OZone 5?

[BruceBrown]

With all the talk on Taxi TV about mastering and levels, is anyone using Ozone 5 ? Is it good? Anything better? Help!!!
I submitted some tracks was told they were not loud enough.
Thanks
Bruce

[eeoo]

I've never used any of those mastering suites like Ozone or T-Racks. I just use my master buss in Pro Tools usually with some eg, some compression and a mastering limiter which is often the Massey limiter demo which I downloaded for free. I've not had a problem with my levels being too low as of yet.

eo

[andygabrys]

you use ProTools right Bruce?

the Maxim limiter native to ProTools is fine for making stuff louder. and it also works fine to chain several in series and hit each one with only 1-2 db if you are worried about massacring the sound too much.

[Kolstad]

I use Ozone for many things. I particularly like the individual presets for each module. It's really flexible and easy to get a sound you like and that is appropriate for whatever the genre the track is in. The EQ's are nice (the graphic representation is really useful), the exciter sounds good, the compressor is great, the stereo widener and the limiter is good.

I think of Ozone as a really handy timesaver. A one stop shop on the master bus.

Is it really neccesary? No, it's one option between many others, but it's a really nice to have plug-in.
It's quite transparent, though. For fat sounding rock, and more colored tracks, you may want to consider the Slate stuff before Ozone.

[markjsmith]

Bruce,

I've heard that same thing on some of my tracks! I think it is honestly that most people slam their tracks too much IMHO! BUT, we gotta compete and the loudest generally wins. I don't use Ozone, but I do use UA stuff and it is great, so is Waves. I recently compressed a track to the edge of distortion (which seemed a little much to me), and heard back from the screener who said how great it sounded, so who the heck knows what the right approach is? I appreciate stuff that has more dynamic range, but in our lossy MP3 world I may be the old dog in this situation. All we can really do is trust our ears!

Anyway, I've always dug the stuff that you have on your hosting page so I think you have the most important aspect down...........great tracks.

[andygabrys]

I recently compressed a track to the edge of distortion (which seemed a little much to me), and heard back from the screener who said how great it sounded,

was this like an electro-rock thing or something of a similar nature? love to hear it.

[BruceBrown]

Thanks everybody for the info. Mark thanks for the kind words, that means a lot coming from you. I have checked your tracks out and feel the same about your tracks and Gtr playing. Andy, The thing that was interesting about this is I went into studio with a real drummer and bass player and cut some aggressive rock tracks for sports TV. I was excited and thought is was great. Not loud enough. So I'll post it later when we go back in and remix it.
Later
Bruce

[AndyKotz]

Ozone 5... love it! Use it on ALL my tracks now. -- Andy

[mojobone]

Ozone is well-liked and well-behaved. The only knock I hear is that a few of the presets are a bit too heavy-handed for some kinds of orchestral material. (but of course, they're completely adjustable) There's no shortage of tools for the job of making stuff louder; what gets expensive is to do so transparently, without distorting or smearing transients. The expensive tools allow you to do this almost effortlessly, but if you don't mind a little self-education and experimentation, you can use nearly anything. It's nice to have a split-or multiband compressor, a linear-phase EQ and master-quality reverb, but there are free software versions that will do these jobs, once you know how to apply 'em. Most DAWs come with tools appropriate to the task, these days; consult your DAW's manual for details. The best tool I've found so far is Bob Katz' book, Mastering Audio; The Art & The Science.

[mazz]

Ozone 5 is a very powerful and flexible suite of tools. That being said, with flexibility and complexity comes more ways to really screw things up. It is certainly no magic bullet!!!

Some of the genre specific presets are pretty over the top, particularly if you hit it hard. If you want to put a little "sheen" and "glue" on things, the you'll need to venture outside preset land and learn to have a light touch with it.

As with any of these tools, the reality and the hype don't always match up, so be prepared for a learning curve. If you want a more user friendly set of tools with fewer controls to tweak that still sounds good, T-Racks is worth a look, IMO........

Bottom line is: the best tools you have are your ears and you should be able to get a great sound out of basic stuff. After that it's pretty much hair splitting and preference. Just like you can hear the difference between a Strat and a Tele, eventually you can hear different favors of compression, eq, etc. until then , maybe the Strat is just fine!