iZotope Ozone 10

[Anderton]

I've been checking out Ozone 10. It has a lot of modules so this will develop over time, but of course, I first tried out the AI-driven Mastering Assistant. For those not familiar with it, Ozone listens to a piece of music, then adjusts its various processors to produce what it thinks is a good master, or at least a point of departure for additional tweaking.

 

Of course, "real" mastering engineers will probably go ballistic, but I'm a real mastering engineer, and I'm not freaking out at all. First, with all due respect, any engineers who think it's going to put them out of a job simply means they're not doing their job. Ozone can't crossfade transitions between songs, skillfully splice out that overindulgent four bars of a solo, determine an album's running order, do deep waveform surgery, run off a vinyl-friendly version, etc. 

 

What it can do is adjust EQ, dynamics, and imaging. I applied it to a couple of songs where I'd already taken a stab at mastering, to see what it would do. Either surprisingly or not surprisingly, the Ozone version sounded very, very close to what I had done manually. Either that means it's almost as good at mastering as I am, or I'm almost as bad as it is

[KuruPrionz]

I will be interested. 

Of the larger, established plugin companies, Izotope seems a bit ahead of the curve in AI. 

They are now affiliated with Native Instruments who are one of the most established plugin companies and at this point one of the least compatible with Apple Native Silicon. 

The last time I checked, they had Kontakt ready. Even IK Multimedia is ahead of them in that sector. 

Izotope has updated their current offerings, just about everything they sell now is good to go on M1 Macs. 

[KuruPrionz]

Izotope is making me twitch, they have a bundle on sale that included Ozone 10 Advanced and an update to RX10 plus all sorts of other goodies. I hate when they do that, I want it!!!!

 

In your "all we need?" thread, I mention using AI to create surround mixes from tracks. 

I will now predict that Izotope Ozone will be among the first (if not the first) to bring this to reality. No later than version 12 and possibly in version 11?

[mcgoo]

On 9/22/2022 at 11:11 AM, KuruPrionz said:

Izotope is making me twitch, they have a bundle on sale that included Ozone 10 Advanced and an update to RX10 plus all sorts of other goodies. I hate when they do that, I want it!!!!

Yeah, I have RX9 Advanced and the upgrade to the Everything bundle is insane. I've been primarily using Waves for mixing and mastering plugs, but Ozone and Neutron looks like they might replace those. We'll see. The new text navigation in RX10 could be a Gamechanger for audio post production. 

[Anderton]

One of the best uses I've found is to do "interim mastering." Here's the scenario. My 2022 project has a bunch of fairly short songs strung together, with transitions between the songs. So when creating the transitions, the songs have to be close to what they're going to sound like when mastered. It's easy enough to run the Mastering Assistant on a mix to end up with something that's close enough to lay on a timeline with another song, and construct a transition to go between them. 

 

Also, I listen to mixes a lot while taking walks. Using Ozone 10 makes it easy to do a quick mastering job on the music so I'm listening to more than just the raw mixes. Granted, this works only because we seem to have a similar mindset of what a master should sound like

 

The one area that I haven't wrapped my head around yet is that AI likes to maximize - a lot, - like -9 to -10 LUFS. I go for more dynamic range, like -12 LUFS. So I let the AI do its thing, and bypass the Maximizer (one of the best things about Ozone is you can edit the individual modules that it tweaks). Then I use either IK Stealth or the Waves L3 to do the actual maximization prior to rendering.

[RABid]

It always seems to work this way. I upgraded my Izotope package in early July. Two months later they come out with a new version of Ozone and want another $99 to upgrade it again.

[Anderton]

Okay, I think I've found Ozone 10's Mastering Assistant kryptonite - songs with lots of dynamics and sections. The recommendation is to sample the section of your song with the loudest dynamics, but with some material, you end up with outlier LUFS readings. I need to investigate this more.

[Theo Verelst]

It's not likely the makers are following a scientific method to get the "mastering" they do...

 

TV

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, Theo Verelst said:

It's not likely the makers are following a scientific method to get the "mastering" they do...

 

TV

 

My understanding is that the main factors are EQ, dynamics, and imaging averaged out among various genres. For example, the typical hip-hop record is going to have more bass than jazz, be highly compressed, and probably not a lot of imaging. So if you say you want a "hip-hop-type" mastering, it will analyze what you put, in try to fit what you give it to those curves. That's a simplified version of how it works, but it's the same basic concept.

 

For people who have no clue about mastering, this can yield valid results. As mentioned, their "AI" often makes the same basic decisions I do. If I think there needs to be a bit of a cut around 300 Hz, it will usually agrees.

 

For someone who knows a bit about mastering, you can access the various modules whose parameters have been adjusted. So if you don't like the results, you can tweak them.

 

For someone who really knows about mastering, it falls short. It can't do any kind of waveform surgery, reduce peaks manually to gain more level without using dynamics processing, make unusual value judgements, figure out song sequences, etc. I do find it useful for "rough drafts," though. I can listen to the "mastered" version instead of a rough mix when trying to decide what needs tweaking in a mix, prior to creating the final two-track.

 

My expectation was not that it would produce a great master...but it's not snake oil, either. On some of my songs, the results have been very close to what I would have chosen.

[LarsHarner2]

Hello, I follow both of you in the Keyboard forum. I did get on black friday last year a  Izotope bundle with Nectar, Neutron, Ozone 9 (deluxe I think?) and a few other things for around $130-$140. I had used Ozone 8 and elements years ago, and Nectar elements years ago as well.

 

I found that the mastering assistant, worked well for me, as although I am technical, I really wouldn't be able to do so myself.

The one thing I did add in my mastering chain was Presonus Eq to change a few things. 

I did like where there was a feature in Ozone to boost up perhaps drums, bass, or vocals in the final master.

 

Do either of you have any opinions on Lurseen Mastering by IK? I was thinking of getting their bundle as I would like their B3 and Mondo bass as well. 

[Anderton]

Lurssen Mastering is very straightforward, "plug and play." I haven't used it much, because most of the mastering I do for clients involves salvage jobs that "normal" software can't handle. As to my own music, because I control the mix, the sound is in reasonably good shape before it reaches the mastering stage.

 

However, the times I did check out Lurssen to keep myself current on what's out there, a lot of the settings would be all most people would need. It doesn't do the same kind of analysis as Ozone, but there's a free trial - see if it's congruent with the kind of music you make.

 

I will say that in general, I like IK software. I think their Stealth limiter is excellent in terms of doing heavy processing while remaining transparent.

 

[Theo Verelst]

Oh, I mean it specific, the makers of this type of software know little about why I don't find the sound appealing, the technical knowledge involved in specifying " my monitoring tells me more 125 Herz " and stuff like that isn't a scientific approach in any way, while the designs in the A grade mixes some remember some of for sure are specific and have a technical foundation above the level of " look at this software it gives me 3 dB more "compression" ".

 

T

[Anderton]

Okay, I've completed tracking the songs for my 2022 project, and am about to start mixing. However, because this is a continuous mix with crossfades and such, the mixes are dependent on previous and subsequent songs. So, I used Ozone 10 to "master" the rough mixes before placing them on a timeline.

 

I suspected that mastering a collection of songs would reveal any issues more than mastering individual songs, and that's the case. Mastering them with all the same criteria nonetheless resulted in substantial level differences. As mentioned previously, some songs are kryptonite to Ozone 10. It samples a short portion of the song for analysis, so the more variations there are in a song, the harder a time the program will have. I think a future enhancement would be to have Ozone 10 load and analyze an entire song, although that would probably make people very impatient as it did the calculations need to build its mastering chain.

 

It's probably no surprise that I can't do the final mastering with Ozone 10. However, for the interim stages, running off tests, and getting a sense of where altering dynamics and EQ will take things, Ozone is quite good. I also want to try using individual modules on the masters. I think the weakest aspect is the choice of maximization. On the other hand, it's pretty good at finding and fixing holes in the overall EQ. 

[Anderton]

Okay, this is the hidden gem. One of the modules in there, the Stabilizer, is a real problem-solved when used in the "Cut" mode. It basically finds frequencies that add to harshness, and reduces them by an amount your specify (for me, it ends up being 2-3 dB). It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but when it works, it really works. Saves a lot of time tweaking master bus EQ, but it also responds dynamically, so it's one level up from static EQ.

[KuruPrionz]

As of very recently, Izotope has everything on sale, including Ozone. 

I'll just keep plugging along and wishing for money to fall from the sky... 😇

[Bill Heins]

When I finish the project I'm recording and mixing I'll use the Ozone modules in Wavelab Pro as needed The montage feature in Wavelab seems very master friendly...track and marker placement, edits per track, master output with multiple format rendering, etc.

 

Bill