After The Music's Mixed, The Mastering Begins - Page 3

And the software itself isn't too shabby, either.

You could easily spend hours tweaking the patches and presets in Ozone, and its unique interface. But some of those presets sound mighty tasty stock. I found myself using the stock "CD Mastering with Exciter and Widener" preset frequently, but dialing back the exciter a little, as stock, it seemed to make the high end sound of my mixes a bit harsh.

Todd says, "In the guide are a few references to some genres and presets to use as a starting point. We found that most of the newer users, maybe for the first couple of mixes, will stick with a preset and maybe tweak it just a little bit. But after a while, everybody tends to tune their ear to what they're looking for. And eventually many users make their own presets, for their own styles of music."

Is it a perfect program? Well, as I said, some of the presets can be a bit harsh sounding without any tweaking. And because it takes up a fair amount of RAM, it may not work in real time if you're using it as an effect on a single instrument or track.

Also, I've noticed that because of the intensity of the compression and loudness maximizer and other effects, fadeouts that I've programmed on a track before running it through Ozone often need to be adjusted. Ozone hears the volume going down, and it's first thought is "push it back up!" Since using Ozone, I've been mixing multitrack songs down to two tracks, processing it with Ozone, and adding the fadeout then.

But those are pretty minor faults, all things considered. Anybody who wants to take his or her songs' mixes to the next level could do far worse than checking out the free demo version of Ozone.

Article Author: Ed Driscoll

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