Just wondering if anybody here has used both?

I've a bit of experience using Ozone 4 and think the results you can get from it are quite remarkable.

There's something niggling me that it's not that transparent though. It tends to add the same sheen to every track I put through it (could be a user error though....)

I've got a UAD card coming this week and i've heard the Precision Mastering Bundle is pretty shit hot. It took me a good couple of weeks to 'get' Ozone so a demo of any UAD stuff (if they do demos?) probably wont help that much.

I'm not looking for 'The Slam', I just want to be able to transparently get things up to level.

Perhaps just the UAD precision limiter would suffice?

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By the way I've got a powercore as well but I don't think there's any decent alternatives there for less than one billion dollars

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I do a fair bit of professional mastering, and either piece of kit doesn't deliver any professional sounding results.

To get stuff up to a level just use a limiter. If you're using Logic, use Adaptive Limiter, Maximizer is fine in Cubase 4 and 5 and if you're using something else try a free Event Horizon from Stillwell Audio (or Shwa, I don't quite remember, but those companies are the same).

If you want to use the term Mastering, well it means a hell lot more than just limiting : ) but if you've got a good sounding mix, just squeez it with a reasonable limiter to get RMS and you've got a decent demo.

You can check some of my mastering works and a bit of theory here : www.myspace.com/powersoundengineering

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quote:

Originally posted by tehlord By the way I've got a powercore as well but I don't think there's any decent alternatives there for less than one billion dollars

Actually Poco is the platform that you want to use as DSP for mastering ... but the more serious stuff costs a lot as you mentioned.

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quote:

Originally posted by chrissundive If you want to use the term Mastering, well it means a hell lot more than just limiting : ) but if you've got a good sounding mix, just squeez it with a reasonable limiter to get RMS and you've got a decent demo.

Indeed

Which is why I didn't use the term mastering except in the actual name of the UAD bundle

Great information you gave me and i'll get straight on that link.


Cheers

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Oh sorry : ) I'm just used to "all in one mastering wonders" that software designers call mastering plugins ... well they are in a sense, too bad they are not suitable for any professional use. If they were any real deal they would cost probably around £1000 / £1500 for a pack ... but here we go, theres capitalism

You'll be better off with a free Event Horizon than a pseudo mastering pack. UAD stuff gets a lot closer to the pro level and I use a lot of their stuff in my work as well, just not the Precision series Their analogue emulations is the stuff that really delivers what matters.

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quote:

Originally posted by chrissundive Actually Poco is the platform that you want to use as DSP for mastering ... but the more serious stuff costs a lot as you mentioned.

Bullshit. Stop spreading bullshit. The more serious stuff huh? So whats the more serious stuff? Outboard stuff? What could possibly be more serious than for instance HarBal + UAD + Waves? You won't find anything similar to HarBal on outboard equipment, and it's a godsend to mastering engineers, and, it doesn't fucking cost much, contradicting to what you say. It's THE mastering EQ you wan't to use, you can drop out using anything else. Unless you wanna smash your recordings ofcourse, then you would put on a good quality MB-comp, which you find with both Waves and UAD, AND OZONE, and Powercore. You can even get transparent, silky, controlled multi-comp behaviour with HarBal, without the compression downside!

So please stop spreading bullshit. "The more serious stuff" Lols.

You won't get more serious than HarBal for a mastering EQ, there is nothing like it, nothing similar to it in the whole wide world. It is unique in what it does, and I bet you even don't know what it does and have yet to try it tbh.. If you couple that with UAD, Waves or Powercore, good monitors and a treated room, good ears and good brain, you do have a professional mastering environment. Yes indeed you do.

Last edited by lenieNt Force on Jan-28-2010 at 10:37

quote:

Originally posted by lenieNt Force Bullshit. Stop spreading bullshit. The more serious stuff huh? So whats the more serious stuff? Outboard stuff? What could possibly be more serious than for instance HarBal + UAD + Waves? You won't find anything similar to HarBal on outboard equipment, and it's a godsend to mastering engineers, and, it doesn't fucking cost much, contradicting to what you say. It's THE mastering EQ you wan't to use, you can drop out using anything else. Unless you wanna smash your recordings ofcourse, then you would put on a good quality MB-comp, which you find with both Waves and UAD, AND OZONE, and Powercore. You can even get transparent, silky, controlled multi-comp behaviour with HarBal, without the compression downside! So please stop spreading bullshit. "The more serious stuff" Lols. You won't get more serious than HarBal for a mastering EQ, there is nothing like it, nothing similar to it in the whole wide world. It is unique in what it does, and I bet you even don't know what it does and have yet to try it tbh. If you couple that with UAD, Waves or Powercore, good monitors and a treated room, good brain and good ears, you do have a professional mastering environment. Yes indeed you do.

Lolz so what are you using from Waves then ? Do you OWN it ? Was it cheap ? I bet it was : ) are u using Waves on DSP or native ? please show me your works so I can believe that you've got any experience ... because what you're (and how) saying states otherwise.

I won't even argue about Ozone being on pair with, lets say MD3 or L3-16, because everyone that has a decent monitoring setup will hear the difference in a split second. So either you haven't used them, you don't know how, or you don't have ears, room or monitors to hear it. Anyway, thats about that for spreading bullshit

As for Harbal :
1) its not a part of the topic
2) its a neat idea with a cool technology behind
3) unfortunately the implementation leaves a lot to be desired
4) sound quality of harbal is miles behind the mastering standards
5) it may be enough for a bedroom production, but please don't call it mastering for the sake of professionals working in that field.

Sorry I got you so nervous : )

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Generally for mastering I like a nice buss compressor, a nice EQ, and a good limiter.

For EQ, I find that sonalksis does the job, L3 multimaximiser from waves is a good limiter, and I'm yet to find a compressor which I'm totally satisfied with.

I wouldn't go for an all in one solution, I'm not that impressed with ozone or T-Racks tbh... Haven't tried any others.

Also, keep in mind that I'm not producing proper masters in a good studio. Just working off my headphones to make demos really, so if you want totally professional results, you might want a slightly different setup.

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quote:

Originally posted by kitphillips Generally for mastering I like a nice buss compressor, a nice EQ, and a good limiter. For EQ, I find that sonalksis does the job, L3 multimaximiser from waves is a good limiter, and I'm yet to find a compressor which I'm totally satisfied with. I wouldn't go for an all in one solution, I'm not that impressed with ozone or T-Racks tbh... Haven't tried any others. Also, keep in mind that I'm not producing proper masters in a good studio. Just working off my headphones to make demos really, so if you want totally professional results, you might want a slightly different setup.

Well I'm also not looking for a 'mastering' setup as I don't know how to master stuff and there's little agreement on what the word means anymore anyway

I want glue and volume, and maybe a bit of EQ air.

That's it.

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quote:

Lolz so what are you using from Waves then ? Do you OWN it ? Was it cheap ? I bet it was : ) are u using Waves on DSP or native ? please show me your works so I can believe that you've got any experience ... because what you're (and how) saying states otherwise. I won't even argue about Ozone being on pair with, lets say MD3 or L3-16, because everyone that has a decent monitoring setup will hear the difference in a split second. So either you haven't used them, you don't know how, or you don't have ears, room or monitors to hear it. Anyway, thats about that for spreading bullshit As for Harbal : 1) its not a part of the topic 2) its a neat idea with a cool technology behind 3) unfortunately the implementation leaves a lot to be desired 4) sound quality of harbal is miles behind the mastering standards 5) it may be enough for a bedroom production, but please don't call it mastering for the sake of professionals working in that field. Sorry I got you so nervous : )

=D

Well.. Many professionals use HarBal, with good reason.. Sound quality of HarBal is miles behind the mastering standard? 32 bit float + linear phase and minimum phase is miles behind? You can't have much knowledge of Harbal.. Told you you didn't, and it's the best mastering EQ around :P All I can say is, you should definitely have a more in depth look at it, as it can help your mastering tremendously. And ofcourse HarBal is part of the discussion.. We were talking about the best mastering equipment around, and HarBal is undoubtedly the best non-coloring mastering EQ, because of all the extraordinary features you won't find in any other EQ. Also check out HarBal's community:

http://www.har-bal.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/index.php

If you think Harbal is all about pushing IntuitQ three times and done, you better think again :P Preconceptions seldom servers one well..

Ok so you meant Waves when you were talking about "more serious/expensive stuff"? I thought you meant outboard gear.. Sorry about that. Preconceptions seldom servers one well.. I know.

And I'm going to admit.. Yes I have the Mercury Bundle and I don't own it. And no it's really not cheap. But ofcourse, like every other thing I use alot and have yet to pay for, it's getting paid, and the "must-buy-list" is shrinking.

Last edited by lenieNt Force on Jan-28-2010 at 11:51

Thx for changing the tone mate : )

Well from my experience with Harbal, which I own, is that it can make the material sound harsh. The interface is not clear for me and I can't make it sound better then lets say UAD Cambridge EQ.

The 32bitness isn't really a factor here. The linear phase is, but then again digital linear phase EQs are wide spread at the moment. My fav being the TC Dynamic EQ. Harbal works with advance FFT analysis and reconstruction (resyntesis if you like) of the audio material. The idea is great, but as I said the implementation doesn't cut it for me ... and I'm still waiting for the promised mac version :/

In the real world, you rarely have to EQ as much as Harbal gives you the advantage to. With a reasonably good mix, all you need is a couple of cuts here and there, one shelving filter, maybe a low cut and a hi cut (depends on the quality of the mix engineer). Thats it, you can do it with one instance of most EQs out there.

I just remembered that I was once using Gliss EQ from voxengo and it also had a linear phase option plus a spectrum analyzer, which makes it a contender. It was ages ago so I can't say anything more. I also heard good stuff about the elephant limiter they've made but didn't try it myself.

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