OZone Questions!

[Noah Nelson]

i recently got izotope Ozone to record my hip hop vocals- I am familiar with most of the Effects in it but i have never heard of Saturation. What is saturation? Also i ttend to prefer the "up front" vocal setting they have- How do they push the vocals "up front" in the mix? es muy bueno

 

[JimmyS1969]

What version of Ozone? 4 or 5? I have not yet purchased 5 as I pretty much quit using the program years ago.

Saturation is a kind of a simulation of an actual tape recording being pushed. Not sure what it actually does, but it sure sounds good in some situations.

Up front can mean a bunch of different things. It is likely compression first then probably other additional effects. Again, there is a reason I let go using Ozone 4.

 

[KissMyRobot]

Ozone is a mastering plugin. Saturation in this context will probably be gentle distortion and compression. It can give a more subtle round, glued together, feeling to a mix. Trust your ears, if you like it, use it.

In terms of "up front" vocals, you have two choices: compression or pushing everything back. With hip hop, the arrangements are traditionally sparse so you don't want to go to heavy with compression as it can make elements feel smaller. With vocals, you can only get so up front; there is only so much headroom on the vocals. Push back the instrumentation besides the kick/snare.

With Ozone, you're getting "up front" vocals probably because of an EQ bump and some multiband compression to control the lower mids. That's purely a guess - the only izotope program I own is RX but I'm relatively familiar with them.

 

[Tom Hicks]

in ozone 4 they call it harmonic exciter. adding a slight amount of distortion in the 2-5K band will make vocals pop out of the mix without additional volume. start off with way too much of the effect, then keep backing it off. use the bypass button often to compare the dry and effected signals. season to taste.