While the processing tools of choice of most reputable mastering houses are still housed in outboard equipment, the plug-in is slowly creeping in as the quality of the tools increases. The first arenas of substantial improvement are limiters and equalizers, with compressors beginning to make significant strides also.

      The Ozone suite from Izotope is an "all in one" mastering suite that performs the processing tasks that might be required in mastering with admirable quality and incredible flexibility. This is one DEEP program. All dsp processes are performed at a 64-bit resolution. That translates to smooth performance with virtually no (unintended) distortion.

      There are six tools built into Ozone: EQ, ambience processor, stereo image enhancer, harmonic exciter, compressor and limiter. The EQ and limiter sections are especially well designed and thought out, with the other sections slowly improving. Hopefully they’ll reach the level of these two.

      The EQ section presents simply enough as an eight-band parametric equalizer. You can choose between an analog (minimum phase) or digital (linear phase) EQ. Again, simple enough, and in both cases these are good sounding EQ’s. The filters are smooth and don’t exhibit digital grit or ringing until you are well into the high EQ values.

      However, if you look further under the hood, there is a level of depth and sophistication that other plug-ins simply don’t offer. One can choose to change the window function of the EQ (the basic mathematical equation upon which the EQ calculation is based) along with other parameters such as the buffer size allocated to the filters. This gives you flexibility to experiment to find just the right EQ flavor for a job. That’s all great if you have the time and know-how to take advantage … and the design of the program makes it easy to ignore all this complexity and just get to work quickly if you like.

      The limiter is both easy to use and flexible. It can be a brick wall-style limiter, or it can be used in "intelligent" mode to create loudness-maximizing effects similar to the Oxford Inflator (subject to judicious use, of course). The limiter section also contains a bitscope and dither engine with some very attractive flavors of dither for getting a project to the desired bit depth.

      The software also contains a phase meter and the ability to completely re-order the processing in any sequence you desire. This is a powerful tool with a good sound, and it’s a real bargain at $249. Once the compressor tool is up to par with the other two it will be a killer app!

Jonathan Wyner has mastered more than 4000 CDs during the last 21 years, spanning every musical idiom (and some nonmusical idioms as well!). He is an adjunct professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass. Credits range from the extremely well known (James Taylor, David Bowie, Aerosmith, Kiri Te Kanawa) to the more idiosyncratic and independent artists/labels. Jonathan prides himself on the fact that he is among the elite group of mastering engineers to have run a marathon in under three hours repeatedly. Visit www.m-works.com.