izotope ozone Manuale Utente

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ve just finished recording what you think is a pretty good song in your project studio. The 
playing is good, the recording is clean and the mix is decent. So you burn it to a CD and 

proudly pop it in your CD player. But when you hear it played after a “commercial” CD, you 

realize that something is wrong.  

 
What’s Wrong With My Song? 

 

• 

It’s not loud enough. It sounds wimpy next to other CDs. Turning it up or mixing down 
at a higher level doesn’t solve the problem. It sounds louder, but not, well LOUDER. 

 

• 

It sounds dull. Other CDs have a sparkle that cuts through with excitement. You try 
boosting the EQ at high frequencies, but now your song just sounds harsh and noisy. 

 

• 

The instruments and vocals sound thin. Commercial songs have a fullness that you 

know comes from some sort of compression. So you patch in a compressor and turn 
some controls. Now the whole mix sounds squashed. The vocal might sound fuller, but 

the cymbals have no dynamics. It’s full…and lifeless. 

 

• 

The bass doesn’t have punch. You boost it with some low end EQ, but that just sounds 

louder and muddier. Not punchier. 

 

• 

You can hear all the instruments in your mix, and they all seem to have their own 

“place” in the stereo image, but the overall image sounds wrong. Your other CDs have 

width and image that you just can’t seem to get from panning the individual tracks.  

 

• 

You had reverb on the individual tracks, but it just sounds like a bunch of instruments 

in a bunch of different spaces. Your other CDs have a sort of cohesive space that 

brings all the parts together. Not like rooms within a room, but a “sheen” that works 
across the entire mix. 

   

Don’t worry. It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong. There are just some things you still 
need to do to get that “sound”. You just need the right tools and an understanding of how to 

use them. You won’t become Bob Ludwig

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 overnight (or probably ever) but you can make 

dramatic improvements in your master recordings with a little work. 

 
We put this document together to help others in their quest for better sounding masters. We 

don’t claim to be mastering masters. If we could master the next Christina Aguilera hit would 

we be writing code and manuals or sitting in a mastering studio with Christina Aguilera? 
 

What we can give you is professional quality mastering software (iZotope Ozone™) and 
guidance on how to use it. But in the end there are no right answers, no wrong answers, and 

no rules. At least if there are, we still haven’t found them. So in the end just experiment and 

have fun. 
 

 

 

•  If you don’t know anything about mastering and don’t have Ozone, we still 

hope this guide will help you. Sure, we think you should use Ozone. But we 

learned a lot about mastering from “the online audio community” and we 

                                               

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http://www.gatewaymastering.com/

 Bob Ludwig has won the TEC award for mastering every year he’s 

been eligible. That pretty much sums it up. 

 

Ozone™ Mastering Guide 

Page 4 of 66 

©2003 iZotope, Inc.