iZotope Ozone 10

[Guy Rowland]

Ozone 10 is released today with one headline feature:

The standalone app has been deprecated.

Astonishing. This is what support told someone at Gearspace:

"There is no standalone app in Ozone 10.

It was retired due to little usage over the years and instead we wanted to use the teams to add new compelling improvements and updates like the stabilizer and impact modules."

Note - this applies to both Advanced and regular versions. If you're still interested, here's the new features in Ozone 10:

STABILIZER MODULE [ADVANCED]
Sculpt a balanced sound with the new Stabilizer Module, an intelligent and adaptive mastering EQ. Dynamically shape your mix into a clear, natural tone, or tame problem resonance, carve away harshness and smooth transients for better translation across listening environments.

IMPACT MODULE [ADVANCED]
Enhance the rhythm and feel of your tracks by intuitively controlling microdynamics with the new Impact Module. Four sliders work across different frequency bands to breathe life into your mix, adding punch and dynamic space, or gluing your track together for a thicker sound.

IMPROVED MASTER ASSISTANT
Effortlessly achieve the sound of chart-topping hits or your favorite reference file using groundbreaking matching technology for tone, dynamics, and width. An updated Assistant View makes it faster than ever to customize your starting point, while the Tonal Balance curve allows for easy metering. With the new Master Assistant, you have a second set of (AI) ears that never get fatigued.

MAGNIFY SOFT CLIP (IN MAXIMIZER MODULE)
Boost loudness while maintaining high fidelity with the new Magnify Soft Clip. Bring your track forward using the soft clipper to amplify the Maximizer’s IRC algorithms, used on countless hit records.

RECOVER SIDES (IN IMAGER MODULE)
Reduce width, without losing the sides. The new Recover Sides feature maintains stereo information in mono so you can preserve depth and power when narrowing problem frequencies like a wide bass.

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/ozone/features.html

[Duncan Krummel]

All I can say is that I am increasingly grateful that I have chosen to move away from Ozone for mastering duties. I was never completely satisfied with the results there anyways, and this just puts the final nail in. The best part of Ozone’s draw for me was that it was a self contained app that required you to adapt to its, albeit decently customizable, workflow. I feel they are beginning to seriously bloat the software, and don’t get me started on “DJ player” vs “Streaming.” What?

[playz123]

Good news for those who purchased the "Everything" bundle in June. The free update to Advanced should now be in your account, along with the new serial number. It appears they've fixed the 'error' that some bundle owners discovered when their RX 9 Advanced was initially only updated to RX 10 Standard. Looking forward to the new features in Ozone 10. I've used Ozone successfully for years and, no, while it doesn't do everything and may not be used exclusively, there's a lot of value in it, and for me it does many things very well.

[vkoulich]

iZotope already have the framework of the standalone app, and they basically just need to connect it to the new plugins. Is that so hard to do or time consuming? Sorry, but I don’t buy that. After all, if it’s true that only 5% of the customers are using the standalone app (according to iZotope), that’s still quite a substantial number of customers (that may be leaving Ozone or iZotope because of such a change). Of course, it’s their software and they can do whatever they want with it, but not very wise or strategical move… And for what? Saving a few hours of development effort? Think how much marketing value they lose by removing such a major feature from the Ozone product compared to the competitors! And yeah, it looks like a red flag! I'm very disappointed and after a quick walk on the web, I can tell you that I'm not alone! Bad decision, iZotope.