I'm just starting to work with ozone 5 plugin and I'm doing some mastering tests on my old material. I work inside Studio one putting ozone into track insert channel (not master or post), just to have control on the single track.
I'm not so prepared with ozone and also maximizers are not at the top of my knowledge field, but I always considered them like "expanded" limiters; what seems strange to me, differently from other limiters I used, is that Ozone have a different behaviour (or I'm not able to understand it, even I didn't find an answer to it inside many further specific tutorials, including ozone ones).

Once fixed the margin, and increasing the threshold, this fixed value(ceiling, -0.3 as suggested)should never be exceeded: on the contrary, I see that over a certain threshold value the track start clipping. The only solution is to lower the threshold, but this means to control the entire track, that is what standard limiters avoid to do.

Is this behaviour correct and I'm asking for something that can't be obtained (if not putting another limiter on post channel)or I'm doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance

 

the signal will not go past the margin ...look at meter on far right you will see signal go down, not threshold meter. the far right meter is output meter... then lower threshold to taste you will see red lines indicating reduction irc modes are just better but cpu eaters as u go up use 1 or 2 if u r low on cpu if u have the power for highest quality use irc 2 or 3 always turn on intersample dection which stops digital clipping of samples in between ...character smooth is like attack/release always turn transient recovery to save transients and stereo link links right and left channel for stereo limiting of limiting of each channel independently and then dithering section i know it seeams like a lot of controls...as always read the manual for more in depth as this is just a basic overview.

 

Thanks a lot for reply and suggestions, not so clear (for me), but I will try to follow them (as well as manual reading, already done, but i'll do it again). the strange thing is......that today the same track, same settings, didn't clip
Did anybody experianced same alternating behaviours?

 

Once you set the margin there should be absolutely no clipping at all no matter how much you set the threshold. May I ask what you are using to read the peak levels and where you are seeing the clipping? Are you using a spectrum analyzer and seeing clipping or are you talking about the track volume fader? Because it is possible that the track is clipping after the placement of the limiter because the track volume fader is too high, in which case it will clip. So just check your plugin setup again and check your faders and the limiter settings as well, keep in mind the limiter should always be the last plugin in the chain if you want to control the signal peaks.

 

I saw just inside Ozone interface, the two metering bars at the extreme right that monitor input and output levels. But I also saw when making an image of the track, Studio One during process advised about created clipping.
It's really strange, the PC (not mine, I'm working on it to test Ozone) is a i7 laptop, fully dedicated to music (no internet, no antivirus, etc) and connected to my RME usb interface. As I told before yesterday, trying again, it didn't present the same problem........just as you are telling (and also in my thoughts) maximizer setted with a -.03 ceiling stopped all the peaks....
Maximizer, I think, is as default setted last in the chain inside Ozotope...or am I wrong?

 

Yes, but you can set/switch your chain as you want to.

 

I've got to be honest with you, Ozone is a great mastering Tool, But if you want to push things a little further (or a lot further) O5 maximizer can't handle it. It's gonna clip before you expect. I'd suggest you to use FG-X or Pro-L for this task. other than that, Ozone5 Eq, dynamics and Imager are great tools... Good Luck!

 

heres a technical aspect about why -.3 and it should b -.3 NOT -.03 big difference...the reason why this is done in the digital world and i repeat digital and for mastering is because when digital gets bounced down to 44.1khz and then converted to analog for vinyl a bump of volume can get added due to the conversion ...the -.3 is to give an allowace for this bump otherwise if u only doing digital release than margin at 0 should b fine or then maybe a -.03 just to b sure and i say .03 this time not -.3. i know its geeky.

 

It's only true for a lossless digital only release (e.g. not converting it to analog), so you could say it's never true.
In most cases your track will be distributed as MP3 oder AAC. Not sure about AAC, but MP3 will clip with almost any source peaking at -0.3dB.
Besides, you would like to convert the digital signal to an analog one to actually hear it and many DACs will also clip with 0dB.

So, never do 0dB!

 

good point i forgot about mp3 i was only saying this for regular wav yeah just keep it at -.3

 

sorry, wrong typing

-.3

This is my setting, don't know if -.03 is a possible one