Ozone 4 is the new upgrade to Ozone 3 and has had some excellent reviews. I'm thinking of taking the plunge, although at the moment I have a lot of success with WaveArts' FinalPlug which I've used for a couple of years now. Both are available as demos so give them a whirl. Unfortunately, although they come with some presets (a lot in the case of Ozone 4) their programmers can't anticipate with total accuracy the type of material their software will be used on, so I'm afraid there isn't a preset labelled "Make my bedroom noodle sound like the stuff on the radio"! if only... So like a carpenter's specialist woodworking tools you have to still spend time experimenting and learning how to wield them with accuracy and taste.

"If some sounds better than more will sound better still" does NOT apply with these tools! If you have software like Sonar, etc. you can insert them as an effect and twiddle with them as they track plays so you can monitor the effect. I find that if you leave 6dB or so headroom in your final stereo mixed track before the above tools are applied they will have more to work with and this can make the final results sound better.

Having said all that and having spent years trying to acquire these 'dark arts', I still find that I cannot quite get the quantity of 'zumph' that pro recordings have. More than most maybe, but not the total sheen and immediacy that the pros get. I can only attribute this to (i) such tracks are engineered by folks whose profession it is, not their hobby, and (ii) they also use a lot more expensive gear in tracking up, mixing, etc. And the business of mastering is a specialism in itself.

Songs web site
YouTube Channel
BIAB 2024
Cakewalk by BandLab
Studio One 7