Beagle


I would kind of like to have Alloy - I've looked at it a couple of times, but just can't seem to pull the trigger on it either.

I bought Alloy specifically for that song I mix/mastered for Janet. I used it on the piano. I really liked what it did for that. It was not dramatic but all the literature says an effects should not be dramatic.

bitflipper


The CPU hit is substantial. Ozone isn't really practical as a track effect, although people have used it that way. That's why they came out with Alloy, to provide Ozone-like features but more suitable for tracks.

I do have projects with as many as 3 instances of Ozone, but all the heavyweight soft synths have to be frozen for that to work on my aged system.

The CPU load with the new intelligent algorithm is much higher than with the legacy modes. I'm hearing from other users that they're sticking with the old algorithms until iZotope does some optimization.

Projects that run fine on my quad-core with O4 are farting and skipping like crazy with the O5 demo I have running. What a mess.

I have a sandy bridge, and I downloaded the O5 demo but I really have not had time to play with it.  I probably should have waited until I had time to play with it before I d/l it, but really...when would that be???

actually I thought I did read from bitflipper that O5 was a harder CPU hit than its predecessors?  it might not be in this thread, there are 2 or 3 O5 threads going on.

 I probably would not hear it. I have my onboard sounds turned off......

That's why we need faster CPU's to run more instances of the software.   I still haven't been able to max out my i7 yet.  I am obviously not trying hard enough.

I'm just not that great with multi parts.  Most times, 3-4 melodic instruments is max I can put in a song, and I'm not that great with laying either.  Of course, I do on occasion use bounce.  It seems to keep Sonar less buggy, even when I should have plenty of CPU left.

After a great deal of investigation and agonizing over whether to buy the Ozone 5 upgrade or switch to FabFilter Pro-L, I have decided to go a third route and simply stick with Ozone 4.

I had difficulty perceiving the difference between the new IRC3 algorithm and the older IRC2. This flew in the face of prevailing online wisdom, which is that IRC3 is a "night and day" improvement.

"Night and Day" (along with "like lifting a veil") is a description I've come to despise because it seems to always be applied to effects that are anything but night and day. Often, "night and day" turns out to be nothing more than expectation bias and/or flawed comparison techniques.

So I did what I often do when faced with a perplexing problem: lit up an herbal thought-enhancer and turned out the lights. Sure enough, the explanation came in an epiphany: I am simply not using limiters the same way as many others; consequently, my experience is not the same.

A limiter basically does nothing at all until your signal reaches (or approaches, in the case of a soft clipper) its threshold. If you set a threshold higher than all but the highest peaks (after gain is added), the audio should pass through the limiter completely untouched - except for those brief moments when the threshold is exceeded.

For those short periods, the limiter distorts your signal, sometimes extremely, generating harmonic and intermodulation distortion, and possibly frequency distortion, aliasing, and smearing of the stereo image. But it all happens quickly, often so quickly that it escapes perception. Obviously, the more frequently the limiter kicks in, the greater the distortion and the more likely it will result in audible degradation. This is where differences between limiters become apparent.

My problem is that I rarely exceed 2-3db of compression in a limiter. I prefer dynamic mixes and I am happy to trade average loudness for clarity and punch. I simply never push a limiter into modes that generate ugly obvious artifacts, and that's why I have such a hard time telling one limiter from another!

The people who are on a constant quest for the ultimate limiter, and like to debate the subject endlessly on KVR, are really on a loudness quest. They want a LOUD mix that still sounds punchy, and favor limiters that are able to eke out some semblance of micro-dynamics despite being in continuous attenuation mode. But that's just not a requirement in my world.

I offer this thought solely for those in a similar situation, who are mastering genres that don't require extreme dynamic squashing: your choice of limiter simply isn't all that important.

December 1, so don't be too long. I should say that's for the introdution price and not the upgrade. I'm not sure how long the upgrade price holds.