WATCH ME MASTER WITH OZONE 9 (start to finish) | How To Master Music With Ozone 9

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, it's me again, Streaky. And on today's video, I'm going to master one of Matt, my assistant’s tracks in Ozone 9. It's what you've all been calling for. So if you're new around here, I'm Streaky. I've been mastering records at a high level for the past 25 years. And I'm on YouTube to tell you everything that I know. And I mean everything. So as a mastering engineer with a rack of expensive outboard equipment and a load of plugins in my computer. I'm not one just to use Ozone just for mastery on its own. I have used certain stuff for. I love Isotope stuff. Most of their stuff is pretty high-end. But today I thought I would get stuck into it. See if I can mask something as a bit of a challenge to myself, just to see if my skills from hardware and the other software that I use worked in ozone, if I was somebody that just had ozone. Would I be able to do some decent in there? Well, let's find out let's jump into the computer and I'll show you exactly what I can do.

So here we are in Ozone. I've got it in as a plugin on RX. Just say that it makes life easier for my recording. So let's preview the track and look at the levels. Make sure they're okay. Coming in. (Music playing). There's plenty of head room going on so that's cool. So first things first, I might get something in, just to get a little bit of warmth going on. Let's bring this little vintage tape in. Put it at 15ips, which is the speed. Bring the harmonics up a bit. Now I've got this on gain match here because I want to make sure that I can hear exactly what I'm doing rather than falling myself with just loads of level. Because if I did have that in…everything sounds good, louder, so keep that on. Now I must admit before I get cracking with this, I've had about two minutes play time with this before we came on. So, bear with me.

At any point, there are things that I do miss that I should have clicked that, or should've done that. Don't kill me in the comments. Don't crucify me because I'm a newbie to this. Obviously, I'm not a newbie to bass stream, but to this software. Basically, I'm going to do what I would do if I was using other plugins, if I was using hardware in here. So anyway, let's get on with it. So let's add some vintage tape stuff. See how that sounds. (Music playing). Sounds right. Now I want to get a level up. I want to go to level to about -8 RMS. I'm just going to smash a limiter on it. (Music playing). Let's vintage limiter. That I’ll do. So you want the true peak on, because you don't want to be gained so much that now. Ceiling of -0.1 standard. If you're only going to Spotify or you're going into one of those, then bring the ceiling down to 1 or -2. But let's pretend this is going to a client who wants to hear it as loud as it is, then we'll bring it up. So, let's bring this up. We've got our about -8 RMS up here, so you can see that it's pretty loud.

Limiters normally make things sound a bit brighter. So I always start with the low end and go through to the top. So this sounds a little bit lumpy in the low end, so let's just, um, first of all, get an EQ out. Why not use digital one? And then we'll just put a low-end cut on this. So a high pass, it's a bit radical, 24 maybe. Bring it down a bit more. We’ll still want to have a kick. So I'm bringing that down to 25. I'm always flicking in between to hear what that's doing. Let's put the limiter at the end. (Music playing).

So let's just put a little bit above it. Not la low shelf. Let's put a bell on it. Standard bell. (Music playing). Let’s go a bit lower. So I want a bit of thumb, but I'm just taking a little bit away. Just say that it's still got the thumb now. Let’s listen how that’s sounding it face comes in again to be helpful. I know what I want to do next. So I'll just add this next thing. I wouldn’t normally go as quick as this. Let's get some dynamics on the go. Let's put this after the EQ. Always leaving the limiter at the end. Let's just listen to that EQ again. (Music playing). I want to grab, hold of that low end. So I think I can do this. And so bring that. I want to cross over. I only want to deal with that thumpy nasty, low-end. So let's just bring that level down a bit on there.

I want to be quite fast. It’s not really touching it at the moment. A bit too much. (Music playing). That’s got it thumping a bit more. A bit lower. (Music playing). I’m watching my levels here as well to make sure I'm still around -8 RMS, which is good. If I didn't gain much, let’s see what happens. Let’s just gain much it and just listen to what's going on. You can hear the limits is really bringing out that top end, which is why I always start with the low end first. Because if I get the low-end right, let's move that out a little bit more. Then basically if I can get that low-end right then everything will be nice. Let's just go back to the start again. (Music playing).

Sounds pretty cool. So what I might do is just add a little bit of widener and stuff on there. So what they got here imager. Basically, we'll mono the low-end a little bit. I think that does that. And how do I get the top one going. (Music playing). A bit wider than the top-end. Sorry, I know this is painful to watch for anybody who uses this a lot. I don't like that. That's doesn't sound very nice. Let’s pin that. Let’s get out of here. I don't want to be doing it there in the chain anyway. I want to be doing it there in the chain. But what I'll do is I'll bring in another EQ. Put it before the other EQ. Put it in MS Mode.

So in the sides, we'll put another high pass on. So what this is going to do, because I'm in the sides only, it means I'm just monitoring the bass. But I can get a little bit more controlled so I can change the shape and know that everything under here. So as I go into my dynamics, I might actually move this here. So as I go into my dynamics, I know around 75 and then if I'm monitoring it before it goes in, it's quite nice. And then in the size, just bring the up backs and dials fine there. That curve and the db on it so that's done. Opens up nicely and tightens the low-end. (Music playing). It sounds all right. I don't have to do a lot to the top because the top is quite bright track anyway. It sounds all right. (Music playing).

Now we could mess around with this forever, but we could start adding different EQs to digital analog. I'd need more time to listen to it, to which one I prefer, but general rule of thumb, this is pretty good. You notice I don't have any dynamics going across the whole mix. I don't tend to do that. I tend to use, I'm using this more for that. So I just want to get some sound in there. Let's see what happens if I take that out. Sounds all right. (Music playing). Sometimes just take a little edginess out of the tops can sound quite nice. But not in this case because you can hear it really taste the tizzies of the shake away so that's what I'm thinking as I see that. Spin that off. Let's just add that compressor working a bit more. (Music playing).

It's been lumpy before, wasn't it? Let's listen. (Music playing). It’s a bit nothing. And now we're in the sheen. See how that top end really comes out and I'm not actually doing much. Am I? I've got a little bit of EQ just there one and a third dB and that's only on the outside. Because it's in side mode. I might just bring that bass up here, but not that though. We can start messing around and start maybe thickening up those low-mids a bit. Sounds alright. It’s a bit excitable, isn't it? Let's go back to the start again.

Let's listen to what this is doing. That’s nice. Really fills the sound with some nice lows. (Music playing). So what I call this stage of mastering is we're in the ballpark. So now what we do, we've got rough sound. We know the level's good. We're in the right place basically. Now we just go in and we find tune and tune and tune. So you'll probably play over five to six times now and just play around small little tweaks and changes. See if you can make an extra 1% here and there really. So let's just listen. (Music playing).

I’m just thinking that vocal maybe is missing a little bit now. Let’s left that area. So, 2.7. Put it 5k sometimes that brings out the nice reverb. That’s the kind of thing you get a lot of perceived loudness. So it's not actually making any louder here because your ear picks up on that nicely around that part. (Music playing). Let's just go back again.

So for the purpose of this video, I think we're roughly there. As I say, we could tweak and tweak and tweak. You’ve got to know when to stop tweaking. You can’t go around in circles. So, just listen through the track. Go from the bottom all the way to the top, just to keep thinking. Is there anything sticking out? Is there anything not? How do I want that sound? Is the limiter sounding right? Could we try a different type of limiter? Quite like the modern. Flick it back to that. (Music playing). And off we go. As you can see, I'm just tweaking and tweaking. Just checking things really. Just thinking okay, is that bass that need more. Just trying different stuff out. That still sounds right. That did I do right there? I’ve done other things along the chain so I’m just going through. It’s too much now, I'm thinking to myself. But that's on the side. Because I had that EQ on the mid channel there. Then that’s getting a bit confused so it’s listening, thinking probably a bit too much. (Music playing).

Now when it comes to limiting, you can obviously. We can go keep going louder and louder and louder if you want. Obviously, it's just going to get tighter and tighter and tighter. starts punching out. As you can hear everything starts crunching up and that is ruining all the nice subtleties that we’ve done previously. Finding a nice balance there with your limiter. I want to say that it's still open, but it's still in decent RMS.

I think that’s it. So if you want to look at those settings and you can kind of work out what I'm doing, that's pretty much a master tune. I hope you got something good out of that. Okay. So I hope you learned loads from that. And if you've got any questions hit me up in the comments. I’m more than happy to help you with any master inquiries you have. If you want to take a free workshop where I go into detail much more than this, then there is a link for that below too. So if you want to check that out, then go through to that. So there you have it. Have a listen to that again. Have a look at my settings, manipulate them for your own good. And hopefully it'll help you master your tracks in Ozone 9. You saw me using a compressor there, but if you want a more of a deep dive into compression and how to get that gluey mix sound to your mixes and your masters, then make sure you watch this video here, that's just appearing. And that is my video on gluey compression.