Home Forums Software and Equipment Snake oil?

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    • #38366
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      So I have been in and out of the studio since 1992. I have spent time as a performer/musician as well as building the home studio I currently have. After much time, and learning both from other from back in the day, as well as just simply spending time making my own stuff, I have developed a pretty good ear.

      With that in mind, I have noticed all of these programs that are marketed towards “getting the perfect master”, “make your master sound like the pros”, etc., ad nauseum. So after reading all of the hype, my sales guy at Sweetwater gives me a link to get a free “stripped down version” of Ozone 9. I try it based on the “let Ozone hear the loudest part of your song and suggest your e.q., compression, limiting, etc. The result? I turned it off and went back to my standby plugins. A touch of compression, MAYBE some e.q. (I tend to eq my tracks to get a good fit between the instruments, as well as my panning to get them ‘placed), some limiting, and that’s it. The results are SO much better than what the A.I. said I needed. I then watch a tutorial which tells me that I need to do exactly as I did, but ultimately, my ears should be the guide. Well…They were which is why I turned the program off.Also, if my ears are the guide, and your product sounds terrible, then why spend the money? It was absolutely terrible sounding using that product. Without it? Nice rich sound, good spread, good eq, nice gain and perceived loudness.

      I am so glad that I paid attention to what the engineers were doing/using when mixing and mastering. Honestly, I am glad the download was free as I would have felt a little ripped to have paid for something so useless.

    • #38367
      rightonthemark
      Participant

      i understand your point.
      truth is that no serious engineer would use the “assist” feature.
      however, for those of us without the experience or great ears these types of tools are helpful.
      for years i used ams for mastering. while i used auto mastering you can use the program manually. essentially it has all the mastering tools in one suite that can be controlled by the user. it doesn’t have to be auto.
      the same is true of the izotope products like ozone and neutron.
      you don’t have to use the auto assist feature. you can simply use the the eq compressor etc manually.
      or, use the auto assist feature then tweak to your liking.
      all the audio for my youtube covers i use izotope products. are they professional grade? probably not. but they sound decent enough for my purpose.

      rock and roll ain't pretty; that's why they picked us to play it.

    • #38368
      superblonde
      Keymaster

      I always wonder who’s ears or who’s preferences the “smarts” are modeled after. Last year I visited a studio where one of the recording engineers had won multiple grammys (or whatever they were..anyway the big awards) … there were some sound mixing demos given, all the vocals were mixed up to be prominent like pop, like female-singer-songwriter style (which I don’t like! gimmie angry guitars over vocals anyday), and I asked about levels, saying something like, well what do you think of a mix like Steve Albini then, who purposely buries the vocals, to bring out the guitars? The recording engineer said.. “that would never work, would never be listened to.. maybe that’s why I never heard of the guy, because it wouldnt make it.”

      Steve Albini is like the hero mixer of the 90s for punk, grunge, underground metal, won numerous awards, especially for his own mixes of his own bands..

      Later I connected the fact that the guy had won his awards for children’s music. And he never heard of Albini, well then.. yeah, no.

      No one “professional” apparently likes heavy metal or the mixes. Yet the largest revenue share of sales is to metalheads and rockers…

      Good to hear your ears and experience beat the AI.

      I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
      And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

    • #38371
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I guess the “ears” the AI is modeled after are pop music ears because four tracks of distorted rhythm guitars, one track of clean guitar, a track of acoustic guitar, bass, drums, and a lead guitar track must have “freaked out” the AI. I would love to read something down the road about hard rock and metal “scaring” the AI of most mastering programs.I think that would be hilarious. I guess my main point is, this program does what 20 other plugins I have do, albeit I have to adjust the parameters myself. It just seems like a colossal waste of money.

      Children’s music or not, how could he be in the business and NOT have heard of Steve? The arrogant remark made in ignorance is what I love. It would NEVER make it. Gotta’ love this business.

    • #38377
      Byron
      Participant

      Ozone is a fantastic program but what you just discovered is that presets suck. They are tailored to someone else’s music and someone else’s mix- not yours.

      Pros use these things all the time, but they don’t use presets.

      Try Ozone again but this time, using your ears, you make the decisions. I bet you get way better results.

    • #38379
      Anonymous
      Inactive

      I will. Starting yet another tune for the new record so I will give it a try, make my own adjustments, and then do the comparo to my standby settings. I do like the idea of the stereo spread. But again, I also like “placing” everything in the mix. Still, I will try it. Maybe an old dog can be taught a new trick. Who knows?

    • #38382
      rorygfan
      Participant

      After reading your post I read the Ozone website and saw that the free version is like many products, limited crippled-ware and mostly unless you dump $399. to pay for other features you cannot make a good conclusion. There are lot’s of bad designs in functionality and human interface in software in music, imo. I have used quite a few including Pro-Tools, the most popular could be made less complex if the interface were properly designed or more backend processing occurred.

      Then again as much as I like technology, there are certain areas where it is premature. Maybe mastering is one of them, as it is so subjective. Look at all the Tesla crashes recently, dopey people watching TV with their cars on AI auto-pilot. And the 737 max “we will fix it in software” ideology, and those crashes. I guess people trust software designed by humans too much.

      AI shines in some areas say like facial recognition, just read an article about tracing the perpetrators of crimes. But It has a long way to go or next to impossible in so many areas where human intuition, judgement, analysis, “taste” ( you cannot define logically), etc.

      Learning by “relative” comparison sampling of one mix of an existing song you like, then applying it to the track the user wants to master seems like another “Lie of technology”.

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