Ozone 3 mastering program (plug in) users

[sunung1188]

Hi guys,
im sorta new to this mastering world.

I;ve been playing and recording for a few years now
and alotta the times ive noticed my song to have no 'kick' or 'crystal' sense
compared to professional mixed songs.

This was driving me until i heard of the Ozone 3. I got it and what i did was:
a. apply one of the presets for each of my tracks
e.g 1 for drums, 1 for rythm guitars, 1 for sythn, 1 for bass, etc...

This sorta made it slightly better to my new to the master ears, but once i
made it into mp3 and compared it...i was back at to the start.


If there are any users or teachers, how do u use this program with effect?
(preferrably with the presets.)

Cheers guys

 

[michaelst]

The presets are just a starting point. Pick one... and adjust the various effects as you like. You can do it real time while you preview. Personally, I use Ozone for the final mixdown. Not on individual tracks, tho if you only use one thing (like verb or compression) I guess it would work fine. When you use it on one track, it's more like an effect. On the whole mix, it's more like 'mastering'.

BTW, in what application are you using Ozone as a plug in?

 

[Massive Master]

Presets aren't really even starting points -- They're usually very exaggerated "show me" steps. They're over-the-top, overdone, overcooked settings to show you what the plug will do.

It's very rare that you'd use such extreme settings on much of anything...

In any case, don't mess with presets. Do what your ears tell you to do.

 

[sunung1188]

Well im using Cubase SX 3.

So what you guys are telling me is
mix my tracks without ozone going on each track,
then make the whole song a mp3 file, import it, and then add a ozone preset on the whole file,
and tweak the presets a lil..


am i right? thanks so much guys

 

[WhiteStrat]

Well im using Cubase SX 3.

So what you guys are telling me is
mix my tracks without ozone going on each track,
then make the whole song a mp3 file, import it, and then add a ozone preset on the whole file,
and tweak the presets a lil..


am i right? thanks so much guys

Almost right...don't make an mp3 then import it. You can do it within Cubase a couple ways. You can do it without mixing down by using Ozone as an insert on your master bus (your main outs) instead of the individual channels. Warning though: this method can make you crazy cause it'll tempt you go back and tweak individual tracks to work better w/Ozone. And that's backwards--you shouldn't adjust tracks to fit a "mastering" plug.

So the second and more recommended method would be to finish your song and mix it down to a stereo track. Make it just as good as it can be--in other words, pretend like you don't have Ozone. Then if you want to tweak it with Ozone, use Ozone on the mixdown track.

 

[KingDiamond]

The preferred way is to mixdown your project into a stereo WAV file, probably 24-bit, 44,100Hz or whatever format your project was saved to. Then you open a new project in Cubase, you can use the "stereo mastering" template. Then you will just have the one track and you can add the Ozone plug-in to the master bus or to the track, I don't think it makes a difference. After that I would open Ozone but don't use the presets. I think the presets don't work too well. Read the Ozone manual and it pretty much tells you how to start off using everything. You usually start with the EQ, then the dynamics, then reverb, then the loudness maximizer (which is pretty much a limiter in Ozone).

 

[Massive Master]

Presets are for playing around with. USE YOUR EARS.

If you can't tell what the mix needs (and you should have done that already while you were mixing) then you're doing little more than spitting into the wind and hoping it doesn't hit you in the face by throwing random plugs and presets around.

 

[masteringhouse]

The best preset to start with is "bypass".

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

If there are any users or teachers, how do u use this program with effect?

One procedure that I have found to work exceptionally well, if you're running Windows (exact display details may change depending upon your version of Windows):

1. Click the Windows "Start" button on the task bar, and in "Settings" open up the Control Panel.

2. From the Control Panel, select "Add/Remove Programs".

3. Scroll down the list that comes up until you fine the instance for "iZoptope Ozone". Click on it to highlight it.

4.Click the "Change/Remove" button that comes up in the highlighted area.

5. In the dialog box that comes up, select "Automatic" and then hit the "Next ->" button to continue. Continue through the "Next" Buttons to the "Finish" button until ozone is uninstalled for your PC.

6. Actually learn how to mix.

G.

 

[WhiteStrat]

One procedure that I have found to work exceptionally well, if you're running Windows (exact display details may change depending upon your version of Windows):

1. Click the Windows "Start" button on the task bar, and in "Settings" open up the Control Panel.

2. From the Control Panel, select "Add/Remove Programs".

3. Scroll down the list that comes up until you fine the instance for "iZoptope Ozone". Click on it to highlight it.

4.Click the "Change/Remove" button that comes up in the highlighted area.

5. In the dialog box that comes up, select "Automatic" and then hit the "Next ->" button to continue. Continue through the "Next" Buttons to the "Finish" button until ozone is uninstalled for your PC.

6. Actually learn how to mix.

G.

Wow Glen, clever and helpful.

Here's the scoop with Ozone and other similar tools. They're tools! The temptation is to use them as a panacea and that's what the presets try to be. That's how I used it when I bought it two years ago.

And guess what--by overdoing it and crapping my songs up, I learned. And I didn't delete the software! I listened for what I liked & didn't like about what Ozone did. Then I learned how to do most of what I liked in tracking and mixing.

Now I'm using Ozone for maybe 5 to 10% of what the presets would do. And guess what? I'm not afraid to say so, or to share a mix:

Oooh...there's Ozone in that mix. How horrid!!!

Bottom line is this: If he's got Ozone, he spent the bucks on it (hopefully). So instead of playing the part of the superior purist, it might be more helpful to show him how he can learn from it. 'Cause guess what: he's gonna use it.

So play with the presets. See what they do. They'll likely do too much. And while they'll make some parts of your mix sound better, they'll also likely make some sound worse. So turn it off, and get your tracks to sound better first. Your tracking and mixing will improve greatly. You'll get a much more polished sound without Ozone.

Then at mixdown--turn it back on. Build your own settings. A touch of EQ, a light brush of verb across the mix, limiting, etc. These are things that can help glue a mix together. But by doing it this way you'll find that you use it much sparingingly and end up with an even better mix.

 

[masteringhouse]

More than starting with presets, read the manual and become intimate with each control on a plug-in. Listen to its effect on mix, then turn them all off and learn to use the plug to do what you want rather than the plug making an arbitrary decision on what should be done.

The best teacher is you and your mixes.

 

[Speshul-K]

Good Tip

this method can make you crazy cause it'll tempt you go back and tweak individual tracks to work better w/Ozone. And that's backwards--you shouldn't adjust tracks to fit a "mastering" plug.

That makes a lot of sense, since the traks should already be mixed.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

So turn it off, and get your tracks to sound better first. Your tracking and mixing will improve greatly. You'll get a much more polished sound without Ozone.

That's all I'm saying, Strat. Don't give me that "superior purist" bullshit, you know the same truth I do. There's nothing "superior" or "purist" about it; there are absolutes in play here.

When he's reached the limits of what he can do well without Ozone - that is when Ozone actually becomes a solution to a problem and not a solution in search of one - he can always re-install it. Until then, no need to carry around that tile cutter if you're still figuring out how to frame the house. Especially when the manufacturers of that tile cutter keep blowing rookie-attracting smoke along the lines of 'not to worry about the framing; their tiles look so good that you won't care what's underneath them'.

Personally, if your boy Strat Jr. were in my kitchen and he looked like he was going to touch a hot stove, I'd try and talk him out of it or even outright physically stop him. I wouldn't just let him "learn" about hot stoves by letting him go ahead and touch it, even if that's how I learned about it when I was a kid. Maybe you'd get on my case for that, too; maybe you think it's healthier for your kid to learn that way; that's your perrogative. But I'm still going to try to keep him from burning himself.

G.

 

[WhiteStrat]

That's all I'm saying, Strat. Don't give me that "superior purist" bullshit, you know the same truth I do. There's nothing "superior" or "purist" about it; there are absolutes in play here.

When he's reached the limits of what he can do well without Ozone - that is when Ozone actually becomes a solution to a problem and not a solution in search of one - he can always re-install it. Until then, no need to carry around that tile cutter if you're still figuring out how to frame the house. Especially when the manufacturers of that tile cutter keep blowing rookie-attracting smoke along the lines of 'not to worry about the framing; their tiles look so good that you won't care what's underneath them'.

Personally, if your boy Strat Jr. were in my kitchen and he looked like he was going to touch a hot stove, I'd try and talk him out of it or even outright physically stop him. I wouldn't just let him "learn" about hot stoves by letting him go ahead and touch it, even if that's how I learned about it when I was a kid. Maybe you'd get on my case for that, too; maybe you think it's healthier for your kid to learn that way. that's your perrogative. But I'm still going to try to keep him from burning himself.

G.

Wonderful analogies, but lets take them a step further. You didn't even allow for the fact that the OP might learn to use Ozone in a beneficial way. You just told him to get rid of it. That's akin to throwing out the stove so Strat Jr. doesn't burn himself. Or having a bathroom with a wooden floor, because tile isn't needed--only framing.

In other words it's part of a process. A small part, but a potentially useful one. You just dismissed it (and yes, your tone smacked of purist superiority). I was at least trying to place it in a decent context.

To go even further with your analogy: I think what you did was like telling Strat Jr. "stoves are stupid, don't bother with 'em" and walking out of the kitchen so he can play with it anyway--just as ill informed as ever.

I think it makes more sense to tell him a bit about how the stove works--so when he uses it (and he will) he can warm up some soup without burning the house down.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Wonderful analogies, but lets take them a step further. You didn't even allow for the fact that the OP might learn to use Ozone in a beneficial way. You just told him to get rid of it.

What I said was to keep away from it until he's ready for it. When will he be ready for it? When he realizes two things: that it is not "mastering software", that it is nothing but a packaging together of EQ and compression and such, and that the proper use of it has zero to do with the phrase "preferably with presets".

If he's particularly lucky, by then he'll realize that he actually doesn't need it at all.

(Oh, I forgot all those recordings made before 1997 sounded like crap because there were no "mastering plugs", and then Ozone came along with the novel ideal of "mastering software" and saved everybody's day.)

In other words it's part of a process. A small part, but a potentially useful one. You just dismissed it (and yes, your tone smacked of purist superiority). I was at least trying to place it in a decent context.

I can't help it if you read my words based upon who they are coming from and not what they say. The fact is process and context are EXACTLY where I am coming from and what my POV is all about. "Mastering software" has come to mean "software that allows you to fix bad mixes in the mastering". This is just the 21st century version of the 20th century problem I grew up with; the ol' "fix in the mix" syndrome. "Ah, don't worry if that guitar sounds like an untuned banjo, we'll fix it in the mix." Now it's gotten even worse; "mixing" - at least on the amateur level - now means compressing the tracks flat, panning left/center/right, and just stacking them on top of each other. Any actual mixing is now done to the two mix after summing by trying to fix the mix with MBCs and "mastering software". (Never mind that none of that has much of anything to do directly with actual mastering.)

Just wait for the OP to be here in a couple of years complaining about all the newbs that want to fix everything in the shrinkwrap. Because that's where it's all going. It's messing with the process and the context in which the tools are best used.

Of the OP wants to use the tools contained within Ozone individually to work on tracks, or even collectively to add a fine polish, and maybe even a little volume to the 2mix *before mastering*, that's fine. But you know as well as I do, whether you're willing to admit it here or not, that is not what the OP is asking for. He is expecting to use Ozone - "preferably with presets" as he put it - to patch up an under-engineered 2mix and make it sound like the latest T Bone Burnett production.

The quicker someone tells him what a load of horse hockey that is, the better off he'll be. And the quicker one advises him to learn how to do the best he can without it, the more he'll understand that on a fundamental level, and the better his work will sound and the faster it will sound that way.

If that sounds superior or purist, then I guess I an purist. Guilty as charged, Gen'ral. Lock me up for purism, because I believe that with every fiber of my being.

G.

 

[WhiteStrat]

What I said was to keep away from it until he's ready for it. When will he be ready for it? When he realizes two things: that it is not "mastering software", that it is nothing but a packaging together of EQ and compression and such, and that the proper use of it has zero to do with the phrase "preferably with presets".

If he's particularly lucky, by then he'll realize that he actually doesn't need it at all.

(Oh, I forgot all those recordings made before 1997 sounded like crap because there were no "mastering plugs", and then Ozone came along with the novel ideal of "mastering software" and saved everybody's day.)I can't help it if you read my words based upon who they are coming from and not what they say. The fact is process and context are EXACTLY where I am coming from and what my POV is all about. "Mastering software" has come to mean "software that allows you to fix bad mixes in the mastering". This is just the 21st century version of the 20th century problem I grew up with; the ol' "fix in the mix" syndrome. "Ah, don't worry if that guitar sounds like an untuned banjo, we'll fix it in the mix." Now it's gotten even worse; "mixing" - at least on the amateur level - now means compressing the tracks flat, panning left/center/right, and just stacking them on top of each other. Any actual mixing is now done to the two mix after summing by trying to fix the mix with MBCs and "mastering software". (Never mind that none of that has much of anything to do directly with actual mastering.)

Just wait for the OP to be here in a couple of years complaining about all the newbs that want to fix everything in the shrinkwrap. Because that's where it's all going. It's messing with the process and the context in which the tools are best used.

Of the OP wants to use the tools contained within Ozone individually to work on tracks, or even collectively to add a fine polish, and maybe even a little volume to the 2mix *before mastering*, that's fine. But you know as well as I do, whether you're willing to admit it here or not, that is not what the OP is asking for. He is expecting to use Ozone - "preferably with presets" as he put it - to patch up an under-engineered 2mix and make it sound like the latest T Bone Burnett production.

The quicker someone tells him what a load of horse hockey that is, the better off he'll be. And the quicker one advises him to learn how to do the best he can without it, the more he'll understand that on a fundamental level, and the better his work will sound and the faster it will sound that way.

If that sounds superior or purist, then I guess I an purist. Guilty as charged, Gen'ral. Lock me up for purism, because I believe that with every fiber of my being.

G.

This is exactly what I advised him. I just did it in a way that he might actually use--as opposed to being dismissive and somewhat condescending.

Lock you up for purism? C'mon, little bit melodramatic, don't ya think? I have no idea what you're like in real life, but posts like that really make you sound rather full of yourself.

I'm not on this forum to fight--I'm here to learn and teach when I can. You offered nothing helpful to the OP--just attitude. And no matter how well founded your attitude may be, you offered him no explanation for why you feel the way you do about Ozone.

I called you on it and tried to redeem the thread by steering him constructively. And do you allow that I might have been right? Nope. Just more of why you're right...

Enjoy yourself.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Look, Strat, nobody here wants to fight. I said several posts ago that we both were saying the same thing, just in different ways. The only dismissive and condescending statements thus far have been your judgments and characterizations of me and my supposed psychological motivations.

OK, so the way I presented my original case by going through the Win delete procedure was a bit on the sarcastic side, I admit. But I stick with my diagnosis and opinion that the OP in his current state would be better off without Ozone than he is with it for the time being. I don't see how that is anything but constructive criticism and an offering of a quality option of a solution.

If the way I come across to you offends you, it might not be a bad idea for you to consider off-line just why that is, especially since you admit that you don't really know me.

I'm pretty sure know why. But I'll let you touch that stove for yourself . (It's a joke, son! Relax. )

I travel around the state quite a bit, though with my gas now at $4/gal+, that's getting tougher to do. But the next time I'm in your area I'll give you a head's up before-hand and maybe you'll let me buy you a beer. You can see first hand that not only am I as far from superior at anything as one can get, but that I know that about myself all too well .

G.

 

[WhiteStrat]

The only dismissive and condescending statements thus far have been your judgments and characterizations of me and my supposed psychological motivations.

Wrong. Your entire post about deleting the software was the epitome of dismissive and condescending. (Imagine you were the OP--how would you feel? Hmm...dismissed? Condescended to?) And where did I make judgements and characterizations of your supposed psychological motivation?

If the way I come across to you offends you, it might not be a bad idea for you to consider off-line just why that is, especially since you admit that you don't really know me.

I'm pretty sure know why. But I'll let you touch that stove for yourself . (It's a joke, son! Relax. )

What? You're pretty sure I know why, huh? Why don't you clue me in? And seriously, I know you're trying to be a nice guy but "It's a joke, son! Relax." in this context is well, dismissive and condescending. I'll allow for the possibility that you didn't mean it and I'll take no offense.

In exchange, you could take the comment to heart and consider off-line just why it is you feel the need to talk down to people.

I travel around the state quite a bit, though with my gas now at $4/gal+, that's getting tougher to do. But the next time I'm in your area I'll give you a head's up before-hand and maybe you'll let me buy you a beer. You can see first hand that not only am I as far from superior at anything as one can get, but that I know that about myself all too well .

You just missed me. I spent last weekend in your fair city. Gotta love a day that starts with breakfast at Top Flight and ends with dinner at Star of Siam.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

And where did I make judgments and characterizations of your supposed psychological motivation?

Your constant insistence that I am full of myself, that I consider myself superior, and that I get a kick out of allegedly talking down to people, for starters. I mean, come on, Sam; you're still at it even now, even after I tried offering you an open hand.

As far as the OP goes, considering the two posts immediately before mine by a couple of the most knowledgeable and respected people here told him his idea was "spitting in the wind" and that the "best preset to start with was bypass", as OP I would have figured that brand of sarcasm - as misplaced as it may have been on my own part - was pretty much in line with the tone of the thread thus far.

And seriously, I know you're trying to be a nice guy but "It's a joke, son! Relax." in this context is well, dismissive and condescending. I'll allow for the possibility that you didn't mean it and I'll take no offense.

If you know that I'm trying to be a nice guy, why isn't that enough for you? If you understand that, and if you take no offense at it, than why do you feel the need to bring it up and (wrongly) point it out as dismissive and condescending?

And I'M the one that's trying to sound superior? Has it occurred to you that your constant judgment of me and your assumptions as to my motivations is really a constant effort on your part to assert your own superiority of character?

Christ, man, I only put that in there because jokes can be so misunderstood and taken as non-jokes when expressed in text format. I only dare think of how you would have responded if I hadn't thrown that "just kidding" in there.

In exchange, you could take the comment to heart and consider off-line just why it is you feel the need to talk down to people.

I have been honest and straightforward in expressing my opinion, and detailed in explaining why, without any coddling or condescension whatsoever. OK, I laid on the sarcasm pretty thick in my original post, much more than I should have, perhaps; I have admitted that several times already. But I have never once talked down to anybody here or tried asserting any superiority over anyone in this thread. If that's the way you read it, that's not my fault or my problem, that's yours.

I offered you an open hand of reconciliation and your response was backhanded at best, and was actually probably the most condescending post in this entire thread: 'I know you're trying to be nice, but you're still coming across as a jackass. But I know you just can't help yourself so I won't get mad about it' is about as obvious of a talking-down-to as there is. Look up examples of "dismissive" and "condescension" in the dictionary and you'll see that quoted verbatim.

My hand remains open. It's up to you if you want to open yours or keep it clenched closed.

But if you want to keep your fist closed, do us all a favor and take it off this thread and move it elsewhere. Whether it's via PM or in person, or anywhere in-between, I don't care. But we are doing nothing more than f**king up this thread and pleasing the ambulance chasers by continuing it here.

G.

 

[WhiteStrat]

My hand remains open. It's up to you if you want to open yours or keep it clenched closed.

See the thing is--my hand never was "clenched closed." Again, way to dramatic for me. A clenched fist would mean serious disdain. I don't disdain easily--certainly not someone I don't know.

Just called you on a disagreement. But it's clear that doesn't work so well with you, huh?

Seriously, enjoy yourself!