Izotope Ozone 5

[Tarekith]

Okay, opposed to Ozone - I have also heard great things about the 'PSP vintage warmer'. Would anyone recommend this for the same sort of job - that is limiting and basically making everything "bigger"?

No, different tool for a different job. Honestly, no limiter is really going to make 'things bigger', it's only one tool out of many that combine to give you that large sound. And I dont mean you need lots of mastering plugins. A big sound more than anything is due to a really good mixdown, a well thought arrangement, and song that isnt super dense with lots of sounds happening at once.

That said, the limiter in Ozone is really good IMO. The only downside of that plug in is that since it comes with so many different modules (EQ, multiband, reverb), people think they NEED to use them all in every song.

[synnack]

This thread reminded me to checkout Ozone 5 (had been using 4). I went ahead and bought the upgrade (Advanced version WAY too expensive IMO)

In messing with it I realized another thing I like about Ozone over native plugins. It's really not that the native plugins aren't good enough (mostly...) but that having everything contained in an interface that looks TOTALLY different than Ableton Live helps me dissasociate from the mixing and production aspects. In general it's not recommended to master your own music, but let's face it we all do it all the time. The Ozone environment, being so different than Live's, helps me focus on hearing and processing things differently. I can abstract myself better from the fact it's my song. If that makes sense.

[craftycurate]

The only Ozone feature I'm not sure how to achieve in Live is the Harmonic Exciter - any thoughts?

I've tried using a little bit of Erosion and Saturator but haven't found something equivalent yet. But then I haven't looked into it in great detail so far, so there may well be Live settings that are roughly equivalent.

[pgmjsd]

The only Ozone feature I'm not sure how to achieve in Live is the Harmonic Exciter - any thoughts?

I've tried using a little bit of Erosion and Saturator but haven't found something equivalent yet. But then I haven't looked into it in great detail so far, so there may well be Live settings that are roughly equivalent.

Overdrive can do something a little like the Harmonic Exciter. Like most things in Ozone, there are rough equivalents in Live's built in effects. Some require more work than others.

Regarding what the original poster asked, Ozone and definitely be used to 'louder-ize' your mix. You can even use it during mixdown if you've got enough CPU, or you are okay with printing the processing. Most of what it does can be achieved with Live's compressor, eq, MB dynamics, limiter, saturator, and overdrive. However, there are some big differences:

* Live's limiter is pretty bare bones. Ozone's maximizer is more sophisticated, but as others have said... the differences can be subtle.
* The stereo imaging control in Ozone would be difficult to do with Live's effects.
* L:ve's EQ8 will do everything anything Ozone's EQ will do (except for the 'matching' thing), but I think Ozone's spectrum display can make locating the right frequencies much easier.
* Ozone's MB com/exp/lim is pretty fiddly compared to Live's MB dynamics. I actually end up using Live's MB dynamics instead of ozone for mix-down processing.