What's the Ozone 10 of classical and orchestral music?

Not sure if this helps but FYI you can feed Ozone 9 (and I'm assuming more recent versions) reference tracks of whatever classical/orchestral/etc. music you want, which Ozone will then use to build it's EQ curves. Which you can then use to process your own track (I think it's the Match EQ module?). You may be able to do this with other modules as well.

This way you're bypassing the presets and shaping the processing towards whatever style/genre you want.

YMMV.

Edit: also - I'm pretty sure there are quite a few folks on this forum who use Ozone for classical/orchestral/cinematic music so hopefully others will chime in

I'm far from being an expert or anything but some insights.There's a discussion about a plugin called "the God Particle"

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/jaycen-joshuas-the-god-particle-plug-in.125673/


And it's said that it's an Ozone 8 or 9 preset made by the developer and then such modules and parameters were concatenated in this single plugin.

Now regarding Ozone 10 and 11, the gamechanger is Audiolens. Working as standalone you tell this plugin to listen to X track, and it will adjust the eq and etc... to a very close mix compared to the reference. I mean, listen from browser, youtube, tidal, SoundCloud, any website, whatever is playing on your OS.

But in the end the idea of Mastering in general has to be one, to make it competitive in terms of volume and dynamics in order to listen in several types of media. So Ozone is a Mastering chain, but your DAW probably also has more than one mastering chain.

And so far, trere's nothing like the Audio Assistant today, which is not good because Ozone's audio assistant seems to focus on the target results not on the track itself, but now in 11 with the RX audio focus that allows you to focus on vocals or drums or bass(? I think) in the future will be smarter regarding what you're looking for.

But still, this Assistant should be a tool for learning or saving money on stuff you aren't going to distribute, etc... because a compressor is a compressor, an eq is an eq, etc...

Main difference between "Mixing" vs "Mastering" plugins is that mastering ones aren't as aggressive as mixing ones, I know someone may disagree with this, and that's right too because there's no limitation, just knowing how to use, still a compressor is a compressor, an eq is an eq

What's the Ozone 10 of classical and orchestral music?​

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Ozone 10.

And, now, it goes to 11.

General_Disarray said:

Just wondering if anyone here works recording and producing classical or orchestral film music and knows what's the standard for mastering

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Ozone 11!! Seriously, my work is all what one could call Classical and I use Ozone 11 all the time. As several people have said, the addition of Audiolens means matching to a mastered source that you like the sound of is very easy. Like all "automated" processes however, its what you do with it afterwards that counts - human judgement and artistic sense.

Audiolens is obviously step one, but one thing to remember is that there's plenty of flexibility built-in. Switching from 'Shape' to 'Cut' in the Stabilizer makes it useful in many more settings, making it feel more like a kind of 'deesser' for the whole bandwidth rather than an upward compressor.

My suggestion would be to take a reference album that you'd like it to sound like, and keep audiolens running while you go through a variety of points at every track in the album. Heck - run an entire recording of a piece that you're referencing through it. It's surprisingly good what comes out. It'll at least be workable.

While I do use and generally like my copy of Ozone 9 Advanced, if I want a more transparent and less hyped sound, I turn to this: https://www.eventideaudio.com/plug-ins/elevate-mastering-bundle/

It's hard to explain, I just feel it's less transformative and keeps the flavour of the sound a bit better.

And if I feel like I need to "fix" some things before or after that step, and I can't fix it in the orchestration/mix for whatever reason, I turn to this: https://www.tbproaudio.de/products/dseq - but I have to be very, VERY careful with it.

General_Disarray said:

I remember months ago when I tried Ozone 10 for the first time, the automatic thing that analyses the part of the song you play and then puts together the mastering chain. My project that sounded well, suddenly sounded like a CD I had bought, like a professional, studio produced song. So it does a really good job, but at the same time it seems to me that it's more tailored for regular popular music and the genres that most people like, like rock, pop, country, etc, not so much towards orchestral music. At best, it has a profile called "Cinematic", but half the times I press the button on the loudest part of the song, if it's something loud, most times it will say it's rock, not cinematic.

Just wondering if anyone here works recording and producing classical or orchestral film music and knows what's the standard for mastering if Ozone is not the go-to tool for that. Maybe it is.

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The generalized targets the Ozone uses are definitely targeted to rock/pop/rap/dance/etc. You can use a reference track of your own to give it a more specific target. This really just shapes the pre-made EQ moves and limiter settings to hit the target loudness based on the loudest section of your song.

Even in their marketing videos, they very clearly state this is just a suggested starting point and that you should make moves according to your own observations and preferences from there.

Thanks everybody for your insights. I knew about the feature Ozone has to match to a particular track, which I have tried, but it didn't seem to me that it sounded much like the reference track. But I didn't try it too much or with too many songs.

The big problem for me with Audiolens is that it requires to do something to macOS that effectively leaves your machine exposed to security risks, so much that you need to boot up the machine in a very specific way to disable this, just so Audiolens can run, and I'm just not ok with that. It doesn't matter how great this or any plugin may be, you either play by the OS rules or I won't install your software.

That said, it seems pointless anyway, because it seems to me that the same result is achieved by loading an audio file from Ozone itself, which is faster and easier.

What I don't like about the assistant is that it doesn't set the parameters from your full project, just ten seconds that are supposed to be the loudest, but it seems to me that it would give a better result if it listened to the full song, both the quiet and loud parts, to make a balanced adjustment. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm just a guy learning all this stuff, not a pro engineer.

So cyber Friday is here and gone, but iZotope has Music Production Suite 6 on sale for $250.

So I wanted to revisit this thread and see if the people who actually work in the industry recording orchestral movie scores have some better recommendations when it comes to mastering, staying at that price tops.

Just to be clear, I don't have anything against Ozone, I think it's a great mastering plugin, and it comes with lots of goodies, but I want to know if there's anything around that price (even if it's just the mastering product, not the full suite) that will analyze the whole song and give the best chain from the whole thing, not just 5 seconds of the loudest part (if you know a way to set it to more seconds please let me know, I wasn't able to find it).

The thing I don't like about it is that many times it goes overboard with the compressors and all that, creating a mix that sounds like an almost deaf person was in charge of the mastering.

It also never shows the right music genre when I do the analysis. All I do so far are mockups of orchestral film scores, some that I try myself, and others from the downloaded MIDI or Cubase project. For some reason, it always thinks it's "EDM", never "Cinematic" at least. I even worked on a project that Lorne Balfe posted online years ago, from the MI Fallout score, for which I had to replace almost every instrument with the closest I had, because he had used a lot of Spitfire libraries and others I didn't have.

In the end it came out pretty close to the original thing, and Ozone 10 made it sound better, but it gave me anything but Cinematic. It was usually EDM and some times Rock. The lack of even an "Orchestral" preset in that short list tells me that it wasn't created with orchestral music in mind.

So I want to find a plugin that does that analysis to the whole song, or at least a longer section, and that is geared towards orchestral classical and film scores. I know I won't get the quality of a major John Williams or Michael Giacchino recording, not just because I don't have 1% of the engineering knowledge the sound engineers that master those recordings have, but because they probably don't use $250 plugins but rather $25,000 at least.

In the end it came out pretty close to the original thing, and Ozone 10 made it sound better, but it gave me anything but Cinematic. It was usually EDM and some times Rock.

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What does this mean? Are you worried that Ozone mislabelled your music? It made it sound better, did it not?

It seems to me that Ozone would serve you well, if you learn to use it properly. And for the record, you will almost always have to tweak the result of assistant tools.

HotCoffee said:

What does this mean? Are you worried that Ozone mislabelled your music? It made it sound better, did it not?

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It made it sound better, yes. But even at a discount, it's still $250. So I was just wondering if the industry uses something different for film scores.

Because it's $250 (which I don't consider expensive for what it brings, but it's still money to me), I'm just doing my due diligence.

But on the other hand I wonder, is Ozone 11 really a substantial improvement over version 10? Because upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, and paying $250 to see at best a mild improvement is not worth it.

Have any of you used Ozone 10 extensively, then upgraded to 11 and thought "Wow, this new feature kicks ass and I'm happy I upgraded!", or is it more like "OK, decent upgrade, but you can do the same with Ozone 10 pretty much".

HotCoffee said:

It seems to me that Ozone would serve you well, if you learn to use it properly. And for the record, you will almost always have to tweak the result of assistant tools.

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Oh yes, and I always do. Most times the chain it produces is an improvement, sometimes a massive one, sometimes a mild on, and on rare occasions it ruins it, but it's just a matter of dialing everything down if that happens.

But the first time I used it was just the standard version that comes with Komplete 14 CE, and it was kind of a Hans Zimmer style thing I had composed. The mix was OK, but once I ran it through, my mind was blown. Suddenly it seemed that this song I had recorded in my Mac sounded like an album on a Zimmer CD. So I used it every since, but like i said, just doing my due diligence. I recently learned that not doing that can backfire big time.

General_Disarray said:

It made it sound better, yes. But even at a discount, it's still $250. So I was just wondering if the industry uses something different for film scores.

Because it's $250 (which I don't consider expensive for what it brings, but it's still money to me), I'm just doing my due diligence.

But on the other hand I wonder, is Ozone 11 really a substantial improvement over version 10? Because upgrading just for the sake of upgrading, and paying $250 to see at best a mild improvement is not worth it.

Have any of you used Ozone 10 extensively, then upgraded to 11 and thought "Wow, this new feature kicks ass and I'm happy I upgraded!", or is it more like "OK, decent upgrade, but you can do the same with Ozone 10 pretty much".


Oh yes, and I always do. Most times the chain it produces is an improvement, sometimes a massive one, sometimes a mild on, and on rare occasions it ruins it, but it's just a matter of dialing everything down if that happens.

But the first time I used it was just the standard version that comes with Komplete 14 CE, and it was kind of a Hans Zimmer style thing I had composed. The mix was OK, but once I ran it through, my mind was blown. Suddenly it seemed that this song I had recorded in my Mac sounded like an album on a Zimmer CD. So I used it every since, but like i said, just doing my due diligence. I recently learned that not doing that can backfire big time.

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Ozone is great, but I strongly doubt it's worth upgrading from 10 to 11 for 250$. They do sales all the time, there is no need to grab this one right now. I recommend you stop buying plugins and libraries for a while, and focus more on learning. E.g. watch how Alan Meyerson mixes:



If you want to spend money, get a course on mixing/mastering.

MartinH. said:

Ozone is great, but I strongly doubt it's worth upgrading from 10 to 11 for 250$. They do sales all the time, there is no need to grab this one right now. I recommend you stop buying plugins and libraries for a while, and focus more on learning. E.g. watch how Alan Meyerson mixes:



If you want to spend money, get a course on mixing/mastering.

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Well, if he mixes on Waves plugins, I believe that's the company that had the community up in arms because they switched to subscription only, so I dismissed them right off the bat. I only subscribe to Eastwest's Composer Cloud for now, because I already have a lot of their bundles and they are excellent. Not that I will keep subscribing forever, but it's a great way to test out their other libraries I don't have and buy the ones I want. Right away I bought Goliath because it's freaking awesome, and might buy the Fantasy Orchestra at some point.

Question for those of you who use Ozone 10 or 11. Where do you put it? I put it in the stereo out track in Cubase and I always put a basic limiter in the strip just to make sure it doesn't clip.

But is there a "kosher" way to put it? Like, would you create an FX track for it and have all the tracks with a send to it, or even route to it?

Lurssen Mastering Console from IK Multimedia has mastering presets for "classical" music. Lurssen is not an automated mastering assistant like Ozone, nor will it attempt to apply significant EQ moves to "fix" a bad mix, but assuming your mix is decent to begin with, Lurssen is pretty easy to use and can deliver usable masters.

Another opiton is Masterdesk from Plugin Alliance. It's also not automated like Ozone, but similar to Lurssen, offers a simple streamlined mastering workflow. It has more tweakable options than Lurssen, therefore you'll need to use your ears to make appropriate adjustments, but IMHO, it can deliver some great sounding masters.

General_Disarray said:

So I was just wondering if the industry uses something different for film scores.

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Each mastering engineer uses a custom set of preferred tools. Sometimes they are software, some others hardware, or a mix of both. They hardly cost less than 250$.

Ozone is an incredible box of versatile tools. Their upgrades are incremental, not revolutionary. The best price I’ve seen for an upgrade is around 150$. Owning version 10, there is no hurry to upgrade.

As any box full of tools, you have to learn how to use them. iZotope's web site is full of (free) articles about mastering. They are always excellent, and made by professionals who know how to explain their job.

There is no one-button solution. Like with any tool. But, at least, this time we have great instructions.

Paolo

Marko Cifer said:

if I want a more transparent and less hyped sound, I turn to this: https://www.eventideaudio.com/plug-ins/elevate-mastering-bundle/

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I use Elevate extensively ... even if I want a hyped sound, but it has indeed felt more "transparent" to my mix, even when I'm looking for a hyped sound.

General_Disarray said:

The big problem for me with Audiolens is that it requires to do something to macOS that effectively leaves your machine exposed to security risks, so much that you need to boot up the machine in a very specific way to disable this, just so Audiolens can run, and I'm just not ok with that. It doesn't matter how great this or any plugin may be, you either play by the OS rules or I won't install your software.

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mmm... I think I know what you mean and yet I've done this with all my Macs and I don't have any issues. I install around 3-4 plugins a week for one gig and so far no issues. It's a small learning curve with the MacOS.

But as long as you're careful with what you're installing, working with the newer security features is "safe" in the sense that they are there to ensure you are intentional; not warning that you "will" be infected. Only warning that the software you're installing can do things MacOS wants to ensure YOU want the software to have permissions to do. That's my words for it at least.

General_Disarray said:

I want to know if there's anything around that price (even if it's just the mastering product, not the full suite) that will analyze the whole song and give the best chain from the whole thing, not just 5 seconds of the loudest part (if you know a way to set it to more seconds please let me know, I wasn't able to find it).

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There are services that do this. But, here at the end of 2023, I will not recommend any of them to you or anyone else, because I do not find them adequate ... yet ... and I do not believe you will find them satisfactory, either.

General_Disarray said:

The thing I don't like about it is that many times it goes overboard with the compressors and all that, creating a mix that sounds like an almost deaf person was in charge of the mastering.

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What I'd recommend in this case is to look at the last step in the "mastering" chain in Ozone and drop that final maximizer threshold waaaay back to 0dB.

In other words, remove the "maximizer" (or whatever they call it, I'm not in the studio right now) from the equation.

Look at the EQ. What did it do?

Most often it tried to make "the mix" sound more ... something. What did the EQ do? Is there anything you like about the changes? Maybe they could influence mix decisions earlier in the signal processing chain.

What about the multiband compressor? Did it make change that seemed to inform earlier micing decisions?

I'm not trying to sound condescending ... I learned plenty about my own mixes by studying what these "mixing assistants" tried to do with my mixes. So, I am speaking from experience. If there is a big cut or boost somewhere it can teach me about my mix ... or even about my room and sometimes (years ago) about my monitors.

But removing that last limiter / maximizer from the processing usually removes that going "

overboard with the compressors

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" feel.

General_Disarray said:

So I want to find a plugin that does that analysis to the whole song, or at least a longer section, and that is geared towards orchestral classical and film scores. I know I won't get the quality of a major John Williams or Michael Giacchino recording, not just because I don't have 1% of the engineering knowledge the sound engineers that master those recordings have, but because they probably don't use $250 plugins but rather $25,000 at least.

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And I have to say softly that the best mastering engineers can do more with stock plugins than many of us on this forum can do with our most expensive plugins.

Stock plugins.

Because — at least in the right room or satisfactory monitoring situation — they have trained their ears to hear what sounds ... "translatable" on all output systems.

If they can hear a relatively "flat" output, they can (often) use stock DAW plugins to sound decent in a car, in a living room, in a movie theater.

But — and this is a big but — they usually receive well mixed tracks.

So, let's back up.

Usually high paid mastering engineers receive well mixed works.

So, how do they get well mixed?

Another thread, maybe.

General_Disarray said:

I was just wondering if the industry uses something different for film scores.

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My impression is that many experienced mastering engineers could, if put on the spot, do a decent job of mastering using the plugins your asking about, even if it wasn't their usual toolbox, because of their ears. And I would be interested if they started with the assistants or not. But "the industry" is vast and the most expensive mastering engineers probably developed their chains without Ozone and are unlikely to have included them, because it could cut into their perceived value if their tools were available to everyone.

Anyway, mastering is a whole topic.

My guess is you are at a point where looking at your mixing will benefit you more.

Much more.

And I say this from experience. If I could speak to my younger self — even myself at 40 years old — I'd tell him to work on his composition more, and worry less about his mixing. And I'd tell him to work on his mixing more than his "mastering". I'd tell him that that his "mastering" should be a clipper/ limiter. And if it doesn't sound good, then he needs to work on his mix. And if his mix doesn't sound good, then he needs to work on his orchestration / composition / arrangement.

General_Disarray said:

Have any of you used Ozone 10 extensively, then upgraded to 11 and thought "Wow, this new feature kicks ass and I'm happy I upgraded!", or is it more like "OK, decent upgrade, but you can do the same with Ozone 10 pretty much".

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They have been incremental upgrades, as @ptram mentioned. Learning what to do with the tools is much more important than the state of the tools — in my opinion, in 2023.

"My opinions are my own and do not reflect the position of my employer" (I have a professional relationship with iZotope due to my job, so I also need to make this disclaimer to stay upfront and honest).

General_Disarray said:

Waves plugins, I believe that's the company that had the community up in arms because they switched to subscription only, so I dismissed them right off the bat

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Well, they still sell standalone versions. I still buy standalone Waves plugins and use them with no subscription. I hope this thread doesn't turn into a Waves thread.

General_Disarray said:

Question for those of you who use Ozone 10 or 11. Where do you put it? I put it in the stereo out track in Cubase and I always put a basic limiter in the strip just to make sure it doesn't clip.

But is there a "kosher" way to put it? Like, would you create an FX track for it and have all the tracks with a send to it, or even route to it?

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This can have a very sophisticated answer.

You are actually touching on an interesting part of the mixing / mastering process.

So, yes, some people swear that the actual "master" out should have zero plugins.

And only a bus (or buss, depending on how one likes to spell) should have inserts.

Personally I don't care and put my "home mastering" limiters on my master output.

Now, on the topic of "clipping" ... that's another topic which could have a masterclass of replies.

Some engineers are known to send digital audio files of mastering previews that have no clipper but exceed the digital audio threshold by +6dB.

I know, crazy.

But the files literally "clip" and they send them as previews to artists who are like, "yeah dude, totally! sounds gnarly!!"

Now, you're not those artists.

But "clipping" is not the same as "unpleasant sounding digital distortion".

So, I am responding to, "

I always put a basic limiter in the strip just to make sure it doesn't clip.

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"
and I am suggesting that clipping is, in some cases, not audibly undesirable. Get your popcorn. This could turn into a Gearsluhh .. uhh ... GearsPACE conversation.

NekujaK said:

Lurssen Mastering Console from IK Multimedia has mastering presets for "classical" music. Lurssen is not an automated mastering assistant like Ozone, nor will it attempt to apply significant EQ moves to "fix" a bad mix, but assuming your mix is decent to begin with, Lurssen is pretty easy to use and can deliver usable masters.

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Yep, I used Lurssen for a while ... it's a nice warmer upper into the home mastering space. And it's true; it doesn't try to mangle your mix, it is way more subtle. I think if I used it more today it would remind me to go back to my mix to fix issues, before trying to "home master" my stuff.

NekujaK said:

Another opiton is Masterdesk from Plugin Alliance. It's also not automated like Ozone, but similar to Lurssen, offers a simple streamlined mastering workflow. It has more tweakable options than Lurssen, therefore you'll need to use your ears to make appropriate adjustments, but IMHO, it can deliver some great sounding masters.

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I've used this as well and like it also. It really speaks to the same point: if a work is well mixed, it will take to mastering more readily.

ptram said:

Ozone is an incredible box of versatile tools. Their upgrades are incremental, not revolutionary. The best price I’ve seen for an upgrade is around 150$. Owning version 10, there is no hurry to upgrade.

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Agreed.

ptram said:

As any box full of tools, you have to learn how to use them. iZotope's web site is full of (free) articles about mastering. They are always excellent, and made by professionals who know how to explain their job.

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True!

ptram said:

There is no one-button solution. Like with any tool. But, at least, this time we have great instructions.

Paolo

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And I have been where you are and I want to say that I "wish" I didn't have to learn what I have to tell you these things. It would be better if you could ONLY work on what you love and not have to acquire all these ancillary skills.

But ... we are not at the point yet where the machines can mix and master orchestral works for us. So, it's not the gear, it's (still) the ear, in 2023.

General_Disarray said:

Well, if he mixes on Waves plugins, I believe that's the company that had the community up in arms because they switched to subscription only, so I dismissed them right off the bat. I only subscribe to Eastwest's Composer Cloud for now, because I already have a lot of their bundles and they are excellent. Not that I will keep subscribing forever, but it's a great way to test out their other libraries I don't have and buy the ones I want. Right away I bought Goliath because it's freaking awesome, and might buy the Fantasy Orchestra at some point.

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I don't use a single waves plugin either, that was not the point I was trying to make. The revelation I got from watching him work - and that I hoped you'd get too - was that top tier pro mixers get their results from a million tiny steps in the right direction, where most of the time I couldn't even hear the difference between each step, when they bypass only a single plugin. But when they bypass the whole chain, it's a very notable difference. It's not about the plugins! A pro like him could do stellar mixes with just Ozone, or stock plugins. It's about experience and ear training. You've got more than enough tools already.

General_Disarray said:

Well, if he mixes on Waves plugins, I believe that's the company that had the community up in arms because they switched to subscription only, so I dismissed them right off the bat. I only subscribe to Eastwest's Composer Cloud for now, because I already have a lot of their bundles and they are excellent. Not that I will keep subscribing forever, but it's a great way to test out their other libraries I don't have and buy the ones I want. Right away I bought Goliath because it's freaking awesome, and might buy the Fantasy Orchestra at some point.

Question for those of you who use Ozone 10 or 11. Where do you put it? I put it in the stereo out track in Cubase and I always put a basic limiter in the strip just to make sure it doesn't clip.

But is there a "kosher" way to put it? Like, would you create an FX track for it and have all the tracks with a send to it, or even route to it?

Click to expand...

Ozone is for mastering your music and although you can use it for mixing it's best used as a mastering suite as it's high CPU once you start adding more modules. When you have mixed your track export it as a stereo file not mp3 or any file type that downgrades the audio quality, then use Ozone on the stereo file as this is primarily what it's designed for and you definitely don't want to use it as an FX send in your DAW. Some people master the track as individual stems but I wouldn't recommend that unless you have full confidence in your ability as you can quite easily mess things up and end up with an unbalanced track undoing all the work you put into the mix. I find the assistant to be pretty much useless as there isn't a one size fits all as every track is different even music from the same genre are mixed and mastered differently and Audiolens just provides an EQ profile from the track you gave it. If you are struggling there are some good videos on iZotope website and check out Streaky on YouTube, he's a pro mastering engineer and although he doesn't use Ozone his videos are informative and can definitely help you.