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Hey guys, Eric Tarr here for theproaudiofiles.com. I’m gonna show you a very cool feature of
the iZotope Ozone 5 plugin. This feature is Spectrum Matching. In order to understand
this feature, you must first understand the idea of frequency analysis.
This plugin has a frequency analyzer built in as part of the equalizer section of the
plugin. So as soon as you open it up and click on this tab, you’ll see the graphical user
interface here display a frequency analysis. What this is gonna tell you is the relative
amplitude or energy of different frequencies that are part of the signal that’s feeding
the plugin.
Right now, I’ve got this plugin inserted on my mix buss. Or as the first insert slot
on my master fader here. Then I’ve got all these other tracks in my session feeding the
mix buss from my drums, synthesizers, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass and so on. All
going into this master fader. And so when I press play, the frequency analyzer is going
to tell me the relative amplitude of all the frequencies of my full mix. So here it is.
[full mix]
This frequency analysis feature on it’s own can be very helpful if you’re trying
to make decisions about doing things like equalization. It will tell you maybe where
frequencies are too loud or too quiet. And help you decide whether you need to boost
or cut certain frequencies. Taking this a step further, you can actually use the frequency
analyzer in the plugin to match the relative amplitude of different frequencies in your
mix, to some other reference mix that you’re using. So what I’ve got in my session is
all my tracks going over to this particular bus called music mix. I’m gonna go ahead
and mute that. Then what I’ve done is brought in a reference track that I like to use. This
is a song mix from a band called flight path, they’re based out of Nashville. I like their
sound a lot. So what I’m gonna do is feed the signal from my reference track into the
iZotope plugin and look at the frequency analysis here on the display of my reference track.
[reference track mix]
So maybe you noticed just visually that there might’ve been some differences in the spectral
content, maybe there was too much highs too little highs in my mix. And so just visually
you can probably tell some of these things. The nice thing about the iZotope Ozone plugin,
is it will actually remember these settings and come up with a way for you to match or
automatically equalize your mix to match this reference track you’re using. So the first
thing you need to do is go in and capture what are called snapshots. These snapshots
are going to be used eventually later on by the plugin to figure out how it should automatically
change or equalize the mix that you’re feeding it. So I’ll start out and capture a snapshot
for my reference track. So I’ll click this.
[reference track playback]
Alright, that should be good. Stop the capture. I can call this one the reference. Perfect.
And I’ll save that. iZotope is gonna use this later on. Let me create a different snapshot
then for the actual mix that I’m working on right now.
[mix playback]
That should be good. I’ll call this one mix. Alright. So what you can see displayed
on the screen now, the purple line is the frequency analysis of my reference and the
yellow line is for the mix that I’m working on right now. You can see that there’s some
subtle differences and for the most part it’s pretty close. But what I can do is use this
— switch over from the snapshots tab to the matching tab — and have the plugin automatically
figure out what the differences — what things need to be changed — by using the equalizer
such that my mix matches more of my reference. Use this one called reference here, and I’m
gonna apply it to my mix. Then you have to click this match button right here and you’ll
see that the equalizer automatically snaps into place. Then it’s up to you to decide
how much you want it to fix — so I can make it more dramatic — or you can also change
how smooth it is. If it’s a gradual change in the spectrum or if it’s more pronounced.
Typically you don’t want all these ripples showing up when you’re trying to do this
matching. But what it’s gonna show you is, my mix might have been too heavy on the low
end relative to this reference that I liked, but also might not have been bright enough
if that’s the particular style that I’m working on, then I want to make sure that
all these things are pretty consistent to other tracks that other people are listening
to.
So let’s then listen to what the plugin is doing to my mix.
[mix with eq spectrum matching on and then bypassed]
So this is a way you can use the frequency analyzer built in to the iZotope Ozone 5 plugin
to match the spectrum for your song that you’re working on with a reference track.