EQ Magazine - April 2009 - (Page 52) GEAR HEAD Adobe Audition 3 (Windows, $349) Audition evolved from Cool Edit Pro, a popular Windows digital audio editor that later added multitrack capabilities. Although recent revisions have concentrated on beefing up the multitrack aspect—rewritten audio engine, mixer, MIDI support, etc.—Audition has retained what made Cool Edit Pro desirable, including a comprehensive suite of plug-ins (now augmented by some iZotope technology, including their timestretch algorithms) and nearly artifact-free sample rate conversion. For mastering, Audition offers superb spectral editing so you can surgically remove specific frequency ranges; for example, breathing sounds from a classical guitar recording, or only the kick drum and triangle from a drum loop. Overall, the noise reduction, restoration, and analysis tools are excellent. I’ve even used the click remover on guitars sent through digital processing to smooth “spikiness.” Navigation is a little more awkward than some other programs, but you get used to it. Plug-in chaining is done through a “rack” plug-in. Overall, many studios that could afford anything do their mastering with Audition—which tells you something right there. Strengths: Very complete feature set with outstanding restoration tools. Cost-effective. Switches easily between Audition 3, showing the phase analysis, frequency analysis, and iZotope multiband compressor. multitracking and editing views. Limitations: Multitrack capabilities don’t equal programs like Pro Tools, Sonar, Cubase, etc. Navigation could be smoother. iZotope Ozone 4 (Windows/Mac, $249.99) Ozone, long a mainstay mastering plug-in for Windows, now supports the Mac. Ozone is the choice of many project studios for mastering, with good reason: There’s a complete suite of mastering tools, including EQ, analysis, multiband compression, limiter, high frequency “exciter,” stereo widener, mastering reverb (don’t laugh, I use it often for narration), and a variety of test equipment. That may sound like a Ronco commercial—“It equalizes! It compresses! It whitens and brightens!”—but especially considering the cost, you get a lot for your money. Ozone 4 has a redesigned, friendlier interface with far better preset management, along with new presets. But the biggest update is Mid-Side processing (which allows for more flexibility when using EQ, exciter, reverb, and dynamics), and the option for multiband processors to “learn” the frequency spectrum and create bands based on that data. This makes it much easier to find a good starting point. The maximizing processor has been improved too, and preserves transients better. Strengths: One-stop shop for your mastering needs, presented as a plugin for your digital audio editor of choice. Set up everything, save it as a preset—done. Ozone 4’s multiband dynamics module is selected. You select one of the six modules for editing by clicking on one of the buttons in the lower left. Limitations: Relatively inflexible approach compared to the à la carte approach to plug-ins. Har-Bal Harmonic Balancer (Windows, $95) This arrived with a flurry of controversy due to the over-the-top marketing, but after the smoke cleared, Har-Bal has gone on to become many a mastering engineer’s “secret weapon.” A standalone program, Har-Bal presents a tweakable graph of a file’s spectral response, averaged over time, into 1, 1/3rd, 1/6th, or 1/12th octave responses. Click/dragging the graph changes the response. It takes some practice to recognize the difference between, say, a rogue resonance introduced by a room (which you want to draw out) and a resonance that’s part of an instrument (which you want to leave intact). Once you figure that out—and throw on just a teeny bit of their “Air” effect—Har-Bal makes a very easy-totweak EQ. Some people still think Har-Bal is spectrum-matching EQ; it isn’t, although you can compare spectra. Har-Bal is much more than that, and personally, it is the one mastering tool I use on almost every project, regardless of genre. Strengths: In the right hands, HarBal is a novel, useful mastering tool that excels at putting EQ under the microscope, and showing you where it needs to be fixed. Limitations: Stand-alone only. Takes serious practice to use it well. Har-Bal showing the Peak, Geometric Mean, and Average curves (yellow, pink, and green respectively) for a file at various frequencies. The gray curve is the original file’s spectrum. The graph is set to 1/6th octave resolution. 52 EQ APRIL 2009 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com
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