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A Different Approach to Hi-rez digital playback


artto

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Those of you using a computer for playback may be interested in sort of "re-mastering" the recording yourself during playback.

 

As many of you know I do some recording for local Choral/Orchestra/band and produce their CDs. Recently I started using Izotope Ozone mastering software, a VST plug-in that I use with Sony Acid Pro and Sound Forge Pro. One day it dawned on me that J River (which I use for playback of my digital audio files) also uses VST Plug-ins for digital signal processing so why not try & use Ozone on playback to "polish" up recordings in real-time while I'm listening?

 

It was a little tricky to get things set up but it works. Ozone has lots of presets for different kinds of music. The preset descriptions are very conducive to what you would expect them to produce. And you can make changes to the presets and save it as a new preset, specifically for that track or recording if you want to. Most of the effects are very subtle (as they should be).

 

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/mixing-mastering/ozone/

 

Ozone is IMHO one of the best pieces of software out there, regardless of application. I find it very intuitive. The GUI is easy to use and the graphics are really cool too. You can display what the DSP is doing during playback which makes for a rather impressive looking monitoring tool. In my case I'm also using a 7" Galaxy tablet as a remote control so everything shows up on there too. Pretty cool stuff.

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Both foobar2000 and more importantly, Audacity have VST plugin capabilities: these two pieces of software cost nothing.

 

Here are the VST plugins that I've got installed in Audacity:

 

GSnap (a free autotune module...for Dylan recordings) ;)

Red Phatt Pro (expander/compressor) - very good for the most compressed/damaged tracks

Transient Monster (a really simple and effective expander for real-time use on foobar2000 and Audacity)

Hard Limiter and SC4 (compressor, limiter that both ship with Audacity

 

More free VST modules: https://splice.com/plugins/free_plugins

 

As you can see, I'm not even scraping the surface of the available VST Plugin capabilities...that cost nothing.

 

I actually recommend Transient Monster for foobar2000 playback, and I suppose that would also include JRiver, too.  It's only got two controls, but works extremely well, IMHO.

 

Chris

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