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One of the most common questions asked by students and home musicians is “Why do my own recordings sound so quiet compared to commercial ones?”
The answer is Mastering. Read on.
Price
$299/£170 – Downloadable Version
$330/£187 (aprox) – CD Version
Formats
Pro Tools 6.1+ (RTAS/AudioSuite/HTDM), VST, DirectX
Mastering is considered a black art by many –
all this talk of dithering, DC offset removal and harmonic excitement can bewilder
the uninitiated! However, there are a few basic tenets, such as getting a suitable
(read ‘loud’ in todays audio culture!) sound level and creating sonic cohesion between tracks on an album.
iZotopes Ozone, now at version three, offers the
home recording enthusiast all the tools (s)he needs to create commercial quality
mastered material, and is assembled in a manner that allows anyone with basic
sound engineering knowledge to increase the quality of their mixes.
Ozone offers several tools, namely;
- Paragraphic Equalizer
- Mastering Reverb
- Loudness Maximizer
- Multiband Harmonic Exciter
- Multiband Dynamics
- Multiband Stereo Imaging
The order of these modules can be changed quickly allowing for EQ pre or post
compression for example..
All of these processes operate internally with a depth of 64 bits ensuring
that the quality is as high as possible (especially useful for dynamics and
reverb tails etc), and each process can be disabled to conserve CPU power in
scenarios when not all processes are required. Ozone can also support sample
rates of up to 192 kHz which is more than enough for any home recordist or project
studio owner.
As with all iZotope releases the aesthetic appearance of Ozone is unique; it
may not be to everyone’s taste with its dark colours and smooth animations
but I’d hazard a guess that most people will prefer this to the more utilitarian
approach favoured my some other software developers. First time users of Ozone
may find that they may have to refer to the documentation a few times to get
used to the slightly different way of working compared to Waves or TC Native
for instance, but it should soon become second nature allowing you to whip between
screens and change settings with maximum efficiency.
Hit the Preset Button
The first thing most users of Ozone will do is to have a quick sniff around
the presets to see what the software is capable of. Pressing the ‘Preset’
button on the user interface I was surprised to find no less than 83 presets!
What’s more, additional presets can be easily downloaded from the iZotope
site.
The way presets are handled is impressive – my favourite feature of the
presets menu is that individual elements from discrete presets can be combined
– for instance, you could find a preset with a reverb that you like, then
combine that with the Harmonic Excitement from another preset to create your
own ‘Super-Patch’!
Also, not only mastering presets are included. There are a multitude of presets
that can be used on individual tracks or subgroups such as Piano, Acoustic Guitar
and Drums, and a few more creative patches such as the obligatory ‘Phone’
preset.
However, to really get the best out of Ozone you’ll want to start with
a clean slate and build your own patches.
DIY Mastering
The 6 main processes in Ozone, as listed earlier, cover most possible mastering
eventualities. We’ll give an overview of the modules available, but if
you require more information you can download a great ‘Mastering with
Ozone’ guide from here - http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html
Paragraphic Equalizer
Ozones EQ in action
Ozone offers 8 band EQ, with each node switchable between highpass, lowpass,
highshelf, lowshelf and bell filters. Q is adjustable for each node, and there
is a very useful ‘solo’ tool that allows you to listen to a particular part
of the spectrum in isolation, again with an adjustable Q value. This is an invaluable
feature that can help to isolate problems that are hard to identify when the
entire signal is audible.
The Ozone EQ is also capable of ‘matching’ – this basically
means you can ‘steal’ the EQ from one track and apply it to your
own. Although some would consider this cheating, it is in fact a useful tool
to help you develop your ears and your EQ skills.
Another feature of the EQ, and one that most will find valuable is the use
of a meter ‘behind’ your EQ curve – this makes life easier
for those of us who are used to feverishly switching between EQ and meter windows.
Mastering Reverb
Reverb is sometimes used in mastering situations to add a ‘live’
feel to a track or to combat overt dryness in a badly mixed track.
Create a 'live' sound with the Mastering Reverb
The reverb on offer here comes in 2 flavours, Plate or Room, and all the usual
controls such as predelay and room size are available to tweak. There are also
phase analysis tools (to ensure mono compatibility is maintained which is especially
important when mastering for radio and TV) and the capability to solo your wet
signal.
Loudness Maximizer
As the title suggests, this module allows you to get the maximum level from
your tracks without incurring distortion. There are 3 different methods available,
soft, brickwall & intelligent.
Also in this module is the dithering and DC offset removal options. Even though
they are in the LM section, they are independent of the modules bypass status
so the LM doesn’t have to be activated to allow dithering.
Multiband Harmonic Exciter
Harmonic excitement is often used to add extra ‘sparkle’ or ‘weight’
to a mix. Ozone offers up to 4 bands of excitement, each band being user defined
and with independent controls for the amount of excitement, the wet/dry mix
and the delay.
There are also 3 modes of operation, Retro, Tube and Tape, so you should be
able to find the harmonic characteristics to suit you requirements.
Multiband Dynamics
This will be the most used module by most owners of Ozone – this section
gives you access to the Multiband Compressor. The compressor(s) can operate
with between one and four bands, all user defined, and each band can be listened
to in isolation. The compressors can also be set to act as limiters or expanders.
As with most Ozone modules, values can be changed numerically or visually by
dragging the relevant lines and boxes which ensures operation is speedy.
Multiband Stereo Imaging
This is a useful tool for mixes that lack any sense of width or size.
Again, this can operate on between one and four user definable bands with independent
controls for width and delay.
This section also holds the controls for testing the phase of your signal.
You can listen to your mix in mono, with L&R reversed and with either phase
inverted to ensure mono compatibility.
Also in this module are meters for stereo correlation and phase.
In Use
Once you become familiarised with the GUI, using Ozone is a pleasure.
The sound quality, thanks to the 64 bit and linear phase calculations going
on under the hood, is superb and transparent. You can of course force more ‘coloured’
sounds out of the software if this is required, and it is this flexibility that
makes Ozone such a valuable tool.
Obviously Ozone doesn’t have to stay strapped to your master insert points,
it can be used anywhere in your mix too. The Multiband compression can create
good ‘pop’ vocal sounds and the loudness maximiser and harmonic
exciter can be used on a lot of material, particularly bass guitars and acoustic
guitars.
However, as a mastering solution, Ozone in conjunction with a decent audio
editor such as Wavelab, Cool Edit or Soundforge would be all that you need in
99.9% of situations.
Beware though- you do have to be careful not too get carried away. With so
many controls to play with you can end up making your mix sound lifeless or
over processed if you don’t really know what you are doing. The key to
using any mastering software successfully is your ears. Don’t always feel
you have to throw the kitchen sink at every track you have to master, less is
usually more.
Despite all the complex calculations involved and the pretty graphics, the
CPU load is not as bad as you may think, although at times you may want to set
Ozone to process and monitor in Mono before finally applying changes to your
stereo file. All processes could be run simultaneously in stereo with all meters
responding quickly on a 1.33GHz Athlon (slow by todays standards), so newer
CPUs such as Pentium 4s and Athlon XP/64 should have no problems running Ozone.
Conclusion
What is really astounding about Ozone is the price compared to other mastering
suites and plugins - $299/£170 for a downloadable version, or an extra
$30/£17 for a version on CD.
At this price point there is only really one competitor to Ozones crown, and
that is IK-Multimedia’s T-Racks 24 with a price tag of $299/£200
for the standalone version. If you compare the feature lists of the two applications
you will find that Ozone has many more features and is much more ‘tweakable’.
No competition there really.
Alternatively, you could purchase something like the Waves Masters Bundle,
which offers Linear Phase EQ and MB dynamics as well as the L2 Ultramaximiser,
but its manufacturers direct price of $900 demonstrates the value that Ozone
offers – it’s a third of the price and with reverb, MB stereo imaging
and harmonic excitement as well as metering facilities. It really is amazing
how much you get for your money.
All of this is augmented by the truly excellent documentation available from
iZotopes site (you don’t even have to own the software) – have a
look here; http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html. These guides should be read by anyone who wants an introduction to mastering.
I certainly can not see any viable alternative to Ozone, software or hardware,
that would cost less than a few thousand dollars, and for that reason I’d
have to recommend iZotope Ozone to anyone looking for a quality mastering solution.
http://www.izotope.com
Mastering and Post Producton
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Author: Ben Morgan
