iZotope's approach is hit & miss with some people. the sound is very modern and can really help with clarity and punch in a mix. i've had my reservations but they arguably do have a place amongst the best of the best

in the 'alien green' days of ozone around 2008 people were really abusing the limiters to go above zero dBFS !!1 guys like laidback luke (dutch dj/producer) had been 'winning' the loudness wars and passing along these nuggets of wisdom to a generation of impressionable beat makers. (*edit: he has since said he uses swedish house mafias secret sauce)

then came ozone 6 and 6 advanced which turned off many people saying its a downgrade as features were missing from ozone 5. i've had a few friends do quick & dirty mastering with ozone for rock/punk albums. its not a bad option but i still feel there are better ones from waves, uad, fabfilter, etc

what got me interested was dave pensado mentioned using ozone on individual tracks like synth pads. then alloy has popped up in a few channel strip threads for a clean & tight modern sound, instead of the 'vintage emulation' flavour of the month. in alloy 2 you can get a flexible eq, transient shaper, exciters, de-esser, 2 dynamics modules and a limiter in one plug-in !

they're currently having a sale until nov 11 for ozone 6 advanced, alloy, insight, nektar, and trash for $550 and ozone 7 free upgrade when its released in december. this is a geat value !

as far as this thread goes, in the context of individual tracks and sub mixes izotope definitely has a home run on its hands. once you wrap your head around the interface then all the plugins are instantly familiar. there are many advanced options within individual modules and i'm still learning the ins & outs of these plugins

the prevailing wisdom is first having a good performance, followed by a good mic, followed by a good pre/converter. what i've found with my peluso 2247 le mic is that its really unforgiving its very detailed and clear so this puts pressure on me to do better, more nuanced performances

so i've been messing around quite a bit with the uad neve 1073 mk2

when i first got it i drove it pretty hard and everything sounded saturated like wu tang clan from 1994. its a specific flavour and this works well with synths, drum machines, pretty much anything you want to be slightly overdriven while still sounding alive, big and warm.

modern rap vocals have a big, open & clean sound, which i prefer. the 2247 is a low impedance mic at 200 ohms, so i move the mic z to low to help with load balance (the unison preamps on the apollo adjust accordingly). the 2247 le outputs a relatively low signal so i've learned to speak 6" to 8" away and NOT DANCE AROUND lol. this makes the vocal levels much easier to dial in

i have the input gain set relatively low and still feel the benefits of the modelled input transformer and dual transistor pre. plus i use tiny eq boosts and cuts while tracking so it doesn't limit our options in the mix later. i've found the sound to be big, clear and strikingly faithful to the source this way.

the high shelf eq knob is a boost/cut at around 12k this is where the 'neve sheen' comes from. i like to boost it only about 1 db as my 2247 isn't as dark as other u47 style mics. the midrange and low band is semi-parametric with fixed values. there's about +/-18 db of boost. i like to do a tiny boost at 3.2 kHz and small cut at 200 hz (like 0.5 db). then there's a passive hi pass, which i like to set at 50 or 80 hz.

the big fader is another modelled component followed by the output knob, which is just a neutral level control. so you can crank up the big fader and distort the output amplifier and transformer, than dial the level down with the output knob. you can also use it to turn up a quiet mic signal like mine without saturating the various stages of the plugin.

so there's my little write up on this. its my favourite saturation plugin to *not* saturate lol. its also a greedy resource hog. on a uad 2 dual card it eats something like 33% of the dsp. i use it in the uad console app so i can take advantage of the unison technology and zero latency. from there the effects, however drastic or not, are printed to the .wav file so i can save my console settings and remove the 1073 to free up dsp resources for mixing.

Great insights on the plugin and on the use of the Peluso mic, good stuff

Makes me get back into recording. But with the wife having a part time job working from home in the evenings these days, I don't get any music time anymore. She wants to pay off the house sooner and I can't blame her...

18 plugins and the new effects rack !! $500(there's also a student version at $250)

i've tried most of the older plugins like echoboy, tremolator, crystallizer, phase mistress, filter freak, etc. they're incredible plugins ! the problem is they've been around for years and years. v3 came out in 2007 and included all of their most creative plugins. v4 came out in 2010 and added decapitator and panman.

in the last 5 years they've release a few new plugins like primal tap and little alter boy, gone fully 64 bit and made them work in the effects rack. they've redesigned the tweak panels and ditched ilok (there's still the option to use ilok tho)

all of these things are absolutely monumental tasks for a small company !

still, so much has changed in the last ten years. some plugins like radiator, devil-loc and decapitator are awesome for adding tone and warmth but there are hundreds of options now. same goes for echo, tremolo, phasers, etc.

the most important upgrade seems to be whats underwhelming at first: the rack

we've been seeing the daw within the daw thing more and more in the last 10 years. ni kore & maschine, t racks, izotope, slate VMR, etc have all pushed this concept forwards. its like a strange proprietary world within a proprietary world within inception

as one plugin it has everything with the global and individual parameters and presets. you can process and mangle sounds a million different ways. its very straight forward to add and remove modules and tempo sync (or not).

you can adjust the global wet/dry mix, input & output levels and you can now add the output of the rack back into the input for howling distortion or epic soundscapes. most of the plugins i've tried are designed to saturate and clip without sounding painfully digital (up to a certain point). iirc they all had options of turning off the 'analogness' and sounding relatively crisp and clean as well.

so there are lots of creative routing options to explore and this alone may be worth the price of admission. grab the demo & try it out !! and get me a student discount

if you go to the link it shows you information in the side boxes about spectrum data and instrument data as you hover over different parts of the chart. there's also a ear sensitivity chart that you can click to see and the legend.

i like it cause it shows the octaves of a piano in relation to the frequency spectrum and where other instruments overlap with this.

when you're working on the arrangement and early patch selection you can move certain parts up and down octaves if they overlap or mask/layer them

Back in the day when broadband started to become a more commonplace speed for accessing the internet, many people speculated about how we might see subscription only services for our beloved DAWs. Well we’re now moving into 2016, internet speeds are blazing yet it’s only Avid’s Pro Tools and Cakewalk's SONAR that’s available in this on-demand fashion—the other top-dogs seem to be sticking with a traditional purchase and upgrade fee payment strategy. I’m not going to go into all the pros and cons of owning versus renting your production tools as this is vast and heavily shaped by your own personal needs, but it’s a hot debate since some companies like Adobe have now gone 100% down the rental route and ditched the option to buy.

i kinda wonder now that slate and a few others are trying it if companies like native instruments would go for monthly instalments ?

Back in the day when broadband started to become a more commonplace speed for accessing the internet, many people speculated about how we might see subscription only services for our beloved DAWs. Well we’re now moving into 2016, internet speeds are blazing yet it’s only Avid’s Pro Tools and Cakewalk's SONAR that’s available in this on-demand fashion—the other top-dogs seem to be sticking with a traditional purchase and upgrade fee payment strategy. I’m not going to go into all the pros and cons of owning versus renting your production tools as this is vast and heavily shaped by your own personal needs, but it’s a hot debate since some companies like Adobe have now gone 100% down the rental route and ditched the option to buy.

i kinda wonder now that slate and a few others are trying it if companies like native instruments would go for monthly instalments ?

Well I don't know, I still have Komplete 8 which I don't use all that much these days... ugh I really gotta fix my Fusion so I get in the mood to synth again.

But Komplete 8 already does way more than I need, I don't know what a subscription would get me. In East West's case, you don't have to pay a whole lot of money up front. But in the case of Native Instruments, their stuff is way more affordable.

Keep in mind Composers Cloud is just the "Gold" version; and my "impression" was that a lot of the EWQL stuff was a little long in the tooth. Plus, the subscription thing can be good and bad depending on many factors.

i tried to get into sunrizer, the jp-8000 emulation but i never liked the sound of 8080 that i had and the plug-in just wasn't doing anything for me

this one is an emulation of the jx-8p and for some reason these roland poly dco synths were always pretty rad imho. i can't pinpoint exactly why i like them and for the price even 5-10 years ago when i was buying analog synths they seemed too expensive

i haven''t had time to downloaded it or try it out but the dreamy tones of the pads and whatnot in the video were great imho !!

there's a few pad presets in sunriser that i like, but overall it's missing something. it's one of those synths that none of the controls seem to do much when i move them yet the presets sound amazing. oh well..

the demo was pretty good too. It captures the light and bouncy, buzzy air of some of those synths.