iZotope's Tonal Balance Control 3 allows you to directly capture audio from Spotify, YouTube, and your DAW timeline for quick and easy referencing.] - Guitar | Technique

Since going into preliminary insolvency back in January, the future of Native Instruments has been far from certain, but CEO Nick Williams has promised that business at the company and its numerous subsidiaries will “continue as usual” during this restructuring process.

In that spirit, iZotope – the Boston-based software developer acquired by NI in 2023 – has announced the release of Tonal Balance Control 3, the next generation of its referencing plugin and mastering tool that allows you to compare your track’s frequency balance, dynamics and stereo width against that of any other track.

Tonal Balance Control works by measuring the tonal balance and energy distribution of your track and visualizing this against a reference target. The plugin features a library of targets based on the sonic profile of specific genres – so you’re able to see how your electropop banger compares tonally to the average electropop track, for example – but more useful is the ability to reference your track against the target curve of a specific track of your choosing.

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This can be achieved by uploading audio files to the plugin, but new in Tonal Balance Control 3 is the ability to capture a target curve directly from your DAW timeline.

What’s more, the software is now available as a standalone app that’s capable of receiving and analyzing audio from elsewhere on your computer. This means you can easily route reference tracks from Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube into Tonal Balance Control to create customized targets based on the sonic profile of tracks from your favourite artists, without having to download the songs first.

Targets captured in Tonal Balance Control 3 can be pulled up in iZotope’s Neutron and Ozone mixing and mastering software, enabling you to use them with Ozone’s Mastering Assistant to sonically match your own track to that of your reference.

(Image credit: iZotope)

Tonal Balance Control 3 also features an expanded target library that provides references for a longer list of genres, including dubstep, drum & bass, hyperpop and more, and multiple targets can now be blended together to create hybrid genre combinations.

Whereas its predecessor was a dedicated metering tool, Tonal Balance Control 3 boasts a built-in EQ overlaid on its metering window that enables you to correct the tonal balance of your track from within the plugin itself. You’re also able to remotely connect to other iZotope plugins like Ozone to control their EQ from Tonal Balance Control.

Also new in Tonal Balance Control 3 are three dedicated meters for comparing the dynamics, stereo width and vocal balance of your track to the reference target, and a Leveled View that allows for more visually intuitive tone-shaping.