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Needs tips on good software for mixing & mastering classical/cinematic music

M

Mr.Olsson

Member
Hey guys,

I'm currently thinking of doing an investment on a mixing and mastering software for my home studio for my Orchestral/Cinematic music, and would love love to have some tips from you guys, what do you recommend, and use frequently, etc.?

The only software I have is Ozone 8 advanced, which feels pretty outdated now, so I'm thinking whether it might be good to do an upgrade to Ozone 11 standard, or maybe investing in Izotope RX instead, or something else?

What do you guys think?

Thanks!
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I’m sorta presuming you’ve read a book or two on the subject as well? Like Mixing Audio by Roey Izahki and/or have spent some time absorbing Mixing with Mike lessons. Those are at least as good of investments so that you can, if you don’t already, better understand the why of things in order to make better decisions and know what software you might want, or need, given the context and audio.

If you do know the basics and intermediates, so to speak, then you can generally get the specialized individual tools as well as make better use of those with some automation like Ozone.
 
I'd say that I know the mixing basics/fundamentals, how the different tools work, and why you should use them, etc. I Would just love to see what software other people in this community uses for their workflow, get some inspiration and ideas, especially since we all work with similar music style!
 
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Ozone 10 working great for me. I'll 11 someday.

Here's a great review of 10 vs 11 for classical music:

 
I use Ozone all over the place in my mixes as well. (I've used it going back to version 4). Aside from new features the DSP is the same. Ozone 8 isn't outdated in any way, the reason to buy Ozone 11 would be to get new features and modules. The 'assistant' sounds & behaves differently in 11 as well, (but I've never been one to use it myself...)

Curious... Why are you thinking of buying RX? It's great, but it's one of those tools that only makes sense to buy if you know you need it for specific reasons. E.g. you have an audible hum, or background noise whenever you record yourself. That's a practical use of RX... I have however seen people use it to denoise orchestral samples, and while that can work, more often than not I see people go way overboard with it, (which sounds really bad, and very obvious)... Personally I've only needed to denoise a sample track twice in the past 3-4 years, literally one track out of an entire mix. There are other reasons I use it, but only when absolutely necessary... Basically I'm just trying to encourage you to ask yourself if RX is something you need, vs assuming it's something you should have...

There are tons of other options, FabFilter, UAD, Soundtoys, the list goes on, and on, and on! Plugins can be a black hole... It's easy to collect a lot of them, only to find out you only use a few... (Something we're all guilty of to some degree or another)... Basically while there are tons of options try to stick to buying only what you know is useful, not something that might be useful in the future... Also, always demo something before buying it whenever possible. I feel like this is the main reason why you sometimes see a post where someone has buyers remorse. (Samples are obvioiulsy a different story)....
 
jcrosby said:
Plugins can be a black hole... It's easy to collect a lot of them, only to find out you only use a few... (Something we're all guilty of to some degree or another)... Basically while there are tons of options try to stick to buying only what you know is useful, not something that might be useful in the future... Also, always demo something before buying it whenever possible. I feel like this is the main reason why you sometimes see a post where someone has buyers remorse. (Samples are obvioiulsy a different story)....
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I think this is inevitable and I don't worry about it too much. I've bought a lot of different plugins in the various categories before I settled on what I currently use as my go-tos, and that was a necessary learning experience for me to figure out what combination of sound and interface helps me get to the results I want best and fastest.
 
Hi Mr.Olsson
It all depends on what the individual understands by "mastering". While with some styles of music it is probably important to (still) get the loudest possible final version, "mastering" in classically oriented music is more likely to mean getting the last bit of quality out of the mix + probably loud as well.

I recommend collecting good mixes (audio recordings of real Orchestras) with which you can compare your own mix(es). Mastering then means correcting the differences to the reference track(s) - if you think it's necessary.

So, mastering starts with an analysis of your own mix compared to references. Of course, you can also ask Ozone what it would suggest, and of course you can also adapt a mix to a music style curve, as Ozone might suggest. Of course you can use an automatic EQ for matching a mix every milli second to a reference curve.
However, all these "automatic tools" often compensate for the small irregularities that would add a little variety to the sound.

Then, of course, there is also mastering, which looks at the purely technical side: Average volume, channel balance, dynamics, maximum volume, stereo things, frequency matters, etc.

-------------------------------

Basically, you should be concerned for a good mix so that mastering only has to take care of the technical aspects.

But please, this is just my opinion. There are of course many, many others.

Beat
 
Mr.Olsson said:
Right now I'm working in Ableton Live which I think works fine, I aim to switch to Cubase in the future though, but that might be a later project when I can make that investment.
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As Beat mentioned, Classical music requires little "mastering" per se and more attention to the actual mix (he is knows his stuff). Ableton Live probably has some nice stock plugins to master your tracks. I personally use a combo of stock plugins (Logic Pro/Cubase), FabFilter and Ozone 10 (which now has a decent Classical and Cinematic preset to get the ball rolling). But with a good mix, it's mostly just minor eq tweaks and loudness when it comes to the mastering stage. Ozone 10 and above also have a cool plugin called Audiolens, which creates an eq profile based on any reference recording.
 
Jeremy Spencer said:
As Beat mentioned, Classical music requires little "mastering" per se and more attention to the actual mix (he is knows his stuff). Ableton Live probably has some nice stock plugins to master your tracks. I personally use a combo of stock plugins (Logic Pro/Cubase), FabFilter and Ozone 10 (which now has a decent Classical and Cinematic preset to get the ball rolling). But with a good mix, it's mostly just minor eq tweaks and loudness when it comes to the mastering stage. Ozone 10 and above also have a cool plugin called Audiolens, which creates an eq profile based on any reference recording.
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I'm actually trying to find high quality classical/orchestral music reference track to buy/download that I can use myself, do you have tips of any good website that offers this? I have currently found some tracks from qobuz.com, the price is not that steep either, but not sure if there any better alternatives?
 
Mr.Olsson said:
I'm actually trying to find high quality classical/orchestral music reference track to buy/download that I can use myself, do you have tips of any good website that offers this? I have currently found some tracks from qobuz.com, the price is not that steep either, but not sure if there any better alternatives?
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I use 7digital to buy hi-res files for referencing.

7digital United Kingdom | High-quality Digital Music Downloads

7digital provides a catalogue of over 30 million high-quality music tracks and a wealth of uniquely curated recommendations. Browse, buy, listen and download!
uk.7digital.com uk.7digital.com
 
Mr.Olsson said:
I'm actually trying to find high quality classical/orchestral music reference track to buy/download that I can use myself, do you have tips of any good website that offers this? I have currently found some tracks from qobuz.com, the price is not that steep either, but not sure if there any better alternatives?
Click to expand...
When I create reference track profiles, I now just use Audiolens...which only needs about ten seconds of a streaming track for analyzing. So if you you have something like Apple Music Classical, the sky is the limit. It comes down to finding tracks that you think sound good. You could also render files from your favourite CD's and use those.
 
SupremeFist said:
I use 7digital to buy hi-res files for referencing.

7digital United Kingdom | High-quality Digital Music Downloads

7digital provides a catalogue of over 30 million high-quality music tracks and a wealth of uniquely curated recommendations. Browse, buy, listen and download!
uk.7digital.com uk.7digital.com
Click to expand...
It checked out 7digital, I found a track that I'd like to buy and reference, in the UK store it was available as 16 FLAC, but then they made me switch to the Swedish store (since I'm based in sweden), and then it was only available as " 320kbps MP3 + 320kbps M4A ".

Is " 320kbps MP3 + 320kbps M4A " good enough quality for referencing, or should I in this case look for another track that's available in FLAC ?
 
Mr.Olsson said:
Hey guys,

I'm currently thinking of doing an investment on a mixing and mastering software for my home studio for my Orchestral/Cinematic music, and would love love to have some tips from you guys, what do you recommend, and use frequently, etc.?

The only software I have is Ozone 8 advanced, which feels pretty outdated now, so I'm thinking whether it might be good to do an upgrade to Ozone 11 standard, or maybe investing in Izotope RX instead, or something else?

What do you guys think?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Hi
I guess like most things in life mixing music and mastering can take a great deal of time to get right But as they say practise makes perfect .When you have the skillset the best software tools I have found are the channel strip from PSP audio ware Infinity strip gives you all you need to mix and track all in one place can recommended it very highly.
 
If talking about finishing a mix or mastering, the new Tokyo Dawn Labs tools should also be considered. I assume recent versions of Ozone can still load 3rd party plugins but I stopped at version 9.

In addition to the "learning" features of iZotope software, there's also the Sonible suite of tools.

What kinds of tools are you looking for? Those that automate part or all of the process, at least as a learning tool, or just The Best Tools (tm) for the job?

RX10 is fantastic - if you have need of it. If I'm cleaning up someone's podcast or equivalent that they recorded with a cheap mic or even the laptop mic, I use it. Otherwise I generally never do.

Infinistrip - it's low latency but does alias as it has no oversampling in order to keep the latency low (unless they added it since release), and the filters and EQs etc cramp. These are not necessarily an issue, unless they are - depends on the context and music and use.
 
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