iZotope Ozone 9 Advanced is Amazing!
Price: $499
Splice Rent-To-Own: $19.99 pm for 25 months
Ozone 9 is the latest flagship update from their previous mastering suite giant Ozone 8. I think Ozone 9 is aimed at not only being a mastering plugin but a pro mixing suite as well.
Let us first start with the brand new modules which have been added in Ozone 9. Master Rebalance is the most talked about module in Ozone 9, often described as witchcraft by many industry engineers. It lets you boost or cut frequencies of the vocal, bass, and drum components in your mix. The processing is so smooth that it is way ahead of its competitors. Usually the frequencies around a certain component are also affected when you do such processing, but iZotope has made sure the processing is sophisticated. Here are some samples with and without this FX. They present the magic of this module without any gain matching.
Low End Focus is also one of the newest module additions to Ozone 9.
Low-end is the final boss of every mastering game. It is very difficult to get that low end right and punchy at the same time. This module basically lets you choose the low-end belt and can process to make it more punchy and smooth. You can change the contrast and gain on how much you want of the effect to be present in the mix. It can certainly help to fine-tune and perfect the low end.
Now, I know that ML and AI are the biggest buzz words currently in the audio tech industry and everyone is just trying to jump on the bandwagon, but I really appreciate how iZotope is bringing the ML culture in audio tech. They have added more granularities in their already existing master assistant and have added some more decision making facilities. You can decide the stream of modules for your master; vintage if you want the coloured analog sound and modern if you are going for the modern digital sound for your master. The loudness criteria of low, medium and high really makes a difference in the final master. Though most of the engineers that I have talked to refrain from using this feature, it is practically marketed to the beginner and mid-level engineers who want to get that start on their final master. Obviously, it won’t get you to your desired stage but gets you to the stage where you are just a few knob tweaks away.
Tonal Balance Control 2 also comes with the Ozone 9 advanced suite. They have added more presets in their bank by analyzing thousands of mastered tracks. One thing I like about iZotope is their R&D department is always trying to bring new tech into their products. Inter-plugin communication protocol lets you change the parameters of other iZotope plugins in the master chain from Tonal Balance Control 2 itself.
Another shoutout goes to their UI team. Finally, the resizable option is here and I still don’t understand why it took them so long to bring this feature in. They have also cleaned up the EQ module, removing those hideous band options and made it sleeker. Overall, I would recommend this plugin to audio engineers who are trying to give themselves the professional industry master sound.
