Mastering Software Question

Hi, I am on a post X-mas shopping spree and wanted to solicit opinions on two moderately priced Mastering Suites: Ozone 3 and IK Multimedia's Mastering Bundle. Ozone is $199 through Sweetwater and the IK Bundle is the same price through Musiciansfriend. Does anybody have strong opinions either way.

I have a home studio using Sonar 5 with a Delta 1010. For burning CD’s I have CD Architect 5. Additionally, I have three plug-ins that were purchased separately: KJAERHUS Audio’s MPL-1 Pro SE (limiter), the BBE Sonic Maximizer and Autotune.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Dave

Ozone is without peer at the price. Soon to be upgraded to Version 4 for $79 for V3 owners.

Are you talking about T-Racks. I also have the 1.5 version not the new V3 but find Ozone is much more comprehensive and better to use.

Another point could be to look at upgrading to SONAR 8 PE. there's enough in there for an amateur home user to record/mix/master completely in SONAR with the tool set it includes in the box.

Big Ozone fan here, but I have to agree with CJ that a SONAR 8 upgrade is probably money better spent in your case. Lots of new goodies from S5.

My advice: You have the MPL-1 Pro SE... that's a pretty good limiter I think, for making your ultimate .WAV or .mp3 file loud enough. I would forget about any other 2-buss "global" processing and focus on making your mix all that it can be. Get it to the point where the only thing you need to do to the 2-buss is make it louder, in other words.

Focus on the mix. You've got the tools.

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

Big Ozone fan here, but I have to agree with CJ that a SONAR 8 upgrade is probably money better spent in your case. Lots of new goodies from S5.

Ozone is great, and yeah, thirded about upgrading. I've done so much with the stock effects Cakewalk provides.

I am thinking Ozone because there really is a wealth of positive feedback out there about it. In addition to what you guys here say about it, I have found at least one website with a product “shootout” where the limiter in Ozone faired vary well compared to a Waves product. Also, there are a number of youtube videos featuring Ozone tutorials and product comparisons (e.g., Multiband Exciter and the Maximizer).

Please keep in mind this is for a home project studio and in all fairness, I never called it a “Mastering Application” nor did I say I was Mastering, all I did was call it a Mastering Suite. With respect to the term “Mastering”, what I do now is mix in Sonar and export the file(s) as a 24 bit file (not to pat myself on the back but my mixes are usually very good). From there, I bring it into CD Architect where I typically place the limiter and/or eq, reverb, maximizer, etc. Am I actually Mastering (or PreMastering)? I don’t know … the answer to that is either, probably not or, it is a matter of opinion but, I do distribute the resulting CD’s.

There are only a few that can Master properly: Magix Samplitude, Magix Sequoia, Wavelab, and to a lesser extent, Soundforge.
You cannot do full Mastering with Sonar - not yet anyway.

Interesting comment. Could you elaborate on what you can do in Samplitude that can't be done in SONAR, as far as mastering goes? Do you mean that SONAR can't burn a proper CD?

Please keep in mind this is for a home project studio and in all fairness, I never called it a “Mastering Application” nor did I say I was Mastering, all I did was call it a Mastering Suite. With respect to the term “Mastering”, what I do now is mix in Sonar and export the file(s) as a 24 bit file (not to pat myself on the back but my mixes are usually very good). From there, I bring it into CD Architect where I typically place the limiter and/or eq, reverb, maximizer, etc. Am I actually Mastering (or PreMastering)? I don’t know … the answer to that is either, probably not or, it is a matter of opinion but, I do distribute the resulting CD’s.

- Quantumeffect, what you're doing is cool and I'm sure you make great music. I didn't wan't to sound ''snoty', and I didn't know you had CD Architect. In this case, getting Ozone will be great. Doesn't CD Architect use Ozone's limiter and dithering section?

Question for CD Architect users: does it do wordlength reduction and dither? The last time I played with it (long ago) it only handled 16-bit files. And does it support VST plugins? If I could load up my 24-bit files and run Ozone for limiting, wordlength reduction and dither, I'd get CD Architect in a minute.

- Bitflipper, I'm not sure CD Architect supports VST's. It's odd because Soundforge does. However, it does do the rest of the things you mentioned.

Interesting comment. Could you elaborate on what you can do in Samplitude that can't be done in SONAR, as far as mastering goes? Do you mean that SONAR can't burn a proper CD?

- Bitflipper, it's not that it can't burn a CD properly. For example, say you're music is like Enigma's, where one piece of music crossfades into another, or has multiple index points, I don't think you can burn a cd/project of that kind seemlessly in Sonar - unless I'm mistaken. Also, Sonar's ''Normalize'' is only peak normalization. Average RMS normalization is far more efective as you can, for example, set all your tracks to an average RMS of -20db and then tweak from there. You'll be using much less compression/limiting in the end and still have reasonable loudness. There is also the question of IRSC codes and cue sheets, among other things, that you'll need to provide to the replication plant - if that's what you're aiming for.
My 2¢ is usually Sonar for recording/mixing, and then an inexpensive application like Wavelab Essentials. Psychologycally, it's also important to change applications for mastering so that you get out of that ''mixing'' mode in your main application. It makes you view everything so much more objectively.

Hmmm,

I'm not I understand clearly, but normaly you wouldn't use the plugs belonging to one application in another(most apps won't allow you). However, I think CD Architect's dithering plug is Ozone. However, if you need the other tools in Ozone, they're great. You can export all your work into stereo files from Sonar and then line them up in CD Architect and use Ozone to tweak everything the way you want to. Ozone comes with a huge number of Mastering presets to get you started. You'll start figuring out in no time how the different modules interact with one another. The limiter and dithering section is very flexible.

another vote for OZONE

Anothe vote for Ozone and you also may want to check out Har-Bal.

Bob

I too have never been able to get anything out of Har-Bal (short for "harmonic balancing"?) that was anywhere near close to what Ozone will do. I'm not rocket scientist, but the more I learn about Ozone, the more I like it. I'm pretty sure Ozone will do something similar as far as matching an EQ curve, but it has so much more than that.....

ORIGINAL: Lil Droppa

another vote for OZONE

Sweetwater has Ozone 4 for only $199! That's pretty sweet For me it's gonna be a toss-up between Ozone 4 or TRacks 3 deluxe($299).
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Ozone4

Hi Moosetex!