Mind Blowing use for an iZotope plugin *** UPDATE: WOW!

RandyCA wrote on 9/20/2021, 7:16 PM

Preamble:

I just watched this video by the Photoshop grand master, PIXimperfict about an iZotope plugin which auto EQs one audio clip with another. He used it to match an inexpensive mic to an expensive mic with impressive results. I have a good studio mic in my studio, but when I am out and about I use a lav mic that needs a lot of processing to sound better. With my limited audio skills I can get it sounding better but there is a lot of room for improvement, and I know it can be done. Watch this Sam Holland video where he does it. I think the results are mind blowing.

He has a preset he sells and I would buy it in heart beat but it is a no go for Vegas.

Question:

Do you think the iZotope plugin Ozone 9 Standard, which has this EQ match, would work with just itself, or do you think one would have to have a lot of other iZotope products to run it? I've tried to find the answer on their web site but haven't been able to. BTW it is on sale for $99 till the end of the month -- PIXimperfict is right when he says the iZotope package is crazy expensive.

Comments

misohoza wrote on 9/20/2021, 10:13 PM

You can download the trial of Ozone 9 and find out yourself.

In my opinion there is no such thing as a magical preset that would make everything sound wonderful. It may work great on one source and not so great on others. Presets are great as starting point but I would use your ears to judge the final result.

Sure you can try to match an expensive microphone characteristics with eq and other processing. If it was that simple everyone would just use the cheapest microphones and use plugins. And often more than microphone itself it's a question of the sound source itself, acoustics of the room, microphone placement, preamps...

fr0sty wrote on 9/20/2021, 11:33 PM

impressive.

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RogerS wrote on 9/21/2021, 1:33 AM

Ozone is great and you can use Izotope VSTs in Vegas if you like.

rraud wrote on 9/21/2021, 1:58 AM

 

Ozone is great and you can use Izotope VSTs in Vegas if you like.

As long as it is a VST-2. Vegas does not support VST-3

 

RogerS wrote on 9/21/2021, 5:29 AM

iZotope offers VST 2 DLLs for these products.

Dexcon wrote on 9/21/2021, 6:11 AM

Based on the Ozone 8 Adv that I've got (which doesn't have the Match EQ module), it comes in both 32 and 64 bit versions and can also be used as a Stand Alone (SAL) program - so its 64 bit functions can be used when using Ozone as a SAL. It doesn't need any other any other iZotope plugins to work.

As it has turned out, I rarely use Ozone. My regularly used iZotope programs are Neutron 3 Adv and RX7 Adv (which does have a Match EQ module), and I've just taken up iZotope's upgrade to RX8 Adv offer (25% off) and also get RX9 Adv when released next month (wish they did a teaser of what's new/improved in 9).

As per @misohoza 's suggestion, access the Ozone 9 trial and see how you like it. And also with the trial, test in Vegas Pro to see if using Ozone makes audio playback sluggish. Over the years, it has for me which is why I almost always now do any audio work in SALs (iZotope programs, Sound Forge Pro and SpectraLayers Pro), export/render to a .wav file and then import/replace the original on Vegas Pro's timeline with the export/render .wav file.

I fully agree with misohoza's additonal comment as well.

Re Match EQ, if you are thinking of Match EQ for dialogue between your studio mic (especially if a condenser mic) and the lavalier, really test this with the Ozone trial. iZotope have a product called Dialogue Match especially for dialogue, but it is ridiculously expensive.

Cameras: Sony FDR-AX100E; GoPro Hero 11 Black Creator Edition

Installed: Vegas Pro 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22, HitFilm Pro 2021.3, DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.0.3, BCC 2025, Mocha Pro 2025.0, NBFX TotalFX 7, Neat NR, DVD Architect 6.0, MAGIX Travel Maps, Sound Forge Pro 16, SpectraLayers Pro 11, iZotope RX11 Advanced and many other iZ plugins, Vegasaur 4.0

Windows 11

Dell Alienware Aurora 11:

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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 - liquid cooled

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C drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD

D: drive: 4TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD (used for media for editing current projects)

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RandyCA wrote on 9/28/2021, 6:41 PM

Update: I was amazed

I got the trial version of Ozone 9 Elements, but was unable to get it into Vegas. My guess is it was the VST 3 version. Does not matter, I am going to buy it and I will be sure to get the VST 2 version.

I will let you know if it has a good workflow with VP when I get it working.

But I want to get this quick and dirty video off to you guys to show you what the EQ match can do with even after messing around with it for just a few minutes right out of the gate. I just did a couple of simple tests with it and I am sure as I experiment more with it I can get even better results but with that said, I was blown away with how much it improved a really crappy audio.

But again, I wanted to get this off to you guys quickly in case any of you want to grab it while it is on sale till the end of Sept. Though I guess they put it on sale from time to time.

Bonus Video:

As a way of thanking you guys for engaging with me on this I want to share this great video of Ergo's workspace that he uses for creating art and editing videos. I thought my workspace was pretty good till I saw this. The thought he put into it both the functionality and the aesthetic, he is a pro artist after all, is remarkable. I can see I have a lot of room for improvement and got some ideas and inspiration from the video. I think you will like it.

 

 

Dexcon wrote on 9/28/2021, 6:55 PM

@RandyCA  ... you should find Ozone and its VST2 plugins in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\VstPlugins. In Vegas Pro, go to Options/Preferences/VST Effects (tab) and use one of the Alternate VST search folders to link to that folder via the Browse button.

Other common file destinations for VST plugins are: C:\Program Files (x86)\VstPlugins (which Vegas Pro sets as the default VST folder); and C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VstPlugins (VST3 plugins usually go to this folder).

Cameras: Sony FDR-AX100E; GoPro Hero 11 Black Creator Edition

Installed: Vegas Pro 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22, HitFilm Pro 2021.3, DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.0.3, BCC 2025, Mocha Pro 2025.0, NBFX TotalFX 7, Neat NR, DVD Architect 6.0, MAGIX Travel Maps, Sound Forge Pro 16, SpectraLayers Pro 11, iZotope RX11 Advanced and many other iZ plugins, Vegasaur 4.0

Windows 11

Dell Alienware Aurora 11:

10th Gen Intel i9 10900KF - 10 cores (20 threads) - 3.7 to 5.3 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 - liquid cooled

64GB RAM - Dual Channel HyperX FURY DDR4 XMP at 3200MHz

C drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD

D: drive: 4TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD (used for media for editing current projects)

E: drive: 2TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD

F: drive: 6TB WD 7200 rpm Black HDD 3.5"

Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4K Color Calibrated Monitor

 

LAPTOP:

Dell Inspiron 5310 EVO 13.3"

i5-11320H CPU

C Drive: 1TB Corsair Gen4 NVMe M.2 2230 SSD (upgraded from the original 500 GB SSD)

Monitor is 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz

misohoza wrote on 9/28/2021, 7:18 PM

@RandyCA

Just watched your comparison video. Definitely a big improvement. Seems like a drastic "smile" eq curve. Boosting high frequencies for clarity, cutting mid frequencies that can sound muddy. Adding a bit of bass boost so it doesn't sound tiny. Still not convinced eq matching is really necessary for this but if it works for you.. definitely go for it. Ozone is known for giving quick results. I had Ozone 6 and 7 but haven't used it much lately. This might change after watching your video.

One thing though, if you compare make sure to listen to both at the same loudness. Our ears tend to perceive louder sounds as better. So a simple gain change might trick you into thinking something sounds better.

Dexcon wrote on 9/28/2021, 9:18 PM

... if you compare make sure to listen to both at the same loudness. Our ears tend to perceive louder sounds as better. So a simple gain change might trick you into thinking something sounds better.

Very true. Fortunately, Ozone's UI has a button called Gain Match just under the meters which is designed to match the before and after gain. See the 2nd tip in iZotope's "6 Tips for Using Ozone's Utilities in Mixing and Mastering" for more info about Gain Match:

https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/how-to-use-ozone-utilities.html

Cameras: Sony FDR-AX100E; GoPro Hero 11 Black Creator Edition

Installed: Vegas Pro 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22, HitFilm Pro 2021.3, DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.0.3, BCC 2025, Mocha Pro 2025.0, NBFX TotalFX 7, Neat NR, DVD Architect 6.0, MAGIX Travel Maps, Sound Forge Pro 16, SpectraLayers Pro 11, iZotope RX11 Advanced and many other iZ plugins, Vegasaur 4.0

Windows 11

Dell Alienware Aurora 11:

10th Gen Intel i9 10900KF - 10 cores (20 threads) - 3.7 to 5.3 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 - liquid cooled

64GB RAM - Dual Channel HyperX FURY DDR4 XMP at 3200MHz

C drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD

D: drive: 4TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD (used for media for editing current projects)

E: drive: 2TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD

F: drive: 6TB WD 7200 rpm Black HDD 3.5"

Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4K Color Calibrated Monitor

 

LAPTOP:

Dell Inspiron 5310 EVO 13.3"

i5-11320H CPU

C Drive: 1TB Corsair Gen4 NVMe M.2 2230 SSD (upgraded from the original 500 GB SSD)

Monitor is 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz

RandyCA wrote on 9/29/2021, 12:11 PM

Dexcon, I looked where you said and Bingo! there it was. Because I have already used up my three locations for VP to find plugins, I copy/pasted the Ozone 9 dll file over to one of the locations where I have been putting my other VST2 plugins. But when I refreshed VP in Options/VST, Ozone never showed up.

misohoza wrote on 9/29/2021, 2:14 PM

Try to create a symbolic link instead.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/amp/

With some of the more advanced plugins simply copying the dll might not work.

Grazie wrote on 10/7/2021, 2:02 AM

What a stunning thread! Excellent work by everybody, all around the Block and back again. I’m deep into RX7Adv work in combo with Ozone. So, this thread is a real keeper. Gonna watch it all again on my larger Monitor.

@Dexcon - You’re a Star-Man, really you are 👍.