Mastering w/ Ozone Elements 9 (FREE DL till June 5 2020!)
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Summary
This video explains how to use Ozone Elements 9, a free mastering plugin available on Splice, to enhance the sound of music tracks. It covers adjusting the limiter, equalizer, and imager, and also suggests using Ozone Elements as a limiter on group tracks within a DAW.
Key points- Ozone Elements 9 can be downloaded for free from Splice.
- The plugin includes an EQ, stereo imager, and limiter, which can be used to master tracks.
- When using the limiter, it's generally advised not to exceed negative 6 dB of gain reduction.
- The equalizer can be used in mid/side mode to adjust the stereo width and high-end frequencies.
- The stereo imager can widen the high-end frequencies but should be used cautiously to avoid phasing issues.
- Ozone Elements 9 can also be used as a limiter on group tracks in a DAW, replacing other limiters like FabFilter Pro-L.
Chapters
Notable quotes (4)
“usually I don't use this method when I'm mastering my own tracks because usually I mix and produce at a mastering level”
“it gives the mastering process room to be able to actually get the volume and the clarity that you want out of your track”
“I generally don't like to go over negative six and gain reduction and it's okay if it's less or more but that's a general rule”
“so they've already sort of prefixed that for you I usually put my everything below 100 Hertz into mono in the multiband version but with this one they've somehow got it so that way I don't know what at what frequency it cuts off but if you widen it it does sound good”
0:00yep what's up aliens here with another tutorial so today I'm going to be going over how to use ozone Elements 9 that is for free they have a free download on splice I'll provide a link below in the comments where y'all can get that usually I don't use this method when I'm mastering my own tracks because usually I mix and produce at a mastering level I've gone over that in several different videos but I do use this method when I'm mastering other people's tracks that they send me like a negative 6 DB stem and I'm going to show you all how I go about doing that right now
0:36this is actually a friend of Mines track they're called dissolve I've played several festivals with them they're dope and I've got their track triplicity right now it's going to be on a new album of theirs it's at about a negative 6 dB right a little bit over but that's that's okay cuz it goes over and under the most important thing is that it's not peeking out it gives the mastering process room to be able to actually get the volume and the clarity that you want out of your track so I'm going to be using two different plugins to achieve this one is ozone 9 and then the other is my
1:13favorite plug-in span if you've seen my other videos you know how much I love this I want to say is that there's better mastering things out there like the full ozone suite is like way better than the elements one but you can still get a pretty good result from this so in elements there's basically EQ a stereo imager and a limiter so first off let's play around with the limiter there's two modes here IRC and irc2 it stands for intelligent release control they have some sort of algorithm that is able to adjust the release of the compressor I like to use IRC too on this one in the
1:49other versions there's higher IRCs and I like to use those also on here I like to turn on the transient emphasis and turn up the amount so we'll listen to this and we'll start pulling down on the threshold [Music] you can see right about here is when we're starting to get some gain reduction there's a little meter right here of the gain reduction I generally don't like to go over negative six and gain reduction and it's okay if it's less or more but that's a general rule so what I'm gonna do is look here inside span and I'm just going to keep on pulling down on the threshold until this
2:24sub-base rests around this negative thirty line and the number thirty is you can see right here [Music] yeah that's pretty good also I'm going to pull down on the ceiling so after you've mastered your tune sometimes when converting from a wave to a mp3 or just the conversions that they have online there can be sometimes like weird distortion that's added so I like to pull down on the ceiling by just negative 0.1 and so that way at least a little bit of space for those compression things to not mess up your song and add unwanted distortion if you're just showing your track online or something like that
3:17next let's go to the equalizer something that I like to do in the equalizer is set it to mid/side mode so basically we have a band that's affecting the mids and a band that's affecting the sides and I actually like to pull up the sides and we'll listen as we do that so that way there's just like a little bit more detail in the side range on the high end only really [Music] and then I'm also going to pull down on I'm gonna set this to a high-pass filter I'm gonna up the slope and yeah we're gonna get rid of all the sub in the in
4:01the sides also looking here in Spain [Music] right now like when I'm looking for like a well-balanced track the average height of the lows equals the average height of the highs and right now the highs are a little bit lower than the lows so that's why I'm boosting the EQ on a high end and I'm also going to boost the EQ here on the mid section as well on the highs [Music] also being aware of like what kind of content is in there I just noticed that these like bells and whatnot are coming in here [Music] so actually I might have the EQ beat a
5:08little less than what I have it at and then I actually my up this sub a tiny bit and I'm going to use the low shelf I'm going to set it to analog so that way I can just control the cue of it a little bit easier [Music] I really just want to affect the very low ends and then also I noticed that there's that sub base of [Music] but you see out here how it's like pretty thick here in this section I might want to have a little bit more separation so I might pull down in this like 70 80 Hertz zone so I'm going to do
6:03that here with the Bell style EQ I'm just
6:13[Music] cool that's sounding much better we're gonna then go into this imager here I found the elements one a little bit deceiving because usually in the full ozone there's like a multiband with the stereo Widener but in this that's only one channel but I thought it would widen the whole channel but like when I listen to it it's actually only widening some sort of high end because it's not widening the sub-base which is what you don't want to do so they've already sort of prefixed that for you I usually put my everything below 100 Hertz into mono in the multiband version but with this one they've somehow got it so that way I
7:11don't know what at what frequency it cuts off but if you widen it it does sound good let me be able to really tell this if you have like headphones or you're listening in your studio monitors [Music] okay cool now this is where you can really mess it up I don't really use the stereo eyes especially on a master because you can put the sub in stereo and it's gonna sound really weird on big speaker systems I'll show you how to mess that up and how to actually observe it here in Spain there's this correlation meter and anything to the right is in stereo all the way to the
7:48right is mono and everything to the left is out of phase so we'll actually put it in out of phase by turning on the stereo eyes turning it up all the way and the width all up all the way and you'll see [Music] you can see that's out of phase it might sound weird too so don't do that they out I think overall this has helped master the sound let's see the before and after hears it before [Music] before [Music] pretty good I'd say now before I go I want to mention another use that I think is going to be super awesome for a lot
8:48of y'all is to use the ozone elements on groups I've talked about my magic template series in the past and I I've talked about my the templates that I use in ableton and I actually have so before I've talked about my templates it so before I've talked about my magic templates so I've mentioned my magic Abell I've mentioned my magic ableton templates in other videos but in them I was always using Pro L or I was using just built-in stock Ableton effects but now I think that this is going to get a better result for people that don't want to buy the Pro L or can't buy it right
9:38now I was messing around with some settings on this and I tested a few mastering a few tracks this way mixing a few tracks this way and actually worked really well so I have limiters on almost all of my groups and y'all could actually just throw the ozone 9 element as a limiter on the groups so let me show you what I do so I actually turn off the equalizer turn off the imager turn on the Maximizer put the threshold all the way up to zero turn it on IRC 2 and just leave it at that I notice the IRC 2 does use a little bit more CPU but it does sound a
10:20little bit better so I'd say it's a worthwhile trade-off and it uses about similar CPU as a fabfilter pro-q on my chords basis kicks and drums top drums and pre master groups basically anywhere where I would normally have like a pro L I'd replace it with the ozone element 9 I'll provide a link below of where y'all can get my Ableton templates and also include the video on like how to use the Ableton templates and how to get the these really loud mixes their super clear and punchy yeah your I think you're gonna be good to go I'm super stoked that isotope is offering this free mastering plugin
11:04because honestly it's my second favorite limiter besides the fabfilter pro-q enjoy this if you did please give it a like and if you haven't alright subscribe I [Music] [Music]
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