MusicRadar

Ozone 4 offers six mastering modules.

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• Review

Mastering is a process that's as simple or as complex as you want to make it. From minimalist solutions, such as slapping a loudness-maximising limiter on the master bus, to endlessly tweaking sprawling chains of plug-ins, it can be frustratingly difficult to know whether you're under- or over-cooking your master and really doing what's best for your tracks.

In such cases, having access to a one-stop software mastering solution can be a welcome relief, especially for the less experienced engineer.

Overview

Ozone 4 is one such product: a "complete mastering system" in DX/VST/RTAS/AU plug-in format running right inside your DAW. Ozone has seen three previous incarnations, and its GUI remains instantly recognisable, although it's been somewhat updated and is now a touch slicker.

More crucially, the audio processing side of things has received a stimulating shot in the arm.

Ozone 4 follows the same tried-and-tested format as its predecessors, with six modules representing common mastering processes – these can be dragged into just about any order you like via the Graph button (the only restriction is that the multiband processors have to be located adjacent to each other).

You'll usually place Ozone's Paragraphic EQ module first in your mastering chain. This has eight bands, operable in Analog, Digital (ie, linear phase) or Matching modes. The latter enables you to capture 'spectrum snapshots' of other mixes in order to apply their tonal characteristics to your own.

It works well in practice, although the associated snapshot menu obscures the EQ display, which can be annoying (this happens quite a lot with Ozone's pop-up windows). However, you can also select multiple EQ nodes and adjust them as one, which makes up for it.

Ozone's so-called Mastering Reverb has always been a contentious inclusion, as it's generally considered that if you're adding reverb during mastering, you should really consider remixing. However, that's not always an option, and Ozone's reverb can work wonders on dry mixes, especially using the mid/side modes.

Ozone 4 contains three multiband processors (adjustable from one to four bands), and these now have numerous extra features. Common to all is a handy Learn mode that automatically sets the crossover points to suit the frequency content of the incoming material.

The four-band Harmonic Exciter adds saturation per band, complete with drive and mix controls, and there are time offset controls for subtly tightening the bass. Four saturation modes are available: Tape, Tube, Retro and Warm. The latter is new for v4 and is perhaps the cleanest and roundest-sounding. Meanwhile, the Stereo Imager performs band-specific widening/narrowing of the stereo field – nice!

Dynamics and limiting

While you might think dynamics and limiting processors have been done to death, Ozone 4's stand out with their fantastic sound, clever functions and intuitive operation.

Multiband Dynamics is an extremely versatile multiband compressor/limiter/expander/gate with automatic gain compensation and a new Mix control that gives you instant access to parallel compression.

The Loudness Maximizer keeps it simple, with just threshold, ceiling and timing sliders. In addition to the pre-existing Soft, Brickwall and Intelligent modes comes the even smarter Intelligent II, and boy, does it do a good job of producing loud yet coherent masters!

It's one of the best we've tried, and is easily up there with PSP Xenon and Voxengo Elephant 3. There are also numerous dithering options.