Ozone 11

I usually try a couple of presets, and then try the auto mastering. If it ends up sounding better, I use it.

dyross said:

No matter how well I do balancing / EQ'ing individual tracks / stems, I find that arrangement differences across sections can use the adaptive "smart" EQ to keep them relatively balanced.

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Of course you may be right, I did not use exactly these tools.

However my experience is different. I have been using similar tools with a "great final effect" impression. After years it usually didn't sound as great as I heard it while doing it.

Now the mix is a priority for me. If mix is ok, mastering should be a simple formality.

I make master in my main session. In the first step I add limiter on the master and check how it sounds. If it's too quite, I edit mix in same session. The rest of mastering-related tweaks are on specific purpose.

sostenuto said:

Only Ozone 9 Elements in past, but now Ozone11 Advanced. Any hints on identifying this TGP emulation from Ozone 4 ?

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You can’t recreate exactly without ozone 4 because izotopes algos changed, but you can get close. Read the gear space thread, it is super long but people in there shared the preset as close as you can get in ozone11. Also you can watch old streams from Jaycen Joshua and he shows the preset. Point of my comment was not that there is something magic about that preset (there isn’t), but that sometimes mixing into tools like ozone are better than applying after.

I think the mastering assistant is fine, but you should only use it as a guideline. Trust your ears.

motomotomoto said:

You can’t recreate exactly without ozone 4 ...

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As I said, it might be worth trying out the free Izotope Audiolens to create your own presets.

K.Pietras / Pssst! Instruments said:

BTW Do you guys use compressor in your standard mastering chain? I use multiband only for specific purposes (e.g. when I am lazy and do not check if all sfx in my project have "not too high" volume).

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Not as a 'rule', but if I'm working on more aggressive genres with a lot of heavy sub bass (trailer cues, electronic, or urban genres, etc) then I often find I prefer a little multiband compression on the sub (often in parallel). If a mix feels a little unglued I may try parallel compressing the mids a little... I find I tend to prefer a pretty long attack (50-100 ms), to give the mix a little more of an attack envelope before being crushed by any limiting and/or clipping.

BTW I recently saw someone demonstrate a really clever mastering technique they use with Ozone 11, now that it has transient/sustain separation.

They'll turn 'soft clipping' on in the EQ (in the EQ's preferences menu, under the "EQ" tab), then find a few areas where they do a few small boosts to bring some transient punch back after limiting. Not the kind of technique you'd use for classical music, but I could see this being a handy trick to have in your pocket for aggressive and electronic genres.

The awesome thing about the EQ is it's zero latency by default, making this the kind of trick you can use in a template on some of your busses without adding latency.

PS - @K.Pietras / Pssst! Instruments Shhh is a kickass library

jcrosby said:

BTW I recently saw someone demonstrate a really clever mastering technique they use with Ozone 11, now that it has transient/sustain separation.

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Interesting. Btw I need to finaly take a closer look at the "clip to zero" technique, did you try it?

jcrosby said:

PS - @K.Pietras / Pssst! Instruments Shhh is a kickass library

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Thanks man! I love it too haha. But seriously, I use it all the time in my projects

K.Pietras / Pssst! Instruments said:

Interesting. Btw I need to finaly take a closer look at the "clip to zero" technique, did you try it?

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I've seen a few people post a video about 'clipping to zero', is that what you mean? If so I don't do that. I can see how it's useful for certain styles of EDM, but unless I were making something really aggressive (like drum and bass) I personally think you lose too much detail that way... (That's an aesthetic choice though... There are a lot of drum and bass artists I like that I know do it...)

That said, the one thing I do that's kind of similar is I use Inflator all over the place. I find its wave shaping curve is a lot gentler, meaning that most things still retain some level of transients. But if something isn't hitting 0 dB I won't deliberately clip it the turn it back down.

K.Pietras / Pssst! Instruments said:

Interesting. Btw I need to finaly take a closer look at the "clip to zero" technique, did you try it?



Thanks man! I love it too haha. But seriously, I use it all the time in my projects

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I’ve watched the whole clip to zero series and imo it can just be summed up by making each track and bus as loud as possible using clipping and spectrum analyzers to ensure things aren’t all loud at the same time. Great way to make things super loud but also more extreme than needed for all but the loudest genres.

Depending on the mix, using Exciter to bring out some sheen / presence on the high end I generally prefer to an EQ boost. A high band with the “tape” setting often works great. Imager also gets a lot of use.

My general starting chain when using Ozone.

EQ > Comp / MB Comp > Exciter > Imager > Limiter

Obviously this can change per track but I find this to be a good starting point. Stabilizer occasionally finds its way in there when a mix needs it.

One thing to note, I have never used the master assistant so I can’t comment on it.