Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Ozone 8 (for desktop) on sale
In my search for an iPhone mastering app, I stumbled on this sale for Ozone 8, great prices:
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/master-and-deliver/ozone/features-and-comparison.html
I assume this is the tail end of a holiday sale, but couldn't find information. Just thought I'd share the info for those who also do work on desktop. Ozone has a good reputation, with good reviews, etc. I went with the Standard. Can't speak much about it just yet, but I will say it looks spiffy on a 4K screen.
Comments
Ozone 8 is good. Hard to beat as a single package of tools for that price. I prefer Fabfilter, but that's more $$$ and not built to work together as seamlessly. Likewise, you can pick and choose your tools of various brands to get "better" - but then you have to research, listen, use, experiment, etc. Time you can spend on music instead of tools.
The sale has the standard versions of Ozone and Neutron in a bundle for $150, crazy deal and crazy functionality between the two:
I was tempted to go for that deal, but decided Ozone would be enough.
crazy thing is that if you own ozone 7 already the upgrade price to 8 is $250, !!! way cheaper to buy a new license
I've used Tonal Balance Control before and it was SUPER helpful, esp. since I have to mix/master my stuff on headphones. Not sure that's worth $200, though! (yeah, Advanced comes with lots more than that, too).
Izotope puts out incredible plugs, but most pros really only gush over RX. I used ON7 for a year and I feel it’s a great learning tool, but as the plug collection grew I found that I’d rather build my own mastering chains and see how it goes. A friend of mine uses TRacks, and I think his mixes melt the Ozone stuff. Plugin Alliance offers incredible mastering tools as well as Eventide/Newfangled, and if they have a sale on, the cost of the licensing is competitive with ON8 while being more versatile in the mix/master environment. Although, I’m a nerd enthusiast who isn’t cashing checks on it.
I'm finding the Master Assistant in Ozone to be very useful for someone like myself, someone who.... Needs an assistant in this area.
I used to think a lot of mastering is overkill, and I suppose it can be for people who know more than me and can avoid early project pitfalls, but then you compare two different final tracks and realize finishing touches can go a long ways.
Ozone is an excellent product. The multi-band aspect is so advanced, like multiband expansion? The multi band compressor is great, I’ve been using it on vocals, and to tame bleed- you can find the most offensive frequency range of the bleed, and just push that down, when the bleeding source gets loud, and leave most of the desired source intact.
The exciter works great too, vocals, drums that need more crack. Also has a nice saturation as a non multi band effect.
The imager is a great widening effect, I like to use it on mono instruments, like a lone electric guitar, to get it out of the middle, but not have to pan it awkwardly to one side. Totally mono compatible, I have no idea how they did it. Also it can be great to mono-ize the bass frequencies on a bus of instruments, or a mix.
Ive been using the Neutron Elements channel strip that came free with some other plugin promo and its really nice. Tempted to get the standard.
Ozone is fantastic, I like using the individual parts of it on tracks too, the eq and dynamic eq are both great.