iZotope O8N2: Ozone 8 Neutron 2 [12th Oct - upgrade price drop]

[X-bassist]

This is expecupation and is not confirmed but Music Store announce O8N2 like a bundle with 2 differents "Advanced" products , i hope is not the case and Ozone and Neutron will be a unique product.

Music Store O8N2

Oh good spot, thanks.

Yes, this was another concern for me. Kind of glad I've stuck with Ozone 5 and RX4, don't really see the need for any of the newer features and had no idea about keeping older versions- suuuuuuuuucks.

After 30 years of mixing all I can say is Fabfilter Q2 EQ (and comp, gate, limiter, multiband comp) is what I had hoped for throughout the 90's, when I was regularly using higher end gear- ssl, neve, etc. Yes, they sound good and warm, but don't work well for real surgury. With Q2 I can actually scupt the sound, making what want rather than what the eq is capable of (actually had a mix way back then where I had to send a signal through 3 input channels to get the amount of eq control I needed on one track). Yet I've rarely ever used more than one instance of Q2 on a track. And it always sounds great and can do just about any kind of eq you want, try that on a pultec.

I guess I would relay it like this: Having a string library with one close mic position can work for most composers (you can always add room or hall reverb, right?) but when you start using multiple mikes it's had to explain how much better it is. Especially of drums or brass, but even on strings and woodwinds, we know it makes a differece. And in most cases 3 or 4 mike positions give us great options without being overwhelming.

For me a 3 or 4 band eq is like that one mic position, it can work, but there will always be times when I need more- more bands, more slopes (bell, cut off, tilt, bandpass, etc), more range (+/- 36dB?, yes please!). Combined with a visual specragrah in the background showing me the frequency curve before and after the eq, and a gui that changes sizes (even full screen) and you have plugins that go far beyond what others are doing.

Every vi emulation of old outboard gear is like a 1 mic position string library, but the mic isn't that great. Driving a donkey and communicating by morse code are possibilities as well.

[Guy Rowland]

Finally having a trial, and specifically putting the Tonal Balance Control through its paces. I've spent a happy hour just feeding tracks I like into it, to see what it does.

The first surprise - not a single track has been bass-heavy, on the Modern profile. The greatest variation, in fact, seems to be the HF. Rae Morris' sublime pop Do It was all pretty even except the HF, which was quite some way above the limits. This was a simlar story to a great many of the electronic tracks in fact - Bodyache by Purity Ring, Bulletproof by La Roux and Crave Me by Bow To Each Other all had similar profiles which didn't fit the mould, with Lo Mids typically quite low. Happily for me, a recent track I produced for a singer also fitted this exact same curve. However some of the more guitar-based tracks had the opposite curve - All You Need by the Jezebels and Wild West by Lissie had accentuatied the low mids and were way low in the HF. The Pretender by Foo Fighters was its own animal, with High Mids above the guide-bars. I also tried a couple of pop songs - What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction dropped off the bottom in the lows and low mids and really pushed the high mids and HF, while Katy Perry's Firework also went above the HF limits.

One other very important point - the tool only makes any sense at all for parts of a song which are all guns blazing. Most songs go out of bounds in all sorts of places when some the instrumentation drops out, which is kinda obvious really.

So is it any use at all? I think probably, but these tests have been incredibly useful in showing where its limitations are and where it's usefulness might be. The most important thing - loads of great, successful tracks do not confirm to iZotope's idea of correct. One mix I particularly love is Ladyhawke's Dusk Til Dawn, and that produced off the charts figures below low mids and above HF. I don't care - it sounds brilliant to me. Different genres seem to skew towards different curves, with increased HF being the most notable for electronica and pop, and a more pronounced lower mid for the kind of rockier stuff I like at least. What was also obvious is that Tonal Balance won't be a one-stop-shop to great mixes - you could fit within the bands and the mix still be lousy of course. I'd be fiercely anti using this tool as a facist imposition, and to me their demo piece is a contender for World's Worst Demo as I genuinely think it sounded better before than after everything fit neatly into the right bands.

But actually I think I'll quite like having it there, especially now I know what genre stuff tends to look like. So damn it all, I'm hovering over that buy button.

[Brett]

How useful is it you think for film score where each cue is not 'all-in'? Did you try predominantly orchestral tracks?

Thanks

[Guy Rowland]

Hello Brett, not tried orchestral yet. My gut feeling is that it won't be so useful, partly for the reason you say, it only really makes sense when all sections are blasting (or at least all playing at the same time). Also an orchestra is an orchestra... my feeling is that if you're mixing vaguely normally with good quality samples, a tonal balance will be pretty much right anyway. Other kinds of music it's pretty much anything goes, so this sort of guide is potentially a little more useful.

[Brett]

Cheers Guy

[Guy Rowland]

So here's a few thoughts on Ozone 8 Advanced, now I've had a chance to use it in anger. I like it. I liked Ozone 7 too, and the differences aren't all that huge. (I got suspicious of Ozone 7 at some point which meant I avoided it, but that turned out to be nothing to do with the program itself but one of the plugs I was using, Oxford Inflator, that inflated so much it went beyond 0db despite the 0db limit, and buggered everything up in the process).

Ozone is a great host, in the main. The ability to A/B before and after the mastering chain, but volume compensated, is invaluable. You can use all your own plugins if you prefer them to the bundled ones - mostly I'm very happy with their plugs though. One irritation is you can't just update a master and have it automatically use the same settings - instead you need to create a new project and then apply the preset, so if you're not careful you end up with dozens of projects needlessly taking up space. My way around that is if I tweak something and I know I need to remix, I save the preset chain and just delete the whole project, then start again.

I guess the big new stuff is the already discussed Tonal balance Control, and the Master Assistant. The latter seems to make a very good fist at a starting point. You put in a few parameters such as if you are mastering for a streaming platform, and it suggests somewhere for you to kick off. I usually take out their maximiser and replace with another, and then use Dynameter to check the loudness to iron out any areas that are getting unintentionally lively - its a slow process as I prefer going back to the mix to more forensically address these issues. For example, on the effects heavy track I'm working on right now, going back and forth in this way isolated a problem with the low to mids on one of the echoes that was getting a bit out of hand on certain phrases that I hadn't noticed. It takes some time to track down fiddly stuff like this, but its a better mix as a result and you shouldn't fall foul of the Loudness Police.

There's a new spectral shaper plugin that I honestly haven't found a use for yet. I can't even really describe what it does, it's a funny sort of effect, but nothing especially useful so far. Oh, and one inexplicable quirk of the Tonal Balance Control in Ozone - it doesn't appear with all the other plugins, but rather in the 3rd party VST section. Even odder, it's not even labelled as an iZotope product, but categorised as Unknown. I had to go to the manual to find it, and it told me exactly this, so it's not an install error either. That's awfully messy, but at least once you know, you know.

Overall it's a very capable package. The Master Assistant I guess puts it into competition with the online services such as LandR also based on machine learning, but here of course you get infinte control over the suggestions rather than very crude ones. And maybe its just how I like to work, but I much prefer Ozone to point out things that might be best fixed in the mix, rather than at mastering stage, an option which isnt really open to you with LandR et al.

[kpc]

So, a little over two months from the last post - still liking and using Ozone and Neuron? They are running a special right now that I can get both (standard versions) for $198

Is it worth the $200 for the standard editions, or would you opt to get just Ozone advanced? I don’t think I can swing both advanced versions.

[Guy Rowland]

I don't think there's much difference between standard and advanced is there? And do you have any version of either at the moment?

I do think Neutron is pretty darn clever - occasionally if I have a vocal sent that this just a mess, I've put it straight into the track assistant and it makes a pretty good fist of a starting position in about 10 seconds. The Tonal Balance thing is helpful, but IMO you need to spend some time with it first on tracks you know and like to get a sense of what to expect from it (and it only makes any sense at all on sections of your cue / track which are full-on across the whole range). But the thing I use most is the simple EQ, I do find it very quick to work with (though the downside is the UI is huge and that can be irritating in a session).

Ozone is a good host, you can add most VSTs to it too. But for me in practice its just a nice-to-have - it it exploded on my hard drive tomorrow I wouldn't mourn and I'd just use Adobe Audition instead.

[kpc]

The standard doesn’t include tonal balance and the Mix Tap plugin.

And, no, I don’t have any version of either.

So, Guy it seems like you would take Nuetron over Ozone?

[Guy Rowland]

Well Mix Tap is kinda useless I think, it mostly seems to pertain to the visual mixing thing which is an absolute waste of space, utterly pointless marketing. Tonal Balance is of use though.

I guess it depends what else you have, what you feel the greatest need is. If you lack a decent host for mastering chores, Ozone might swing it. Otherwise... yeah, I'd go for Neutron.

[kpc]

Ok. Thanks Guy. I think I’ll pass on both. I’m going to stick with “if it’s not a hell yes! It’s a no” and price alone doesn’t equal a “hell yes!”