Hey guys, Eric Tarr here for theproaudiofiles.com.
I’m gonna show you a very cool feature of the iZotope Ozone 5 plugin.
This feature is Spectrum Matching.
In order to understand this feature, you must first understand the idea of frequency analysis.
This plugin has a frequency analyzer built in as part of the equalizer section of the
plugin.
So as soon as you open it up and click on this tab, you’ll see the graphical user
interface here display a frequency analysis.
What this is gonna tell you is the relative amplitude or energy of different frequencies
that are part of the signal that’s feeding the plugin.
Right now, I’ve got this plugin inserted on my mix buss.
Or as the first insert slot on my master fader here.
Then I’ve got all these other tracks in my session feeding the mix buss from my drums,
synthesizers, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass and so on.
All going into this master fader.
And so when I press play, the frequency analyzer is going to tell me the relative amplitude
of all the frequencies of my full mix.
So here it is.
[full mix]
This frequency analysis feature on it’s own can be very helpful if you’re trying
to make decisions about doing things like equalization.
It will tell you maybe where frequencies are too loud or too quiet.
And help you decide whether you need to boost or cut certain frequencies.
Taking this a step further, you can actually use the frequency analyzer in the plugin to
match the relative amplitude of different frequencies in your mix, to some other reference
mix that you’re using.
So what I’ve got in my session is all my tracks going over to this particular bus called
music mix.
I’m gonna go ahead and mute that.
Then what I’ve done is brought in a reference track that I like to use.
This is a song mix from a band called flight path, they’re based out of Nashville.
I like their sound a lot.
So what I’m gonna do is feed the signal from my reference track into the iZotope plugin
and look at the frequency analysis here on the display of my reference track.
[reference track mix]
So maybe you noticed just visually that there might’ve been some differences in the spectral
content, maybe there was too much highs too little highs in my mix.
And so just visually you can probably tell some of these things.
The nice thing about the iZotope Ozone plugin, is it will actually remember these settings
and come up with a way for you to match or automatically equalize your mix to match this
reference track you’re using.
So the first thing you need to do is go in and capture what are called snapshots.
These snapshots are going to be used eventually later on by the plugin to figure out how it
should automatically change or equalize the mix that you’re feeding it.
So I’ll start out and capture a snapshot for my reference track.
So I’ll click this.
[reference track playback]
Alright, that should be good.
Stop the capture.
I can call this one the reference.
Perfect.
And I’ll save that.
iZotope is gonna use this later on.
Let me create a different snapshot then for the actual mix that I’m working on right
now.
[mix playback]
That should be good.
I’ll call this one mix.
Alright.
So what you can see displayed on the screen now, the purple line is the frequency analysis
of my reference and the yellow line is for the mix that I’m working on right now.
You can see that there’s some subtle differences and for the most part it’s pretty close.
But what I can do is use this — switch over from the snapshots tab to the matching tab
— and have the plugin automatically figure out what the differences — what things need
to be changed — by using the equalizer such that my mix matches more of my reference.
Use this one called reference here, and I’m gonna apply it to my mix.
Then you have to click this match button right here and you’ll see that the equalizer automatically
snaps into place.
Then it’s up to you to decide how much you want it to fix — so I can make it more dramatic
— or you can also change how smooth it is.
If it’s a gradual change in the spectrum or if it’s more pronounced.
Typically you don’t want all these ripples showing up when you’re trying to do this
matching.
But what it’s gonna show you is, my mix might have been too heavy on the low end relative
to this reference that I liked, but also might not have been bright enough if that’s the
particular style that I’m working on, then I want to make sure that all these things
are pretty consistent to other tracks that other people are listening to.
So let’s then listen to what the plugin is doing to my mix.
[mix with eq spectrum matching on and then bypassed]
So this is a way you can use the frequency analyzer built in to the iZotope Ozone 5 plugin
to match the spectrum for your song that you’re working on with a reference track.