daniel.sneed wrote:
IMHO, BTW, presets in a mastering suite are really weird things.
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Well, they are not weird if you cycle through them, paying attention to what you like and what you don't like and then REDUCE the aspects you do NOT like.
I like presets as starting points.
After awhile, you remember certain pre sets, just as you like your 3 presets. I might like for example, what a certain song did to the bass.
Also, Ozone is one of those programs that takes awhile to learn well.
So, as you use it, tweeking it more and more, later "presets", start to have certain treatments, for example, on Bass, that you remember you liked. Or rememebr you learned something. It took me a LONG time to learn to use the compressor on Ozone, damn if it's not really intuitive!!..lol
So presets for me have been great starting points.
And finally, often, I end up mixing THROUGH Ozone.
Somewhere along the line, I end up turning it on and it is as if it becomes a bit of a mixing short cut.
I might find a preset that really tightens the bottom end or shines the top, (or does both). And it saves me lots of work.
Perhaps it makes 8/10ths of the mix I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF, sound absolutely fabulous, but the acoustic guitars now sound too bright.
OK, well, to save time, I will just dull the high end on the acoustics and the other 8/10ths of my mix has been improved!!
From that point on, Ozone stays on and I continue to mix.
This must be done with much discretion of course as, if you are not careful, you leave nothing for a real mastering engineer to do.
My mastering engineer here in LA won last yrs grammy and several other grammies for mastering engineer of the year.
And he inevitably chooses my Ozone mix and jokes with me that the mixes sound so good, he feels like he has to work hard to "contribute".
Yet he does make them even better, just a touch better, but nonetheless..better.
I do take him both "with" and "without" Ozone mixes by the way, just to give him a choice and to not be rude...lol...
Because I really understand mastering, I leave a little room for mastering, even with Ozone.
But it can be a real mix helper.
This is not really a cheat, although it could be thought of as that. I really don;t care.lol..
In some ways, if used correctly, it allows one to hear what a final , mastered mix will sound like WHILE MIXING.
If you mix, THROUGH it, you make adjustments that leave no surprises at the end of the record.
Of course, this is all a personal to taste thing, many would argue not to mix this way, and, there are songs I end up NOT using it on.