Hey there, Geoff Manchester here from iZotope and
I'm very excited to walk you through the latest generation of Ozone, Ozone 11. and head to the
description or to iZotope.com to download a free trial of Ozone 11 and follow along. For those that
don't know, Ozone is our suite of mastering tools that are designed to come together in a really
smart and assistive way to get you to a great sounding master, whether you are just beginning
and dipping your toe in the world of mastering or you're someone who's been in the game for
a very long time and you just want an amazing, great sounding set of tools to get you over
the edge to the finish line with a great, mastered final product. And at the center of Ozone
is the Assistant which is designed to get you to an amazing starting point which you can then
tweak or start over or just set and forget on your way to a great sounding master. One of the
big themes of this release has to do with giving you even more insight, allowing you to hear things
you couldn't hear before, see things you couldn't see before, solve problems you couldn't solve
before or solve them in a way that's so much easier than the old way, which might have taken
you 20 clicks, now you've got about two to five to solve that problem. So I'm going to walk you
through the modules and technology that really speak to that level of control and specificity
over how you want your master to sound. And I think the first stop on this whistle tour has
to be the Clarity module which is brand new in Ozone 11. And you can see it right here, it's got
a little eyeball icon as the module centerpiece. What this technology is designed to do is really
take the blanket off of your muddy or dark sounding masters. And we do this with spectral
shaping, that's the processing that's powering this module. The controls are super simple. We
have an amount slider here, we have a tilt slider, an attack and release, and of course we also have
some parameters here where we can kind of tailor and focus the processing to where it needs to be
according to whatever it is that you're working on. What I'm going to do is stop talking and do
a gain matched, because that's very important in mastering, before and after with some default
settings and the track we're going to be listening to is called “Slowly” and this is from Smokehouse
made up of Peter Mol and Dan MacKenzie, a Canadian Duo, and as a Canadian you know that's how they
got the gig. No I'm kidding, it's a great track. [Music] So let's talk about what's happening here. As I
said earlier we have spectral processing powering this module. What's in between these action
regions is essentially about 256 bins or bands of audio that are subject to the processing
that Clarity brings. And what we can do is tilt that processing toward a few different
profiles. If we leave the Tilt option in the center we're essentially tilting and molding and
shaping the audio towards a pink noise profile. If I was to bring this over here to the right
to positive values, I would be tilting things to a white noise profile. And over here
to negative values a brown noise profile. But again the objective is to tilt it into a
territory where we have Clarity and we kind of take the mask off the mix. And the amount well
it's up to you. I've left it at about 50 percent over here, but of course we could increase it
or decrease it depending on what sounds best to you. And as I said we can adjust the action
region to really target the processing to a certain part of the, I would say, lower to upper
mids all the way to the highs here depending on what the master needs. And down here we have some
simple ballistic controls. Attack and release, how quickly or slowly the processing is taking shape
to really unveil and bring clarity and brilliance to your master. So if I want I can bring the
Tilt up maybe let's have a listen to that. I find that I have better results with
more conservative values at amount if I'm going more toward the white noise tilt
than I do when I'm over here in pink, I find I can push the amount a little bit more and just really unveil things. Let's go down
here to some of the brown noise profile. [Music] So the color brown certainly connotes
perhaps a darker sounding result, but as you could hear I think what we have
instead is maybe a more subtle before and after, still compelling in terms of what it's unveiling,
but it's not as pronounced and kind of bright and clear as when we have things at positive values,
pink noise, or if we tilt all the way to the right here to a white noise profile. So really it's
up to you but as you can see the action regions, the amount, the tilt, and a couple controls
down here really afford you a lot of control over the before and after, and I think
the after, certainly gain matched, sounds like we have a much clearer more kind of
complete defined picture of the mix than before. So that's Clarity but I want to take a
moment just for those who might be going “okay I've been with Ozone for awhile, I know
there's a couple other modules here that have spectral processing under the hood. What's the
difference between Clarity and those other ones?” So I'll say that Low End
Focus, the Spectral Shaper as well as the Stabilizer all use spectral shaping
but they use it in different ways. With Low End Focus we're really only able to hang out at 300
and below to pull apart the spectral content in the low end. Either really bringing up the
punchy, transient elements or the smooth sustained elements, and of course we have contrasting
gain as controls there. So we are using spectral processing but for different reasons to bring out
different elements of specifically the low end. With the Spectral Shaper, this is really meant for
attenuation and control, not so much brightening. So you'll see in a future example in the video
we're going to tame some sibilance and effectively use the spectral shaper as a de-esser. The other
thing to know, I mentioned that we have 256 bins or bands in Clarity. With the spectral shaper we
have 64 nel spaced bands so far fewer than the Clarity module but enough to get the job done. In
the Stabilizer, we also have spectral processing, but its purpose is really to mold your EQ profile
and tone toward that of whatever target that's been chosen, either one that we've made or
one that you've uploaded over in the Master Assistant page. Its job is to kind of guide
and shape the tone toward one of the targets, whereas with Clarity, it's guiding and shaping
the tone toward a profile that's, you know, again, pink noise, white noise, or brown noise,
but all are power stored by spectral processing. And I think it might be worth it just to tell you
a little bit of you know the differences between all of them in case you might think the jobs
overlap or they're not really defined. Now you know what each one of them does each job they do,
and how they might come together, or just be used individually to really make your track shine,
get it under control, those kind of things. Now the next feature I want to talk to you about
is called Stem Focus and when I say stem folks who might have been on Ozone 9 or 10 might be thinking
already of like stem separation and they might be thinking about a module which is over here called
Master Rebalance. And what this tool is designed to do is bring the gain of the vocals, bass
or drums up or down by a certain decibel level that's set by you. We have taken this thinking and
really pushed it to the limits of what's possible in iZotope technology for Ozone, and that's where
Stem Focus comes in. What we've done with Ozone 11 is take this concept of Master Rebalance,
stem separation, and pushed it as far as it can possibly go. And now we have Stem Focus. So what
you can do is not just bring the gain up or down of the vocals, bass, or drums, you can isolate
just the vocals and then use any Ozone module to process just the vocals, leaving everything else
alone or just the drums, leaving everything else alone, or just the bass. What this means is if you
have a vocal that happens to be pretty pinched, and perhaps sibilant, you can instantiate a copy
of Ozone ahead of, take a look at my channel here, ahead of the one that you've used to get a great
overall sound. So you want to make sure that it's upstream from the last version of Ozone. So in
this case I have one version above this version of Ozone, here it is, and I'm going to use this just
to focus and target my processing on a vocal that again, I feel is kind of pinched and perhaps a
little sibilant. So have a listen and take a look. [Music] So you might notice those with discerning eyes
that the spectra here is not full frequency even though we're looking at Ozone right? And that's
because right now I am hanging out on the vocal focus. If I go over here I'm basically going
to be processing everything. So I see a lot more information here, but let's go to vocals.
A lot more low end is missing now. So that's just a visual indication that we are now
focused on just the vocals. So I have a little curve here that I've introduced
and what I'll do is use the equalizer, just bring up the amount so you can see
and hear that we are restoring this vocal, making it less pinched and kind of Lo-Fi
and more full frequency and full-bodied. [Music] So we've just affected the vocal, I
feel like I have to repeat this we are just affecting the vocal, nothing else, and we
are doing it in real time with an EQ. Before. [Music] Now when the client asks you to make that
vocal less pinched you don't have to ask for the multi-tracks or bring the master track
into RX and use Music Rebalance to spit out the vocals. You can do everything in one session,
one digital audio workstation with Ozone 11. Now we still have to take care of that sibilance,
those harsh s sounds. Now we have de-essers we have them in RX we have them in Nectar as well.
But the Spectral Shaper as I mentioned earlier is really great at suppressing energy that might be
strident using spectral processing. And what I can do here is call it up right after the EQ, again,
just in vocal stem mode here, and just adjust things to the point where I am controlling the
s's again of just the vocal, nothing else. [Music] You can adjust the action regions here. So
let's just loop that section again where the strong s's are and we'll do a little before
and after let's turn Spectral Shaper off. If you determine that's too much de-essing,
just pull it back. Go to either the light mode or bring the amount down or do both. Let's
hear. Before. So getting back to the themes that I talked about at the top of this video.
Control, right? We can now fix problems that were impossible to fix before or were fixable at
the risk of introducing artifacts and whatnot. I've just de-essed and re-EQ’d a vocal without
affecting anything else in the mix all from Ozone and it sounds great. So you can imagine using this
workflow to just go into a really kind of rubbery bass, or out of control drums, or under uh cooked
drums, and boost them up, bring them life, bring them vitality with Low End Focus or something
like that, just going in and targeting the element that you want to process without affecting
anything else in the mix thanks to Stem Focus. The next thing I want to talk to you about
is transient sustain processing and this is a feature that's now been extended to 10 modules
in Ozone 11. Some people might be familiar with tools out there that let you at an EQ level
control the transient or sustain information. Well with Ozone 11 we now have transient and
sustain processing across 10 different modules to give you so much more control again with the
themes of control here over what it is you're working on. So how to find it is just by going
here to the center of the module. Click down, and you'll see the familiar stereo, mid/side,
left/right, and now transient and sustain. So what someone can do here is just go to
transient, and process this, or sustain, and process just the sustain information. So
you'll see over here that we have a pretty nice boost here from about 150 all the way
down and then 5k and all the way up. Now if I turn off this sustain you'll hear what
things sounded like before on this file. [Music] So let's say that what I want to do is really
enhance the transient information in the kick drum and I also want to bring to life a little
bit the transient information of some of the shakers and other percussive elements that are
really hanging out at the top end. With my two boosts and really focusing my processing on the
transient stuff, I can achieve that. Listen for the kicks and for the percussive stuff to
really brighten up when I un bypass my work. [Music] Another example of altering just the transient
or just the sustained information is using it in the very popular Imager module. So let's
say that I determined that I really wanted to brighten up the transient information that I'm
widening. This is getting pretty tricky here, pretty meta. So I just want to bring out the
transient information that I'm widening you'll see that I have a couple of bands here not doing
anything on this low band, but on this high band bringing it up by 15, on this upper mid band
we have around 40, and then 70 at the very, very high end with our transient control
selected here. So here's before and after. Another example of this kind of processing is let's say that you wanted
to really draw out and excite the warmth of these sustained notes of the bass using the
Exciter module. Just those sustained notes. We have sustain selected here, nothing really
happening in transient all our amounts are down. Go over here I brought things up to 555
for each one of these bands. Have a listen to the warmth again that we can draw out in just
the sustained elements of the performance. [Music] I could enhance it even more. Obviously I have to go to the Maximizer and bring
a limiter on, but I really want you guys to just hear what's happening here so, you know, clipping
police don't uh, don't come after me too hard. So hopefully this gets your mind working a
little bit in terms of the creative possibilities afforded to you by this style of processing only
the transient or sustained info. And we have just four modules here. The processing is available
across tents. You could bring this up in other beloved modules, not just the ones you see on
screen here, so the sky really is the limit. Now the next feature that I want to talk to
you about is tucked away in the completely improved Maximizer module in Ozone 11, and
it's called Upward Compress. It's pretty unassuming but it's very powerful in terms of
the ability it has to really bring into focus and put up against the glass information
that's kind of nestled below the surface in the mix. So you can wring out a little bit
more perceived loudness and focus with just one control down here. I have a track that I'm
going to use and have a listen. I'm going to turn this first off to the crackle, the kind
of white noise, as the track gets started. This is a super squashed uh, really gritty
sounding master and we have that fun kind of Lo-Fi stuff happening at the beginning
with Upward Compress. You're just upwardly compressing some of the stuff that's down there
and you can really hear it come up in tone, and again, just push the mix up against
the glass a little bit more. So I will turn it on and again listen for that Lo-Fi
stuff just creep up a little bit quick. Before So the other really interesting thing that
I hope you heard, and you can certainly see with this really nice gain trace at the
bottom is the minute those drums came in, the Upward Compress got out of the way and let the
rest of the track kind of sing. All it was doing was make sure that we had a little bit more vibe
and energy at the beginning with that Lo-Fi stuff and then its job is done, it gets out of the
way once the drums hit. So once again, before. So of course you can push this even more if you
want even more upward compression or back it down. I find six kind of works for my purposes but just
because we're here let's bring it all the way up. [Music] This is just a really easy almost focus increase
or vibe enhancer and it happens at the Maximizer module, so feel free to just bring it in to taste
to really push things up against the glass and add some kind of body and almost musical haze,
if you will, that almost glues things together a little bit. So anyway now the last big feature
I want to talk about is some of the changes that have been made to both the Master Assistant and
the Master Assistant page. Let's run the Master Assistant so you can get a sense of its new look.
So to do that we really recommend that you play your track at the loudest, most energetic part
so that the processing knows. Okay the track's gonna get as loud as this. I will make some moves
and then have that generalized to the rest of the track. So I have my loop set and I'll go over
here to the Assistant page and get started. So that is a first pass and now we have this brand
new, redesigned Master Assistant page. Big targets on the left here. We have our total balance
section, loudness, which are really the two most important things I think when you're kind of
putting your mastering engineer cap on. And then we have the extras over here: Dynamic Match with
Match Clarity Amount and Stabilizer Amount and the brand new edition Vocal Valance. So Master
Assistant is now intelligent enough to go in, know the kind of track you're trying to
sound like at a genre level and go okay, I think your vocals might be a little bit too
quiet or too loud, let me make some adjustments. And we can see that a very slight adjustment
was made to the vocal balance. Because if I go to the detailed page I can see that I have
a 0.5 Db boost of the vocals. So again, it's mastering right? It's very subtle. The other thing
I want to say is I don't think this track is rock. If you don't think that Master Assistant got
your genre correct, you don't have to start over. Just go over here and choose the genre that
you think it sounds like. For me this sounds like a pop track, so I'm going to choose that. As the
track plays you can hear the sonic differences. [Music] Here’s rock. So notice a couple things changed. The target at
a visual level changed to allow for a little bit more brightness and Clarity, if you will, in the
high end. And our modules over here in the detail page are working to conform and fit things closer
to a high kind of nice, airy level here in this quadrant. The other thing that changed is the
volume level of the vocals at the vocal balance level here went up. So if I go over to the detail
page and go to Master Rebalance, we're at 0.9 instead of 0.5. So it's determined that okay, well
if it's pop it's going to have to come up by this much. So hopefully now you know if it gets the
genre wrong or kind of not quite in the ballpark, just change it from here and make some tweaks.
You can use the equalizer gauge here to further form it to that target. You can play
with some level here with the Maximizer. You can increase or decrease the vocal balance. Or play with the extras down here, or just
turn them off and turn them back on to see if you like what you hear. But the real kind
of tweakability occurs when you go into the detailed page. And from here you can
see all the modules that were introduced after the listening pass occurred. An
Equalizer, the Impact module, the Imager, Clarity the brand new module, Stabilizer,
Dynamic EQ, and finally the Maximizer with a little bit of Upward Compress. So why don't we
do a gain-matched before and after to make sure that the Master Assistant has left the track a
little better than when it found it together. [Music] Now because you've made it to the end of the
video I want to talk to you about some other really cool changes that are really for the folks
that are Advanced and still with me in this long walk through. And that is the introduction of way
more delta buttons across way more modules. So we know that for mastering engineers, understanding
where the processing is being targeted and really getting a sense of what's being affected
by the modules in the tool is very, very, very important. So to that end we have introduced
this little Delta feature which lets you hear the difference between the processed and
unprocessed track. So you can go in to a module like Clarity and just hear the focus of
the processing with this button. So let's do that. So now I know that the vocals, some of the
shimmery stuff on the top end, a lot of the low and high mid stuff is definitely being affected.
Cool I don't need to adjust my bands, I'm satisfied. The same thing with the Imager module.
So I can go in over here solo it and just hear the you know difference in processing
between before and after to make sure that my bands are in the right place and
I've separated and processed things accurately. The other really cool thing is that we've
added some grids to existing and beloved modules like the Equalizer. You'll notice
that some of these colors have been tweaked and they're really elegant as you make moves
here with your EQ across the screen. I find this really modernizes and brings a lot of
class to Ozone 11. I think that will just about do it for everything that's new and how
you can really make the most of it in Ozone 11. So thank you so much for watching, I hope that
now you've been armed intellectually with how to make the most of the new features in Ozone 11
on your next track, production, what have you. Maybe you're going to go back to songs that you
didn't think you could fix because you can with some of the tools and processing in Ozone 11. If
you have any questions or comments please leave them down below and as ever thank you so much
for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
