Ozone 11 Upgrade $129??!!!

[James Steele]

I just got an email from Sweetwater today announcing Ozone 11. Upgrade pricing from Ozone 10 Standard to Ozone 11 standard is $129! What the hell!? Ouch!!

[James Steele]

Okay… Plug-in Boutique has the upgrade for $99. I can stop hyperventilating now… mostly.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... 0-Standard

[James Steele]

Also available for $99 directly from iZotope, too, apparently. I gotta check the Sweetwater email again to make sure they were tacking on $30.

[James Steele]

Also available for $99 directly from iZotope, too, apparently. I gotta check the Sweetwater email again to make sure they were tacking on $30.

Well yes they are!

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... 0-standard

Well gosh… sorry Sweetwater. I’ll keep my $30 and go have a decent lunch with it somewhere instead.

[mikehalloran]

I need to check to see if I have paid for it already. The way that iZotope licensing goes, pretty sure I'm entitled to upgrades for a year since my last purchase in November.

Checked my "loyalty offers". $119 for Ozone 11, $149 for Advanced, $229 for Music Production Suite 6. Now to go read some receipts — tomorrow. I had eye surgery yesterday and can barely read anything other than my keyboard. Liking screen zoom tight now.

[James Steele]

I still haven’t read up on Ozone 11. Is it THAT much better than Ozone 10? BTW, Mike, did you do the demo of Invisible Limiter G2 (or G3)? I’m curious. It’s pricey, but sounds very clean on some program material. I’m fact, on a bit of a impulse I bought God Particle on sale and for one project I really liked Invisible Limiter better.

[mhschmieder]

The Music Production Suite upgrade is several hundred dollars. So much for loyalty. Both Ozone and Nectar are updated.

I could now kick myself for not prioritizing preparing my iZotope licenses for sale last weekend, but I had too many top priorities to deal with at once. The rate of quasi-updates is so rapid, usually with so little on offer, that I am convinced it is designed to lock people into their licenses almost like a subscription.

I really don't use iZotope products anymore. Each release sounds less transparent than the previous and is harder for me to tame. RX has been mostly an exception, but I am expecting to transition over to SpectraLayers soon, now from Steinberg.

Some people on GS say that the latest iZotope updates finally address longstanding concerns and make up for the disappointment of the past few updates. Certainly it is true that some vendors recover after fresh cash infusions.

I did cancel my Plug-in Alliance subscription before its renewal recently. I own perpetual licenses to everything pre-subscription and several since subscriptions began, and haven't been too impressed by their latest offerings.

As for Native Instruments, they seem to have slowed down quite a bit, and there's always the risk of FM8 going away, or even Reaktor for that matter.

It is interesting though, that iZotope/NI are including the unrelated Guitar Rig Pro (a plug-in I will never use) with the Music Production Suite. Cross-marketing for its own sake? The only thing I ever used in Guitar Rig was its Talk Box effect.

There are people saying they got this upgrade for $49 or less, but as I skipped the last two suite updates as I'm tired of all the redundant licenses combined with lack of follow-on loyalty discounts, I guess my timing was off.

I don't think the suite includes the Pro version of the Nectar 4 update, which is fairly expensive even with the loyalty discount.

[James Steele]

There are people saying they got this upgrade for $49 or less...

From what I read that's only for people who bought the previous version in August. They probably had to do that to prevent people from getting angry if they'd bought it a week before the announcement and were goin to get charged full pop.

In my case, I vaguely recall getting Ozone 10 when I upgraded to Komplete 14? I think NI and iZotope were still "dating" back then. But it was at least a year or more ago, so best price I can get to go from Ozone 10 to 11 is $99. And I'm not even sure it's that much better. Maybe I'll demo it at some point.

[mhschmieder]

Ah, I forgot you were talking about Standard vs. Pro, and on its own vs. a not-so-suite deal.

Even so, with all the quality plugs out there now from folks like Sonible, that are much cheaper and more advanced in most ways, the selling point for a $100 upgrade on an iZotope product has to be in the quality territory more than functionality, such as way better sample rate conversion or dithering.

[James Steele]

Ah, I forgot you were talking about Standard vs. Pro, and on its own vs. a not-so-suite deal.

Even so, with all the quality plugs out there now from folks like Sonible, that are much cheaper and more advanced in most ways, the selling point for a $100 upgrade on an iZotope product has to be in the quality territory more than functionality, such as way better sample rate conversion or dithering.

Yeah. I was just looking to see what it would cost me to upgrade from Ozone Standard 10 to Ozone Standard 11. It's $99. And for some bizarre reason I can't fathom, Sweetwater is trying to sell the same upgrade with a $30 premium tacked on.

Yeah... the sonible stuff is cool. I've been hearing good things about their new pure:EQ.(I don't know why I even attempt to follow these developer's stylized capitalization or non capitalization quirks. Like tying iZotope instead of Izotope or all lower case like sonible. I so digress.)

Anyway because I had some other sonible bundle, pureeq was $17... and it's getting a lot of buzz... so I bought it without even listening. LOL But yeah, back to the subject, I'm gonna have to seriously do some research on Ozone 11 Standard as I'm not in a mad rush to cough up $100 for a plugin upgrade, with probably an exception for Altiverb 8 when it's released sometime in 2025... (kidding!)...

[James Steele]

I do have a number of iZotope plugs... I could upgrade to Music Production Suite 6 for $379 and get a lot of stuff I suppose, but dang... it's adding up. LOL

[nk_e]

As someone who owns a lot of iZotope, ni, and plugin-alliance stuff, the licensing and promotions are a mess. Izotope was bad enough before the mergers, but now I have no confidence in any of the upgrade prices quoted to me.

I get different numbers for the same things depending on which site I go to; ni has some of my izotope products listed but not all; izotope doesn’t seem to realize I “upgraded” to their everything bundle last september…the cost to update my “everything” bundle is $749?!!

Lots o weird stuff. I sent in a support ticket.

Some of the AI things in the new version are cool, but less useful if you have access to the original song files imho. For example, using AI to eq a vocal or change it’s volume in a mixed track is neat…unless you have the song file and stems and can do it from there…

[mikehalloran]

I still haven’t read up on Ozone 11. Is it THAT much better than Ozone 10?

They're advertising AI in Ozone 11. Oooooohhhh buzzword! I'll look at it at sime point but I use RX a lot and Ozone, not so much. Still, there's a track isolator in Oz10 built on Spleeter, a freeware AI engine that goes back to Ozone Advanced 8. I have little use for it but, if better in 11, that should help sales. Perhaps they've changed engines.
https://alternativeto.net/software/spleeter/about/

No more VST2 or stand-alone but I think both were dropped in Oz10.

Audio Deluxe has some good deals here including Oz 11 for $49 if you have 10 and $99 if you have 10 Advanced.
https://www.audiodeluxe.com/search/site ... now%3Atrue

Plugin Alliance has an overview here.

BTW, Mike, did you do the demo of Invisible Limiter G2 (or G3)? I’m curious. It’s pricey, but sounds very clean on some program material. I’m fact, on a bit of a impulse I bought God Particle on sale and for one project I really liked Invisible Limiter better.

I bought G3. I like the brickwall limiter a lot. If I get some of that K-LOVE business back, this will be the only one I use on that material. For most limiting, Brainworx bx_limiter True Peak is still my first choice—that goes on sale a lot.

[daniel.sneed]

[...]Audio Deluxe has some good deals here including Oz 11 for $49 if you have 10 and $99 if you have 10 Advanced.
https://www.audiodeluxe.com/search/site ... now%3Atrue[...]

Thanks for posting this, Mike.
For years, Ozone standard has been involved in all of my deliveries.
107 bucks was a no go for me, but 49 is fine.
BTW, it's my very first deal with Audiodeluxe. Smooth sailing.

[HCMarkus]

I like Ozone 10. Transparent overall level adjustment. Waves WLM follows to give me a large, easy to read LUF meter and true peak headroom control.

Don’t see anything in 11 that blows my dress up, especially in light of the fact I don’t often master others’ mixes. I’m often mastering as I mix, so I have access to the original individual tracks; rebalancing generally means remixing for me.