We typically bounce the Master Assistant’s idea of a good mastered song, and then import the audio to compare loudness and timbre as we work.

Our favorite way to use this feature is not as a starting point, but as a guideline. Instead of just spitting out a final audio file, the Master Assistant leaves the track in the software with the preset modules in place so users can tweak or add to a song before bouncing. Then, while playing back the audio, Ozone will analyze the track to determine the procedure necessary to balance the tonality and control the dynamics of the song before applying appropriate modules and settings. The Master Assistant allows users to select whether to use transparent digital plugins or to emulate analog hardware, pick the loudness and transient control, and the intended medium for a song’s release. For those who have no experience with the process, iZotope has included an automatic mastering feature called Master Assistant. Mastering in Ozone 9 is great for engineers of any level.

With the new version 9 allowing for the use of third party plugins as modules, we no longer use traditional DAWs as our starting point when mastering. Of course, switching from ProTools took some time, but Ozone offers simple playback, intuitive looping, and will automatically find and indicate sections of a song.

We have been fortunate enough to be invited to beta test the latest version of this software, Ozone 9 after having used Ozone 8 for quite some time as a basic mastering platform. Ozone is a smart mastering software created by intelligent processing software developer iZotope.

Ozone 9 elements master assistant