Any opinions / problems with Ozone 4 or Alloy as plugs for X1?  Anybody using XP 32 bit XP on a quad core with Sonar X1 and these plugs? Would running these be asking too much for an XP 32 bit Quad core system? It appears that Alloy is a “lite” version of Ozone 4 and more of a track plug, where Ozone 4 is more of a bus and final mix tool. Other than the plugs that come with X1, I really don’t have any pro level tools and was thinking about taking the plunge on these.
 
h

you can demo both if you haven't already.. there is a good guide on their site regarding mastering thats often mentioned here.

I wouldn't say alloy is a lite version.. they might appear that way but how you approach one / many tracks is different. I don't have alloy as I have other plugins also (I have t-tracks singles), as tempted as I would be to get it, I haven't.

quad core is decent enough , but it depends what your running it with / your track count.

lots of companies around , most will offer demos / trials . I've been looking at stuff by melda of late.. www.meldaproduction.com and a few more companies.

but I liked ozone 3, upgraded to 4

I have them both on a Quad Core AMD/X1/32bit/4G ram and I must say, I rarely use Ozone 4.  It is more of a mastering tool and I prefer to master with individual tools.  It is not meant for tracking and can be a system hog if you try to do so.

Alloy, on the other hand, is very cool.  It can be used for tracking and has very good options and settings within.

A lot of people here will go to bat for Ozone but it's just a matter of workflow, usability and knowledge of mixing. 

Try the demos and see if you like the results.

Thanks for the feedback on these.

I decided to also add iZotope RX2 to the pile, so it has been an expensive weekend  

After seeing the demos on the Ozone, Alloy, and RX2, I am amazed at the capabilities iZotope products offer. I know it is going to be quite a learning curve on all of these, but it should be fun. I have quite a few older copies of tape tracks I pulled into wave files awhile ago and there was all sorts of noise and level problems. Cleaning these up will be a good test bed to put the tools to work. Hope to report back once I get my head wrapped around things.

Take care,

g

I have O4, running on an Intel i5 chip with XP/32 bit OS.  I don't hesitate to use O4 or O3 in a track. With a processor like i5, the plugs do not use that much CPU power. I have run several in tracks and O4 in the  master all in real time.

I looked at Alloy but O4 seemed to do the same thing already, so I just stuck with it. I set up custom presets for various starting points for Vocals, Acoustic, etc....

O4 on a Q6600 with XP 32bit. Runs fine.

Also runs fine on my laptop Win Xp 32bit on a duo core T7200.

If you're just starting out with 3rd party plugins, I'd also suggest looking at TRacks 3 Deluxe.
The "single" plugins load individually into any host DAW software.
You get some really nice souding dynamics/EQ/peak-limiter/etc.
The Opto compressor, Pultec EQ, and Peak-Limiter are particularly nice.

And to my ears, the Fairchild by T-Racks is pretty dern close to the UAD Fairchild (the T-Racks being just a little grittier).

If I had to lose my UAD Fairchild I would not hate having to use the T-Racks version.

If I had to lose my UAD Fairchild I would not hate having to use the T-Racks version.

 

Alloy 1 is on sale on KVR for $60. Bargain.