[Level 99]

Trying to move forward with a switch in my plugins choices. Anyone have experience with Ozone 4 or Voxengo or, dare I say it, both?

Leaning towards Ozone 4 because of the price for an "all in one", but I've heard very good things about Voxengo as well.

[BlackPanther]

Don't know anything about voxengo, but I do have ozone and I love it. I'm very pleased with what it does to my music. There is a nice assortment of presets to work with whatever type of mastering you're goin for and there are parameters that you can mess with to tweak the Sound of the presets even further. You can always do it completely from scratch if you're feelin up to it, nice straight forward interface so things aren't confusing. Anyways I'd recommend ozone but that's mostly because I don't have the other one lol.

[zircon]

My personal opinion on this is that you need to try mastering/mixing plugins for yourself. It takes a trained ear to really hear the difference between one digital plugin EQ and another, so a lot of it boils down to the actual featureset, the UI, presets (if you use them) etc. For me, I've never really been able to hear a big difference between one EQ and another. Even 2 software compressors can be hard to tell apart sometimes. That's why I really recommend just trying them all. You will find tons of people that swear by any given FX plugin set.

[The Vagrance]

Originally Posted by zircon

My personal opinion on this is that you need to try mastering/mixing plugins for yourself. It takes a trained ear to really hear the difference between one digital plugin EQ and another, so a lot of it boils down to the actual featureset, the UI, presets (if you use them) etc.

Pretty much, although the comparison between Ozone and Voxengo is weird because Ozone has a very clear purpose (quick, easy, effective in-box mastering) whereas Voxengo's plugins run a wide gamut of effects and intended uses. If you're looking for something to slap on the master channel its hard to beat Ozone if you're staying in box.

[Scrap McNapps]

I own Ozone4 and am VERY happy with the results.

[luhny]

Sorry for bumping this thread, but I saw no need in creating a new one when the search function gives me useful results...

I would like to ask if you could be a bit more concrete on the results you get with Izotope Ozone? I know it's hard to describe many of those mostly subjective aspects.

I am thinking about getting Ozone, but I read SO many different things about it, I would like to ask a few things, just to get another opinion on the matter from actual users of this plugin (because most things I can read on forums are either hypers or haters, but nothing that contains fact). So, let me begin:

1. I read there are tons of presets. Are they any good (meaning, are they useful to take them as a starting point instead of starting from scratch and start adjusting)

2. Is it true that the sheer amount of presets make you lazy in mastering? Some people complain how Ozone Users abuse potential customers by doing 1-click mastering and pretending to have worked for a long time on the master (it sounds like a pure hater-comment to me, but I just wanna make sure)

3. If I could get a used Ozone 3 for a considerable less amount than Ozone 4 - would you think that Ozone 3 does its fair share of work? Or would it nowadays just be better to go with a new Ozone 4 because the new features are just that much better?

Thanks for taking time to read all of my questions.

Take care,
Luhny

[Dj Mokram]

Long story short, a friend of mine, who have much more advanced audio gear than me, got this. I haven't been able to spend much time with it, but I'll try answering with what I know.

Originally Posted by luhny

1. I read there are tons of presets. Are they any good (meaning, are they useful to take them as a starting point instead of starting from scratch and start adjusting)
2. Is it true that the sheer amount of presets make you lazy in mastering? Some people complain how Ozone Users abuse potential customers by doing 1-click mastering and pretending to have worked for a long time on the master (it sounds like a pure hater-comment to me, but I just wanna make sure)

There is a shit-ton of presets. So much in fact, that you can really waste hours just trying them, without even turning a knob or changing a parameter manually.
Will they make you lazy? Perhaps. Let's say that if you're just starting out, it might be tempting to rely heavily on preset.
Alas, skipping on learning how things work, and pretending you've spent 3 hrs working on your mix when, in fact, you just pushed a button won't help you in the long run.
One shouldn't make that mistake, for you'll be passing up on one very powerful piece of software imo.
You can most definitely take these presets as a starting point to understand how they affect each area of your mix.
You can bypass effects in real-time, target a specific channel only, hear your mix in mono with or without said effect, isolate a frequency range and hear (see) the results real-time too, take snapshots of your mix to gauge the impact of changes made on equalizer thus maximizing your mastering efficiency.
And there is much much more depth to this, but I digress, and your questions were about presets, so here goes!

From my short experience with O4, the most useful presets were the solo instruments / instruments group related ones (bass, cello, guitar, brass section, piano...).
The global presets (multi-bands / gate, tube, compressor / cd master...) have a tendency to go overboard, and toss harmonic exciter and loudness maximizer all over the place, or simply aren't gonna be adapted for every style of music.
So yes, there are genre specific presets, and some will work like a charm (rock / electro / hip hop / reggae). But some won't be as effective...
Finally, the Utility presets have some usefuf ones for vocals, for creating specific ambiences, or for sound modeling.

BUT, and I insist on this, once you're done playing with presets, really try to delve into each specific tool.
There's an amazing amount of control in this thing, and unfortunately, I've barely had time to scratch the surface.
So yes, it's very possible to do one-clik mastering. But then again, I'm not sure how many audiophile it would succeed to fool...

Finally, I can't answer for question #3 since I've only tried Ozone 4. That would have to be your call.
Anyway, hope this helped. ;)

[luhny]

Wow, thanks for the input and information.

I guess I will give it try then, what could possibly go wrong?

thanks again,

Luhny

[Josh Whelchel]

Try both, but to answer your question I use IO4.