MASTERING with iZotope OZONE 9 - Review and Walkthrough

today it's plugin Friday and we are gonna talk about mastering with ozone 9 that came out a couple of months ago so I guess I'm a bit late to the party we say in French go mute off cos any hey what's going on the Chris here from mixdown online now if by any chance this is your first time here on the channel feel free to subscribe to the channel and to click notification bells so you don't miss anything and for all of you if you enjoy this video when you think that the video is helpful share and like alright so now let's talk also 9 from iZotope that again came out not too long ago now to be honest with you I am completely new to ozone so it was quite interesting to work with this this software for mastering I kind of liked it to be honest with you and I'll show you why in this video so let's jump in directly in Cubase and this is how I'm gonna work with ozone today within my d8w this is something that you can do if you're using Cubase or any other types of dwz you can load the ozone 9 as a plugin as an insert on your channel and do your mastering directly from your day w or you can use ozone as a standalone software also and do your entire mastering process directly in ozone without going into a da w so what we have here with ozone we have the main GUI in K the main window that is actually resizable which is quite nice ok so this is something that I appreciate a lot so on top we have the modules in K like EQ there's two eq s and K which are basically the same a qs and every EQ will have a stereo a stereo mode or mid side or left and ride mode and K which is very practical especially during mastering right now at the moment it is a very clean window but if we click on that small icon on the top left we have access to all the parameters of the EQ itself right here at the bottom ok but if you want to have a clean window you can just dis activate that ok so now we also have some dynamics ok it's like in the compressor we have an exciter and something cool that I'm gonna talk about in this video is the imager which is very nice and there's low end focus stay tuned for this one that's one that one is pretty nice too and match EQ is awesome and master rebalance this is something very very special and unique so make sure you keep on watching until we get to that part of the video and we also have at the bottom all vintage types modules like come prevented compressor vintage EQ limiter and also a vintage tape to add that type of tone to your sound okay so those are all available on top you can load as many modules as you want but only one of each at a time ok so if you load the exciter right away it is not going to be available to add a second time around so let's start our mastering a session with master assistants ok what master assistant will do is to assist you basically to set up a good starting point it is not gonna master for you working with a software like ozone is not gonna master your song by itself it is gonna provide you tools that will help you to get to a starting point and move on afterwards and this is what master assistant will do so first step here is to choose from modern modern modules or vintage types modules ok so I'm gonna select modern and then second we we need to to figure out the loudness and EQ settings so we can select manual which is what I'm gonna choose but there's also reference that can also be be selected now with reference you will need to load a reference track to be able to use that feature and that will analyze that track and then apply those settings to your to your mix basically so you can get close that reference so I'm gonna keep that to manual for now because you know there's another feature like I was saying match EQ that actually will do a very nice job without doing it directly here in K in the master assistant so I'm gonna keep that to manual and then I'm gonna choose the intensity now the intensity is gonna be the amount of loudness that you are going to target the low low intensity is going to target a loudness of minus 14 L u FS medium will target a level of minus 12 l u FS and and then high is gonna target - 11 l u FS then we have to choose between streaming or CD now if you master a song that is only gonna go on streaming platforms just select streaming that will actually set up the maximum ceiling out of your limiter okay your your Maximizer actually so by selecting streaming your ceiling is going to be set up at a default value of -1 DB and for CD you have a bit more room to play with that will bring that up to minus 0.3 okay so between minus 0.3 to minus 0.1 DB is good if you plan on on burning your song on the CD but if you're only planning on uploading on streaming services just go with streaming and bring that ceiling down to a maximum of minus 1 DB then we need to click on next but before then it says for the best results play the loudest portion of your track in case so this is what we are gonna do here I'm just gonna set that up so I play the loudest part of my song and I'm gonna go back on ozone and the click on next and play the song [Music] you [Music] all right so now I click on accept' and there you go now I have my starting point I have these suggestions that ozone is giving me as far as EQ goes like we can see here I have a bit of a boost on the top-end portion of the spectrum and also a bit of a cut to tame down the low end of the signal and also it added a dynamic EQ I love dynamic EQ and you know they did just very useful to to get you know give a bit more control to some frequencies that might be problematic in the mix so very useful in mixing and also in mastering so I have some dynamic EQ that takes care of controlling the top-end of the signal the high mids a bit of the mids and a bit of the low mids and then I have my Maximizer and the ceiling is set up to minus 1 DB because I selected streaming and this is what it looks like basically very straight forward something called a lot that I have here is learn threshold this is something that you can you can do manually can target yourself a loudness level and in Lu FS and that is gonna set your your Maximizer according to you what your your custom target is but we already did that with master assistant so I'm gonna keep it as is now at the bottom we have a bypass and gain match bypass will bypass all the modules at once and gain match will actually gain match your own process signal with the full processed signal so let's start by listen to a before and after of what I have as a starting point without activating the gain match so we can hear the difference it makes tone wise and with loudness as well [Music] okay cool so now let's do the same but with gain match activated [Music] so we'd gain match we have the difference between the on process and processed signal as far as the tone goes but the gain stays the same so very practical so if I was to use master assistant that would be my starting point I wouldn't make that mastering the final master I would definitely just go down and dive deeper and figure out a few things and just tweak a few things because there's right now if I listen to it I like it as a starting point but there's some stuff that I would definitely have to work on I'm sorry so let's start by looking at the imagery I was telling you about the imager which is a very very nice module so we can divide that in different bands and I'm just going to play around the stereo image of those different bands let's have a quick listen and see how that sounds like [Music] [Applause] [Music] cool that sounds pretty good and I'm just gonna move my imager before the last limiter let's listen to that again [Music] [Music] [Applause] cool very subtle but I like what it does so it gives me a lot of control over all those different bands too to work with the stereo image of those bands so this is the imager and now you can also solo those bands if you want to monitor those individually that can also be done okay now let's look at the Lo and focus module which is also very nice this will actually focus on the low end of the signal if you want to add a bit more punch to a muddy low-end that will actually do the job pretty well so let's try this out in case so I have my my parameters at the bottom right here where I can choose from smooth or punchy and also the amount of contrast if I want to just reduce that contrast or increase the contrast of the punch setting or the smooth setting and then we have the makeup gain if we want to add a bit more gain or reduced again depending on what we do with the punchy contrast so now the cool thing is you can also solo that band of frequencies [Music] and you can also click on listen don't you also owe that been frequent ease you click on lesson and that will monitor what you are adding to the signal that's pretty interesting alright so let's try this out I'm just gonna increase a bit of punch and then I'm gonna play with my make up gain here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] to [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] interesting okay I'm not sure I would need it for this master but it is a very very cool feature especially if I was like we're saying earlier if you end up mastering a song that has a very muddy low-end that feature can be useful in that case and also in the mix situation that can also be be cool on a drum bus for example or on the bass bus or you know whatever there's some stuff that can be done in mixing as well using that low-end focus anyways it's pretty interesting now something else that we have here and I told you about that earlier in the video is the master rebalance now this is a bit crazy to be honest with you so what we have here we have three different focus instruments okay listed down below vocals bass and drums so what that is going to do is to focus on one of those instruments by isolating them with a kind of artificial intelligence type of thing going on which is very well done okay so let's have a quick listen and I'll give you my impressions afterwards [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it is pretty cool you know I kind of like it if you if I use it in a very subtle way but it's kind of doing a very good job to isolate that vocal and to have a bit more control over the volume of the vocal to be able to reduce it or to increase it just a bit so if I'm in a mastering situation where I need to bring the vocal up a bit that can be very very useful but if you get to the end of your mastering session and you need to just increase that vocal way to too loud you can use that to get to your point but afterwards I would say go back in the mix fix that in the mix and bring that back in mastering because doing that then the mix is going to do a way better job but you know I'm gonna have to say that to use that as a tool to fix a problem in mastering where you don't need to overdo it it will do a very good job okay let's try it on the bass [Music] [Applause] [Music] get to [Applause] [Music] yeah that's impressive it's very very well done and the beauty of this is that this feature okay that gain can be automated if you're using ozone line within your date w and this is cool and that's one of the advantages of using it in the dock where you can automate you know a lot of the parameters of ozone like this gain gain feature out of the master rebalance now the last feature I want to look at is the match EQ I have a mix that has already been mastered by Ian Shepard so what I want to do here is try to just match that EQ the EQ curve to what Ian did in the mastering just to test that out so this is what I'm gonna do I'm gonna match it with match EQ I'm let's first load the reference so I need to click on reference and this is where I'll be able to load a reference track so if you if you do this for the first time you are gonna see that window you just need to click on the plus sign load your your reference track ozone will load it and there you go you have all the different portions of the track that you can choose from or the full track if you want so I'm just gonna select this one and if I want to monitor that that signal what I need to do is just to click on reference a B and K and once a reference is activated when I'm gonna click on play this is what I am gonna monitor [Music] okay so now I'm gonna go I'm just gonna click it's gonna detective eight reference I'm gonna go back to my project in Cubase I'm just gonna make sure I'm at the same starting point here okay I'm just gonna make sure I'm playing the same the same portion of the mix okay I think I am next what I need to do I need to capture both signals okay so first I'm gonna capture the the signal of the reference Viking on capture but I need to make sure that reference is active click on capture click on play alright so once I'm done I'm gonna do the same with my my mix alright so now we click on stop so what I have here is I have both frequency spectrum of the mix and also the reference mastered track in my case in orange I have the master track and in blue I have my own processed mix and then I have the suggestion that ozone is giving me as far as the EQ curve goes so I have a bit of a boost in the low end and a bit of a boost on the top as well around 12 K 11 or 12 K and a bit of a dip okay in the mid-range so what I can do next is to fine-tune that to my taste so if I want to add a bit more of that curve I just increase the amount and that will bring that amount up because well let's bring it up just a bit and then I can smooth the the frequencies or shorten the frequencies if I want to have them a bit more a bit more detailed in K so this is up to me so let's bring that at around 3 percent and we're just gonna compare to see how that sounds like compared to the the mastered version [Music] interesting it's it's not the same but that's not the goal the goal is to get close to it and again it's a starting point it's not necessarily made to be your final EQ curve okay but it's just to get closer to your reference again as a starting point so that is actually very well done and a tool that can be useful all right my friend so this is gonna be it for today I hope you enjoyed this video if so share and like and if you want to try out ozone now the one I was working on today is ozone advanced ok so there's I think there's three versions of ozone there's the basic standard and advanced if I'm correct but I'm going to leave the link in the bottom section of this video and if you want to try it out the link is also going to be there for a free trial if you have any questions or comments leave everything down below and I'm gonna wish you a happy weekend I'm gonna see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 25,570

Keywords: izotope ozone 9, izotope, Ozone 9, Mastering, MASTERING with iZotope OZONE 9 - Review and Walkthrough, Mastering with Ozone 9, Chris Selim, Mixdown Online

Id: 5xEhcKwGxd4

Length: 21min 49sec (1309 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2019