Ozone has a 17 year pedigree, and has steadily improved as a one stop mastering shop, with all the above mentioned elements included for a great mastered track. Over the years the art of mastering has progressed to include a myriad of other tricks and techniques to continually head toward the musical perfection of a finished track. Mastering turns a mixed track into a finished piece of music. In essence, mastering is the very skilled use of EQ and compression to get the absolute best out of the mixed music removing aural irritations to make it accomodating to the ear, and match with any other tracks (if it’s an EP /Record). Now seeing it and hearing it in use in a mastering capacity was equally, almost terrifyingly impressive. I was impressed with my first encounter with the AI in my iZotope Neutron review, where the software assisted in creating a rough start mix to work from. Izotope are very much at the forefront of the useful integration of AI in our musical software apps. What is clear, as time goes on, is that AI is here to stay, and will become more a part of the music production world. I’m aware there are musicians, producers and engineers on different sides of the fence when it comes to AI in music, but that’s definitely a discussion for another time.

Izotope has, over the last several years, put a ton of R&D into the use of AI in their software. I took the current version, Ozone 9, through its paces to see how it’s evolved.

Izotope’s flagship mastering software has gone through a couple of iterations since our Ozone 7 review.

Ozone 9 mastering