Noel, Herb, or anyone else please chime in...

I saw it mentioned that you keep Ozone in your master bus AS you mix. I'd like to try this but how do you find a "one size fits all songs" setting that fits with each new and different song?

Thank you.

Josie, I don't do it this way; I prepare a .WAV file then use Ozone on it within SONAR for finishing touches (you could use any DAW). One reason is that yes, every song requires different adjustments in Ozone (the presets only get you so far). Another reason is that Ozone by itself is quite CPU intensive.

Izotope also makes a sort-of "Ozone light" that is called Alloy. It is not anywhere near the drain on the CPU and is designed to be used on several tracks independently. I would think this would be a better choice to use in real time in BIAB.

Matt,

Thank you for replying.

I usually do it that way too. I mix down to a stereo file - I use Tracktion 3 - then run that through Ozone but they were talking about running Ozone on the master bus while they are mixing so they get a better idea of what the mix is going to sound like....

BTW, I demo'd Alloy but didn't buy it. I have other plugs I like as well. And it seemed to me like it wasn't that much less cpu hungry than Ozone or especially my Mackie plugs - ymmv.

I'm always interested how other people mix so I'm curious how they come up with a setting that works. Both of them do really great sounding tracks.

It's an intriguing idea, quite foreign to the 'normal' approach of mix then master. Ill have to try it.

Josie, you should give Final mix a try as well since you are using Tracktion.

I typically mix without having Final Mix engaged and then I'll play around with some of my favorite presets to see if they bring something to life that I missed. Then I'll turn it off and see if I can get that magic by mixing. Often times, if I'm in a rush to get a song in the bag, I'll just go with the Final Mix preset enabled.

I've never used Ozone, but my understanding is that Final Mix is very similar (parametric EQ, multi-band compressor, limiter, etc.) with presets to help you along the way.

Hi Josie,

Below is an overview of how I use Ozone.

I'll back up a bit first ...

1. After I've created my song in BIAB, I open it in RB and then play around with Realtracks to see if I can find other instruments that sound better than the ones I chose in BIAB. At this stage, I'm also looking for Background or Soloist tracks that I can use snippets from for sweetening the mix with a bit of added musical interest.

2. Once that's done, I save all tracks to WAV files with panning set to centre and with reverb set to zero. I then load those tracks into my DAW (Reaper). I normalise all tracks, instrumental, drums, vocal. At this stage of the process, I have not yet loaded the Ozone plugin.


3. Now I roughly mix the tracks to get a reasonable sound. At this stage, I'm not all that fussed if the sound isn't the best. I then record 8 vocal tracks of the melody, one after the other. Doing it this way keeps the sound of each vocal track fairly consistent with the others. It's from these 8 tracks that I'll compile a master vocal track.


4. Now that I've done all that, I load Ozone into the Master track. I'm not sure how Tracktion works but in Reaper, all tracks are channeled through the Master track. This means that all individual tracks will be routed through Ozone. I don't have to do anything fancy to get this to happen.

5. Now I play with Ozone. I'm a preset person, totally unadventurous. I simply try different presets until I find one that seems to work with the instruments I have. "CD Master" is always a good standby These days I lean towards "Country" and "Rock" presets if my song has acoustic and electric guitars in it. If it's one of my tin pan alley styled songs, I tend to use the "Gentle Tube" preset. These are the ones that provide me with good starting places. (I do sometimes experiment with other presets so I guess I'm a little bit adventurous on the odd occasion.)

6. With Ozone operating and a preset selected, I now starting fine-tuning the mix. Because there's some compression in Ozone, I find it valuable to have it operating while I mix. This allows me to easily optimise the various tracks volumes.


7. Once I have the sound I like (that usually takes about a week or two of 'playing around' with volume shaping), I then create a mixed-down, stereo WAV file of the song. As mentioned before, I stay with CD quality of 44.1 kHz and 16 bit throughout my whole process.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for asking this question. It will be interesting to see what Herb does, if he has time to reply, because his songs sound spectacular and I know that he also uses Ozone early in the mix.

I seem to recall that you mentioned once that your music computer runs XP and has 2 GB of RAM. I'm not sure if this will work with Ozone plugged and processing constantly. It would be interesting to try it out.

Best wishes,
Noel

Josie,

I started with the Ozone 4 band rock preset in Ozone.

I took that preset and used it as a starting point and then edited it by changing the various modules settings in it to something that I liked even better. (personal taste) Then I simply save it with a new name.

It's now in my list of presets in Ozone.

While I start every project by inserting it into the master bus, there is no such thing as one size fits all. So it simply becomes a starting point. Quite often I do not change it. I have fine tuned it to the point that it really does work well in most songs to shape the overall tonal quality of the song. But in the end, it's just a starting point.

The BEST advice I can give is for you to learn as much as possible about what Ozone does in the modules. Learn what happens when you increase a fader or change the attack in a compressor so that you actually know and understand what you are doing when you adjust something....and even more importantly, WHY you NEED to do that.

Ozone has some PDF's that you should download and read.... it applies to Ozone of course BUT it also applies to mixing in general and to specific operations. Also Mike Senior's book, Mixing Secrets for the small studio is an excellent read. Get that book and read it. You will learn so much from it.

Some folks are from the old school of export the wave and then Master it.... and if I was planning to release the music on a CD as an artist, I might consider that... but in that case there would be no mastering in my studio. Export to red book standards and let someone else do the Mastering.

Since I am not in that category, I do (small "m") mastering in my studio..... I simply make it sound good, polished, and with a bit of shine.... that works for my purposes. So, I do insert from the start and work towards that end goal from the first note in the first track to the final raise the master output faders to their final mix level.

Scott,

Thank you for your input. I have used and like Final Mix very much. The way Ozone is set up with the modules seems easier to have more control with an added feature or two compared to FM. Also the Ozone compared to FM sounds just slightly silkier for lack of a better way to describe it - at least that's how I hear it - whether I'm trying a preset of tweaking one - most often tweaking. But don't get me wrong because FM is a great plug in and I do use it just not as much as I do Ozone. I'll have to try FM on the master bus while I'm mixing - never tried using it that way.

But one of the reasons I'm still using the old computer Noel mentioned for music instead of the new one we bought is that T3 and all it's plugins work without a hiccup so I'm hanging with it until I have to move all music stuff over to the win 8 machine.

BTW, I enjoyed the free Berklee music production class - great teacher.

Wow Noel,

Thank you for such a detailed explanation. That was great. In T3 I can just drop an effect on the master bus. Individual track reverb panning - now that's a really cool feature I've not been able to do in T3.

I'm going to try Ozone on the master bus while mixing and if it's too much for the old computer I'll try Final Mix and see how that does. If all else fails I guess I could do the dreaded switch to the win 8 computer - eewww what a chore that's gonna be. <grin>

Herb,

Thank you for sharing too. The Ozone guides are good stuff. I'll have to check out the book you mentioned.
I read a lot, watch many videos and live ustreams on the subject, etc. I'm always interested in people's mixing approach and how they get their sound. Then I experiment to try and see if it works for me. I don't always get it right and am not where I want to be yet but better than I used to be. My main problem lately is actually mixing regularly enough so that I keep what I learn in this air head. LOL!

Hi Josie.

As usual, I seem to do it differently to everyone else. I'm not saying that the way I work is any better, but you may find it interesting.

I don't like a compressor, or such, on the main output whilst I'm mixing, because the channel faders don't work in isolation. That is, raising the level of one channel can push the mix further over the threshold and affect the other levels.

I still compress each track individually at the recording stage, choosing a compressor with the right characteristics for the instrument. I find this works better than trying to compress the overall mix. I also find it makes the mix easier and I never add reverb until the mix is sorted.

Finally, I might put a bit of tape saturation and a balancing amp on the main output, but often the mix is OK as it is, because the compression was taken care of earlier.

It's very much how we had to work in the past, when tape ruled, so this probably why I still find this easier.

ROG.

For a final run I'll do the mix to wav, then master the wav route .. for many reasons.
But that doesn't stop me from using it occasionally along the way inside RB. It's part of the fun of experimenting, and we have that luxury in this day/age. Have fun trying things.

I will say, inserting Ozone on a mix has exposed flaws that I could then go back and correct before saving it, but as ROG mentions it affects the whole mixing process. So I put it in and try it, find a preset close to what I am looking for, and *listen*.
If the sound I am going after in mastering negatively affects the mix, I'd rather know before mixing down, saving/closing, opening new file, etc.
I use it there more to 'test' than for regular use. And for doing a quick mix to listen to on the way to work .. that sort of thing.

Mac's two cents here is that I don't want anything that will mask what I am hearing during the critical mixing phase.

My way of doing things, you have to develop an ear for what a good mix should sound like in the digital domain BEFORE Mastering takes place.

I expect things to sound a bit "thin" at that point, knowing full well the parameters that Mastering will bring once it is accomplished.

The bottom line, though, is what Duke Ellington said.

"If it sounds good, then it IS good!"

So if you can make good sounding stuff by running Ozone alla time, just do it.


--Mac

Josie you can start with a preset and then correct, for example if your song is country then use a country preset.

on my version on the country setting it sets the threshold on the maximizer to -5 and the margin to -.3, if a country song is mixed properly this setting should be good.

on the maximizer set dc offset to on and use mbit type, set the bit rate to the rate of the tracks set dither to normal

next go to the eq
click on the stereo until mid/side appears
set the mid settings
# Band Type Frequency Boost Q
1 Low Shelf 30hz 0 1
2 bell 55hz 1 12
3 bell 110 1 12
4 bell 520 0 .3
5 bell 1870 0 .3
6 bell 4000 .5 .3
7 bell 7400 0 .3
8 High Shelf 16000 0 1

frequency can be changed go for best sound this is just a good place to start and will usually fit nicely

Set Side Settings
# Band Type Frequency Boost Q
1 Low Shelf 200 -1 1
2 bell 70 0 .2
3 bell 180 0 .3
4 bell 520 0 .3
5 bell 1870 0 .3
6 bell 3900 0 .3
7 bell 7400 0 .3
8 High Shelf 8000 1 1

frequency and adjustments can be changed go for best sound this is just a good place to start and will usually fit nicely

Next set the Exciter
Band Range Frequency Boost
1 Low End 20-120 .4
2 Low Mids 120-2k .3
3 Upper Mids 2k-10k .5
4 Highs 10k-20k 1
slide the bands to match up to frequency

next set multi band compressor
set bands at 20 100 2k 10-20

next set attack to 265 slow
set release medium fast 275 ratio 1.5

solo the low end and adjust until you hear the high end of the kick and bass around mid 200's but adjust to taste
pull threshold back for a 1.5 to a 3 gain reduction
add a just a little more gain than reduction on the gain section.

if you choose to use the mastering reverb at this time slide the low shelf and high shelf to where it sounds good to you set dry @ 100 then move the wet to taste, if you are putting reverb on the whole mix it is best to use the room verb setting but is not carved in stone.

The last thing is set the stereo image
only use bands 3 and 4 as a rule
set 3=.20 4=.40

I hope this helps, if you have any questions feel free to drop me a line.

Josie,

I think that most of the responses in this thread would lead to disabling the mastering plugin of choice in a mixing phase of a project.

Summary of various quotes:

"I don't like a compressor, or such, on the main output whilst I'm mixing, because the channel faders don't work in isolation. That is, raising the level of one channel can push the mix further over the threshold and affect the other levels."

"you have to develop an ear for what a good mix should sound like in the digital domain BEFORE Mastering takes place.

I expect things to sound a bit "thin" at that point, knowing full well the parameters that Mastering will bring once it is accomplished."

"Now that I've done all that, I load Ozone into the Master track." (all that being quite a bit of mixdown/mixing, level adjusting, etc.)

There is one response that does go at it from the other way:

"So, I do insert from the start and work towards that end goal from the first note in the first track to the final raise the master output faders to their final mix level."

I will admit that I worked that way with Final Mix for probably 6 months to a year back in the mid 2000's when I got Tracktion 2, but I found that what was happening was what is reflected in the first quote in this post" The multi-band compression/expansion section of Tracktion was not letting me carve out space in the frequency domain for each track. I do quite alot of High Pass filtering on tracks that really don't need low end. I'll also really hack away at acoustic ensemble instruments from an EQ and panning standpoint.

BTW, Noel's technique of independently panning track level vs. reverb level for instruments is quite easy to do in Tracktion and just about any other DAW that allows for bussing. Set up a send 'filter' for two different reverb types (or as many as you like), on the returns, you can pan those however you would like, as long as the volume/pan filter in Tracktion for those returns is after the reverb vsts on their individual return tracks. You can then shrink these on the screen so they don't hog the space.

Put the sends POST FADER on the tracks where you are wanting to do this. That's a key point to execute this. That is, the 'send' 'filter' in Tracktion needs to go after the volume and pan fader for that track. In the return track, the reverb filters should go PRE volume/pan 'filter', so that the output of the reverb VST can be panned by that. If you put the sends pre volume/pan fader, then that particular track's pan/volume setting will control both the main track volume/pan as well as what is brought back from the reverb; effectively killing off the work you did on the reverb returns to pan them how you would like.

Hopefully this makes sense. I can do a T3 template for you in an archive project, or post you a screenshot.

Can be done if you use your head and make judicious use of BYPASS when making mix changes, then turning it back on to hear what the Final sounds like.

It is rather common to insert a Master Comp set up to function like a Limiter there.

Again, use that bypass control often. This makes sure that your mix changes are truly a function of the mix change itself and not the Mastering plugin.

As with any of these technical issues, I know of no way to get good results for the person who, for whatever reason, refuses to learn and understand the basic function, care and feeding, of the Audio Compressor, EQ and such matters.

Well worth the time spent scoping it out, the good news is that the Internet has a wealth of material on these subjects and most of it is only at the cost of a few minutes a day of your time.

And always mix at low "conversational" volume levels. So you can hear the problems.


--Mac