Is Ozone 4 much better than Ozone 3

[leedsquietman]

I don't know about the Ozone limiter in v4 but I was not personally too enamoured with the v3 limiter myself actually - it comes in soundforge 9 along with the mastering reverb, eq and multiband compressor. I say this as an advanced user.

To me, Precision Limiter in UAD and Elephant, Kjaerhus MPL-1 PRO and PSP Xenon were all superior to the Ozone v3 limiter. I know Tarekith doesn't like the Sonalksis Limiters, and they have some shortcomings, but I liked that better after spending some time with it, and when I blind tested it with 4 other limiters including Elephant, Ozone and Xenon, my friend whose project I was mastering preferred the Sonalksis result 3 out of 5 times, 2nd 1 time and 3rd 1 time with Elephant being picked the other 2 times as first and second on 2 tracks and last on another. The Ozone result was bottom choice 3 out of 5. This was on a rock and pop project. So while I agree the Sonalksis isn't the most transparent, like the Waves L2, it's colour added something as far as the client was concerned that sounded good. Transparency is key for very dynamic recordings such as classical/soundtrack/jazz or more subtle type music. If you make Belgian trance, limiter transparency is not usually too much of an issue, which is why the L2 is used so much.

The biggest problem with Ozone for beginners are they use the presets too much, such as moderate rock etc - there will be times when those settings aren't the best for the music even if you're making rock music. rock music encompasses everything from quiet ballads to in your face distortion, so one preset can never be the go to 100% of the time. As for Elephant - when you know what you're doing with limiting, having those options is brilliant and therefore with experience, you know how to apply the right settings and get a very desirable result. For newbies, all I can suggest is that you really try things out, use the gentlest settings first, with higher release times and keep taking it up a notch from there and don't look to push your RMS levels more than a couple of dBs until you're familiar with the process.

However, the metering in Ozone is excellent as are the timestretching, dithering and sample rate conversion algorithms. I HATE the mastering reverb with a passion though, although having m/s is useful.

[aqua_tek]

I've been trying out the demo version of the sonalksis limiter and I'm torn.

It sounds good, but it's not very transparent when pushed. I remember having tried out ozone some time ago and it remained quite transparent even at very high levels of gain reduction.

I know I SHOULDN'T be pushing the limiters anyways, but for the type of stuff I make, pushing it is pretty much a rule of thumb.

Maybe the sonalksis will grow on me and I'll be content with taking down the overall loudness of my tracks a notch or two. I need to play around with it a bit more.

Been interested in trying out Elephant for some time now. Downloaded the demo yesterday, but I hate non-fully-functional demos that cut off every 30 seconds. Pretty annoying. Doesn't really entice me to buy

[Tarekith]

Yeah, the Sonalksis limiter is a really nice colored plug in, just not that transparent. I'm sure on some projects it's exactly what's needed.

[UKRuss]

I'm no ME so I go to presets on Ozone 4 ,particularly 'CD - Widener and Exciter' for the dithering and loudness maximising and NOT because I read it in a magazine, yeah? Seems to make the bass madphat and shine up the highs nice to my ears. As all my dancy musics sound the same (you know, mixed similar and made similar from an artist perspective) it works almost every time.

When i have fiddled from a blank starting point it very quickly becomes clear I have little, to no, idea what I'm doing when it comes to mastering but FWIW I do love the mid/side option for the processing but not sure i know why I'm using it when I do...

For very quick and dirty demo mastering I think the Ozone presets are pretty good as long as you use your ears to double check what the flip is going on.

I'm no anti-preset guy, I think they probably know what they're doing better than i do so I'm happy to go-to with them.

[SubFunk]

I'm no anti-preset guy, I think they probably know what they're doing better than i do so I'm happy to go-to with them.

there is absolute nothing wrong with presets whatsoever, the only 'wrong' is to use them blindly and to apply them without checking if they really fit, respectively exactly do what you want them to do... and if they do not, not altering them and tweak them into your direction.