Ozone, or rather Ozone 8 by iZotope Inc, is a plug in for the Cubase music production program. It's magic.
I'v have been focusing on the live band Forsberg Wilson & Muller for a while. Our first gig was a test of how Gus songs could do on stage. They are not written with the stage in mind.... not at all. But we tried reworking the arrangenments and swapping instruments and recorded sounds for the instrument we carry on stage. It's quite a big task. But we now know it works. It works good. Now I'm back working on composing and recording in the studio again.
I work in Cubase 9.5 Pro. It's a big professional music production program. It's big in it self but there is a lot of companys making plug in programs for Cubase and other music production systems. So Cubase and the others are prepared to work with the plugins. There are hundreds on the market. Although I find that the one's already in Cubase is quite sufficiant.
Mixing and matering, though, is hard. Really difficult. And something I'm not good at. Once you have recorded a track, a guitar for example, you work the track to sound good. When mixing you work with the induvidual soundtracks and make them work together. Then it's time for mastering where you work with the sound of all the track together. My producer Micke MiMo Moberg is a fantastic at it. And I'v been sitting alongside him in his studio watching when he does it in Cubase and.... I dont understand anyway. It's like some kind of magic.
Ozone 8 (or Ozone 9 wich is the current version for sale) is a plug in that can mix and master your tracks. It also has alot of tools you can use separately but mostly I use it for mastering. I put it on the stereo out channel and it "fixes" the sound on it's way out. Sometines the effect is not much, but better, and sometimes it really improves the sound. The nice thing is that it can master the song optimised for streaming or CD playback. Or, if you want to, it can learn from a track you like the sound of and then apply the "learnt" sound to my track. It's magic..... for me. It's a short cut for my producer Micke MiMo Moberg. I stop after letting Ozone have a go at the song but for Micke it's the start piont of the mastering process.
Before Spotify and iPhones we used to listen to music on HiFi equipment and in big nerdy high performance headsets. Well, we had a crappy TV sound, transistor radios and car stereos too, but when we really listened we had good sound gear. Nowadays we have low performance MP3 sound streamed to our phones and we listen in super small crappy but expensive earplugs. And that's when we are really listening. But we have highgrade car stereos and HIFI eqipment in cafés and sorroundsystems to our TV. When we are not really listening. Strange turn isn't it? It's the other way around. Anyway making music that sounds good on HiFi gear as well as in crappy earplugs is difficult. Ozen 8 is a big help here. It can do it..... if I have Ozone 8. And I do!
Micke MiMo Moberg has the TV on when he is working. He means that this is the way we listen today. We have multiple sounds around us all the time. So he tries to matser and mix the our songs so that they will stand out in the.... sound polluted(?)..... places we listen to music to day. Anyway Ozone 8 is a big help for me.
/Gus
