
IZOTOPE 8 ADVANCED VS. STANDARD HOW TO
The best investment of your time, energy, and money, is making music itself and learning how to make better music.
IZOTOPE 8 ADVANCED VS. STANDARD SOFTWARE
Hardware makes software obsolete, and software makes hardware obsolete. Software that seems completely ageless quickly becomes dated. There is always a new edition, a new generation, a new feature, of products. No one can give the world the music you make except you, and by exporting everything to a machine, you are numbing the music you produce in most cases.Īs usual, this is a typical product. Just know that your art is about your human identity coming out, whether you like it or not. Very little human input is given to this. I’m sure that in more cases than not, Master Assistant is the primary mastering engineer. Is this really true “mastering”? It’s great that we can achieve relatively flat levels and tonally consistent tracks.But, is it really a good idea that I still master my own music? Granted, during the pandemic it has been forced on all of us to do much of this. Doing most of the artistic work by yourself is not the best idea. In most cases in life, we all need feedback from others. When all control is in one person’s hands, it usually highly personal, which can create great music. So, what is bad about the average musician doing all of these steps? This is only for the professional’s professionals. And, not only is mastering a completely separate, highly specialized, art and science, but it requires a ton of expensive equipment and a supremely well-tuned room to master in. It requires an even greater level of separation from the whole process. In the same way, mastering is another, separate person’s job. This is usually to the detriment of the mix, and I have to be aware of this. As a guitarist, for example, I tend to overemphasize the guitar tone in a mix and place less emphasis on the other instruments. However, mixing takes a more objective ear. That is the basic toolkit required of every musician nowadays. In musical terms, this means that musicians generally only play their own music and record it. (These are simple examples–it is a bit more complex than this.) The people reconciling it aren’t the same people collecting on past-due accounts. The people taking in the cash aren’t the same people reconciling it.

It is a key business practice whenever money is involved, which prevents fraud. In student finance, which is my day job, we have something called separation of duties.

The question that lies in the premise of iZotope Ozone is: “is this a good idea?”Īs in, is it good to have musicians who play, record, mix, and master their own music? It chooses those elements to (hopefully) allow your mix to translate well between a car radio, headphones, iPhone speakers, and your TV.


In other words, the Master Assistant chooses plugins, processes, and settings to apply to the whole track based on a sample of what it hears. analyzing a passage in real-time), the engine in Ozone “learns” what will achieve a balanced result regardless of how the track is played back. The main appeal of Ozone is its Master Assistant. The presets serve as a jumping-off point–for example, if you want to know more about multi-band compression, you can use the presets as a point to investigate in real-time while you study reference tracks, materials/tutorials, and books outside of Ozone. By selecting between presets, one can not only learn the program, but also how different audio elements and settings work. It also has a host of presets that allows the musician to master even without a perfectly-tuned mastering room. I will get into the pitfalls of this approach later in the article, but for what it’s worth, it helps a musician understand concepts of levels, loudness, A/B-ing, EQ, limiting, gain matching, dithering, reference tracks, track order, and other key concepts to mastering. Ozone allows musicians a cheap, reliable way to master their own music. Honestly, I have Ozone 8 Standard (one generation old at this point, and not the Advanced version), and it does more than I need at this time for my attic home studio. Standard – all you really need for most people.Īdvanced – for the professionals who need every little bit of detail. It comes in three levels of advancement:Įlements – the basic package, for the lowest price. IZotope Ozone is an all-in-one mastering engine.
