Positioned under the main stereo meters is the new ‘Meter Bridge’ button. So aside from a facelift, the update to Ozone is primarily in a swag of new features. All the modules are where you’d expect them - meters in the same place, etc. Ozone 5 Advanced’s newly polished black look is overall less glare-y and more conducive to longer sessions, though a preliminary glance revealed the main page layout to be pretty much the same as Ozone 4. Lastly, you need either an Intel Mac running 10.5.8 or later, or a PC running Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit), Vista 64-bit or XP 32-bit. It’s a plug-in, not a stand-alone application, so you will need either a multitrack or stereo DAW to host it. I’m on a Mac, but Ozone 5 Advanced will install on both Mac and PC and is compatible with all major plug-in formats except MAS. And to keep things reasonably fair I flip-flopped between the old process and new with each new song to ‘start afresh’ so I couldn’t get on a roll with one process or the other. All songs, bar one, were recorded in the same space -which would level the playing field. To test the different mastering methods for fidelity, ease of use and speed of workflow I used an album recorded by Andrew Bencina in Balgo, Western Australia (see Issue 86), which I hoped would take no more than eight hours for the 13 tracks.

I took Ozone 5 Advanced for a spin to see if it could give me the same result (or better) in a quicker time than my usual go-to (ball ’n’) chain. It’s like tabbed browsing - every module is accessed via its own button. With Ozone, iZotope has provided a way around this multiple plug-in method of mastering by offering all the required EQ, compression, excitation, widening, reverb and limiting plug-ins you need in one convenient window.

It would be nice to close a few plug-in windows and just let them ‘do their job’, but usually they each have to be open all the time to read critical information at a glance, make adjustments to EQ, etc. My typical software mastering path comprises Universal Audio, PSP, and Crysonic plug-ins, all individually inserted, and all contributing to an unwieldy clutter that slows workflow. Time to release the ol’ mastering (ball ’n’) chain and tap into Ozone’s all-in-one potential.

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