about learning the techniques. The best investment you can make isn’t in a new plugin, but in your own skills.

That's the whole point. Focus on learning your tools inside and out. Then, when you run into a specific problem—like preamp hiss, hi-hat bleed, or a boomy kick drum that fights the bass—you’ll know it’s time to reach for a specialized tool like RX or Neutron.

The goal is to get your tracks sounding so good that all the creative decisions become easier. Watching a pro do it from start to finish on a real song is the fastest way to level up your own process. If you want to see exactly how these kinds of tools are used in the context of a full mix, check out the catalog of sessions available on Nail The Mix. You get the real multi-tracks and watch the original producer build the entire song from scratch, explaining every single move.