Greetings!
My name is Ian Vargo, I'm from The Pro Audio Files and masteringinthebox.com, and today
I'm going to be introducing you to Ozone 9, which is the latest update to iZotope's all-in-one
mastering plugin suite.
Ozone 9 has made numerous improvements to its predecessor, including several new modules
such as — Master Rebalance, iZotope's machine learning technology which allows you to adjust
the gain of vocal, bass, or drum elements in the mix without having access to stems
or multitrack sessions, Low End Focus, which can increase bass energy and punch with one
simple gesture, instantly improving the low end for your final master, additionally, Imager
has been improved, and now includes a new stereoize mode, Match EQ is now a separate
module.
Easily grab the frequency response from your favorite track and apply it to your own, and
Master Assistant has been vastly improved, including an all new Vintage mode, which allows
you to apply the vintage inspired modules to your master.
We also have extended options for loudness preference.
So allow me to show you how I would use Ozone 9 on an in-the-box master.
The track I'll be using is “Dead Dog” by Annie Dirusso.
This track was recorded and mixed by my great friend, Jason Cummings.
Super talented musician and producer in New York City.
It's essential to critically listen to the material you're working with when mastering
so that you can evaluate what types of aesthetic adjustments you want to make, if any.
If you're working with a beautifully recorded piece of classical music, you'll likely want
to be really conservative with processing.
If you're working on a Dance tune and the mix you've been delivered is on the quiet
side and lacking in brightness, you'll probably want to be more heavy handed with compression,
equalization, limiting, etcetera.
So let's have a quick listen to this song.
I'll play you about 10 to 15 seconds of several different parts of the track for you.
[mix]
So as you heard, this particular production is sort of a singer/songwriter rock track.
It has big, fuzzy guitars, powerful drums, and melancholic, but still catchy vocals.
The lyrics need to remain intelligible.
In fact, one of the notes I was given was to try to make the vocals a bit clearer and
more prominent.
So in this case, that Master Rebalance might come in handy.
I also want to use the Vintage mode, which will take advantage of the vintage inspired
modules, because I want to impart a bit of vibe and harmonic content onto the track.
So let's do it, and we're going to start with Master Assistant.
As with Ozone 8, it's recommended that you choose a loud section of your song when using
Master Assistant, so I'll make sure to do that, and because I'm going to choose Vintage
mode, Ozone is going to select the vintage inspired modules.
We're going to go with medium intensity, and I'm going to choose streaming as my target.
This will ensure the average volume is close to what most streaming services use.
I'm going to ultimately shoot for -12 LUFS.
CD will give you a louder result, and reference is for when you want to try to match a piece
of reference material that you can actually load into Ozone 9.
It's a really useful feature.
But as I mentioned, let's go with streaming and on medium intensity.
[song]
Let's see what the Master Assistant recommended.
First, we have a slight high shelf boost with this equalizer module.
Not much of a change.
We've got no changes whatsoever with the Vintage EQ.
I suppose that means it's a perfect mix.
That's a great compliment, thank you iZotope, good job Jason.
The Vintage Compressor chose low ratio, somewhat of a fast attack, and a moderate release,
so I'm going to adjust them just a bit.
The Vintage Limiter is somewhat subtle too.
I may dial that back a bit.
Alright.
And the Maximizer is doing very little.
Let's have it learn a negative 12 LUFS threshold, because that is what I'm aiming for.
[music]
As I mentioned, I am going to make some slight adjustments, probably want to use more subtle
settings with limiting and compression to reduce pumpiness, and I do plan on using some
different modules, so let's dial this in a bit.
So really subtle stuff with the Vintage mode.
Again, a testament to this recording and mix.
I would like to try and give some of the other features a spin.
We've got the low end focus module here, first up.
You'll notice it allows you to extend or contract the low end frequency range you'll be affecting.
We've got two modes — punchy and smooth.
From what I can tell, so far, the punchy mode will emphasize transients, making your kick
more prominent, and the smooth mode will enhance warmth, so it'll benefit basses and other
low frequency based instruments with less prominent attack.
You could also choose to add or remove gain, allowing you to give more emphasis to either
the punchy or smooth low end components.
Really interesting.
There's also a really cool Listen mode, and you can solo the frequency range.
[song]
So let's check out Master Rebalance.
This is such a useful feature, because sometimes, the things that we do in mastering, maybe
we're helping the overall tonality of a piece of music, or preparing it to be loud enough
for distribution.
These processes might actually negatively affect the balances of the music.
So I'm going to hit play, and bring up and down the drums, bass, and vocals.
[mix]
That is really helpful.
Something I believe to be best used in a subtle fashion, but regardless, really an excellent
tool for a mastering engineer.
The Imager has been updated as well, so to start, you've only got one band, but you can
add three additional bands by clicking.
You've got control over widening the low, low-mid, high-mid, and highs, and you can
control the crossover points.
This new stereoize mode seem, to me, simply like it adds a bit more of a drastic flavor
to the processing, or colorful widening.
Let's play around with this for a bit.
[mix, adjusting Imager]
So I did go back and make a few adjustments here or there, change some settings, use some
different modules, but the Master Assistant is extremely helpful, this is a great learning
tool, sounds great, every update to Ozone has been fantastic, so well done iZotope.
I could probably have spent another several hours, if not an entire day going through
each and every setting on this thing, but you should check it out for yourself.
This has been Ian Vargo with The Pro Audio Files and masteringinthebox.com.
Thanks!