Is anyone using Ozone?

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Freudian Slip

Freudian Slip

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I am wondering if anyone is using ozone, or if anyone knows of another multi-band compressor plugin for direct X?

If so how do you like it and has it helped your mix alot?

Thanks

F.S.
 
Keep in mind I'm a newbie to all of this and I think I've established a reputation as the resident crack pot, but if this helps, my friend who is a DJ and calls himself KillaKlown mentioned something called Ozone and said 'it kicks much ass' though I'm not entirely certain he was talking about the same thing you are. Do you have any bannanas? I LIKE bannanas. :)
 
Baaaaaaannnnnnnaaaaaaannnnnna!

There you go. One fresh bannana! Personaly I hate bannanas, as I told my baby sitter once while I beat one on the counter till it exploded much to her dismay......:)


Ozone is mastering software for multi-track recording on computer. So I do not know if he would know what it is or not.

Thanks though.


F.S.
 
F.S. I haven't got a full version of ozone but have played with the demo and I have heard mention of it by a couple of others on this forum. When I get my computer upgraded I will be buying the program but until then I think it will be too unwieldy as it is a very high resolution/CPU hungry program meaning you can't run too many of it's functions simultaneously on a slow computer.

My first impressions of it are extreme amazement and I'm not sure why it has not created tons of interest on forums like this - maybe because I am inexperienced and easily amazed????!!!!!

Waves also puts out a multiband compressor but when I demoed it there seemed to be no comparison in the flexibility and usefulness of the two programs - I thought ozone was generations ahead.

Anyway you can download demos from the www.izotope.com (ozone) website and from waves (30 day trial) and I'm sure there are others but I can't remember them now.

Ozone was very cheap by comparison to other plug ins I looked at - it is far more than just a multiband compressor - and you can also download a free copy of the manual which gives the best overall basic explanation of what "mastering" is about that I've read.

Maybe I am a fool about this software it just seems to me to be a very overlooked piece of genius.

Good luck and good hunting.

Nige
 
Nigie

Do you know if the Ozone demo is fully functional? If it is a 30 day trial and fully functional I would be able to really test it out.

I have a song just mixed down and I would like to try mastering/remastering the stereo track. That would answer weather I will purchase or not.

I did take the time to print the manuel a week ago and it looks great.


Thanks


F.S.
 
Sorry F.S. , the ozone demo is not "fully functional". In that sound cuts out every 20 seconds or so for about 5 seconds or so which makes it very disjointed and frustrating. You can use it in this fashion forever though - there is no 30 day limit. The waves demo from memory is fully functional or very nearly so and only lasts 30 days. Sorry I know this is disappointing.

Also I presently use a Celeron 566 (P3 motherboard) and with this speed of computer you can't have many ozone effects switched on at the same time. You have to set one or two up and then "bypass" them while you are setting up other effects. In my opinion this is not a very satisfactory way to work when you want to hear the overall sound of what you are shaping!

I hope you have a faster computer than I do. Trouble is I don't know if even a relatively fast computer (say an Athlon 1600 or so) would allow everything to run at once. For some people this may not seem such a drawback (I read someone just using a Pentium 400 (P3) felt they were getting good results). I won't be buying ozone until I have an Athon computer and some monitor speakers.

Hope this is of some help. Good luck.

Nige
 
Thanks for the info!

I think I will wait for some more reviews before I spend any dough. I am running a P3 1ghz, and am able to run plenty of real time effects while playing back 40 tracks in cakewalk. I think that the structure of the program could really have an effect on the processing power it sucks though.

Thanks

F.S.
 
One way to check is to download the demo and select a preset that uses a lot of it's effects. You may be very lucky and have enough power! If you try this I'd like to know what the result is!

I didn't want to put the program down at all. There is nothing else like it that I've found that has everything completely integrated and with a spectrum analyser, phase meter and vector scope so you can see graphically exactly what you're doing. (These are also very useful to compare your results with commercial CD's which can set a kind of target to aim for in a way). Waves for pc doesn't even include a spectrum analyser let alone integrate everything so you are doing everything in an interconnected way in the one program.

Cubase make mastering software that looks interesting but I couldn't get a demo. Again it was not integrated - ozone have really made their program "simple yet very sophisticated" and easy to use in this way.

Anyway if you do get round to downloading the demo just selecting some presets may give you a much better idea of what it can potentially do which is just about everything!

Best wishes.

Nige
 
There has been very good audio comparisons between Ozone and Waves in the Cubase Forum. (Look up Paul Woodlock for the user name when searching) Lots of people ranting about how it's better than Waves. I used it and I think it is fine for the price but not as good as Waves mastering tools.

It has a great on-line manual!
 
Greggybud & Nigie

Thanks for the info Greggybud:).

Nigie: I am to too worried about the ability to run all the effects at one time. If need be you could always run them in the order that they are set up in the program 1 or 2 at a time.

I think I will try to download it and give it a whirl. I will have to check the file size. I am in the boones, Bad phone lines, no dsl, no cable modems.


Thanks All

F/S
 
Ok It is a fool proof demo.

I tried to get around the cutting out every so often. I used the general preset, and I treated a matered mix to it. Then I made another track on the untouched mastered mix and slid it 5 messures over, added 5 messures if a track to the begining (just to cover all the basses) I used the demo on it as well. I then cutt up the bblank parts leaving plenty of room where signal was pressent. And I deleted, cutt and pasted, and cross faded. the tow tracks Together.

What I found is that the Ozone demo also cycles the signal level very slowly. There would be know wat to counter this other than massive compression or a very time consuming automation building session.

Well I tried. 20 secondes is just not enough for me. I need to be able to switch back and forth between tracks to compare at will.
I did get a better idea of the product this way but I am skeptical (SKEP-TICK_ELL) of first impressions


F.S.
 
10/10 for trying FS well done. You deserve to have succeeded 100% with all that effort but those bad demo designers must not agree unfortunately!

Nige
 
You got me thinking about how much juice ozone really pulls...

I have a 1 gig t-bird with 256 megs of ram and I could not quite get 4 ozones running with everything on all of them. 3 worked graet..but when I hit 4..it started to chop the sound..I dunno.maybe if I screwed with the buffer settings..maybe i could of got 4.
I have the full version of ozone and highly recomment it. Definetly read the manual (pdf) it's got a lot of tricks to using it,,plus a bunch of good stuff on general mastering..
 
I'm running a P3-700 384MB Ram 40G IBM-Deskstar 60GXP with Sonar XL. Ozone is definitely a hog. I exported one of my mixes and opened it as a seperate file with Ozone on the stereo mix.

When I switched all 6 effects off my CPU was at 2%. Just turning on the EQ/Spectrum analyzer kicked it up to about 25% and all 6 effects brought it to about 56%.

I would say if you are concerned about Ozone eating your CPU, bounce your mix down to 2 tracks and open it up in another file like I did so your CPU is totally free.

It's a great program.. Much nicer than T-Racks 24.
 
Well I think I may buy.

I may buy it. I liked the sound it gave on hte general preset. and that is with out messing with it at all. I saw a Behringer multiband compressor and it is $270.00 just for it. Plus I am a little worried about behringer. Anything that sells that cheap you've got to wonder?

Anyway I am looking at Ozone for strictly remastering, that is only using it on mixed down stereo tracks. So I am not worried about CPU usage. I think I have had descent success up to that point with my fx1, 2, and 3 effects that came with my CW9.0 pro suite. I do have quite a bit of out board gear to, but it is mostly geared for live sound and I would like to stay all digital in the effects if possible while recording. It sure is cheaper if you can find quality programs. I would like a good software chorus unlike my cw stuff but what the hell I never use it much.


Later

F/S
 
Timothydog did you say you can run ALL SIX ozone effects on your stereo mixes and only use 56% CPU? That is very encouraging. I was thinking something like a P4 1.8gig system may be required to run everything! (My P3 celeron 566 only allows about 2 ozone effects to be operating at once on a stereo mix-down). Sorry of course you did say this I am just finding myself not daring to believe it that's all! Also - I'm not sure if this makes a difference - but are your songs originally recorded in 24bit/44.1 or similar? My songs are still 16/44.1 but I don't know if this makes them an easier load on the CPU when working with them.

Brokenwindow, were you talking in reference to applying ozone to an unmixed song? Do you get similar outcomes to timdog when "mastering" with ozone on a stereo mix?

F.S. how many ozones could you go with your mixed down song?

Suddenly the world seems like it may not be such a harsh place...

Thanks

Nige
 
I was referring to using the 3 ozones on a stereo wav file in wavlab.

I just put 1 ozone on top of each other and turned on all the effects on all of them..It didn't sound very pretty..but I was seeing how much I could get.

I got 3 of them easily using all the fx on each..4 ozones took my cpu to it's knees...

Who knows...I could have gotten more if I had changed the buffer settings..I do have them set pretty low..
 
Nige,

Yah, when I'm running a single stereo mix by itself in Sonar and only the Ozone plug-in (all 6 processors active) I top out at about 60% CPU usage

I'm doing 16 bit 44.1k right now. I plan on doing 24bit soon so I'll let you know if there are any differences.
 
Couple of general comments. I don't own the product, so I'm mainly passing along what I've heard about it from other sources. I did play a little with the demo - but the 20 second dropout made that pretty difficult.

1. Ozone is pretty highly regarding on the Sonar newsgroup.

2. Consensus seems to be that it's not quite in Waves league - but it's also only about 20% of the price.

3. The other fact I've heard mentioned is that the presets pretty much suck. However, most people seem to feel that the program's ease of use make the need for presets pretty minimal.

4. Ozone is designed to be a "mastering" plug-in. Therefore, you would typically only use one instance of it on a pre-mixed stereo track. Of course, it will be a resource hog - it has 6 seperate functions or so - but it really should be the only plug-in you would be using at that point in time. So who really cares if it uses even 90% of CPU capacity, so long as it runs.

5. I really liked the idea of some of the graphic aids. The frequency graph alone might be worth the price of admission.

YMMV
 
Well... after reading this thread and looking around at other forums, etc., I started playing with Ozone.

My first impression, using the "General" preset, was "This seems like it sounds good, but there are certain aspects of it that mangle the song." I plugged several different songs through the preset, and had the same impression with all of them, although it was usually something different that I didn't like, depending on the song.

Well, I sat down and read the entire 56 page user/mastering guide, going through the plug-in and the process step-by-step.

Two things happened: I felt like I got a much better understanding of "mastering" (put in quotes so as not to offend the "send it away and pay $$$ or it's not real mastering" crowd ;) ), and I also came away feeling pretty impressed with Ozone.

I've "mastered" all of my songs, but always with a "press this button and see" approach. I've been happy with them, but I honestly feel like the song I just remastered using Ozone is better than I could have been capable of before. A lot of my previous mastering approach has been a hands-off affair; a little compression and maybe a touch of EQ, but that's it, if that.

I will have to play around more with Waves, but I do have to say that the Ozone interface is VERY appealing, and I could see that being the major factor, if the quality is similar, which to my (somewhat hyped and excited) ear, they are. Time will tell, I think, but right now I am pretty happy with the way Ozone worked for me. (I hope it's not just me being over-excited about a new toy, which I am totally abusing. lol)
 
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