# Ozone Mastering Assistant Issue



## BenG (Sep 6, 2018)

So, I had to quickly master a bunch of audio files but seem to be having a small issue with Ozone Elements Mastering Assistant. It's heavily distorting some audio and sounds like it is compressing too much. 

- All of the 'unmastered' tracks had no clipping. 
- Settings were for CD/Medium
- Has never happened previously.

Any ideas what could be causing this?


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## Mornats (Sep 7, 2018)

Maybe try leaving 6-12db of headroom before mastering to see if that helps. Some of the presets in Ozone Advanced recommend that so it could be that your source material, whilst not clipping, is maybe just under 0db? Worth trying to see if it helps.


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## martinjuenke (Sep 7, 2018)

Mornats said:


> Maybe try leaving 6-12db of headroom before mastering to see if that helps. Some of the presets in Ozone Advanced recommend that so it could be that your source material, whilst not clipping, is maybe just under 0db? Worth trying to see if it helps.


I master with Ozone Advanced and take care that all tracks which will be on one album have more or less the same headroom before applying track assistant. My headroom aim is a healther 14dB. At least for me that works out fine. Don‘t forget the target LUFS you can define. My aim is streaming standard 14 LUFS.


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## redlester (Sep 9, 2018)

BenG said:


> So, I had to quickly master a bunch of audio files but seem to be having a small issue with Ozone Elements Mastering Assistant. It's heavily distorting some audio and sounds like it is compressing too much.
> 
> - All of the 'unmastered' tracks had no clipping.
> - Settings were for CD/Medium
> ...



Which DAW are you using? I had terrible problems with it on Ableton 10.0.2, it simply didn't work at all, this was especially troubling as I had decided to upgrade to Ozone Advanced.

After to-ing and fro-ing with iZotope support it became apparent it was actually an Ableton problem. According to the release notes for the Ableton beta versions, on a recent update they fixed a problem which affected OpenGL plug-ins (which Ozone apparently is), and it now seems to have been sorted in the latest official Ableton 10.0.3 release, all working correctly now.


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## BenG (Sep 9, 2018)

Thanks everyone and I'll definitely try and lower the headroom! It is so odd, since a few weeks ago it was working perfectly with the same exact tracks...:/

Also, I am using Cubase so not sure if that makes a difference. Very interesting to hear about that issue with Ableton, though.


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## AllanH (Sep 9, 2018)

I have Ozone Advanced, but just in case it applies: There is a maximizer in the mastering chain. Make sure you set the overall levels for the maximizer for the loudest section of your music. Otherwise, the maximizer may excessively maximize and clip the loudest section.


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## BenG (Sep 9, 2018)

AllanH said:


> I have Ozone Advanced, but just in case it applies: There is a maximizer in the mastering chain. Make sure you set the overall levels for the maximizer for the loudest section of your music. Otherwise, the maximizer may excessively maximize and clip the loudest section.



At first, I thought it was this as well, but everything was set at the loudest point from the outset.


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## BenG (Sep 9, 2018)

Also, just noticed that this is an issue only with the 'CD' setting. The 'Streaming' option works perfectly.


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