Ozone 8 Advanced vs FabFilter Mastering Bundle

[simon.a.billington]

The Master Assistant is indeed a powerful way to quickly get you started in Ozone. You can then either leave it all on, or turn it off and tweak it one by one.

I actually use it in kind of the opposite context, and i find it's excellent. I get 75% done with mastering something with fabfilter, uad, brainworx, etc., then i run mastering assistant with ozone last in my chain. The dynamics section is always bypassed since I'd have handled all that already, but usually at this point my ears are slightly tired and having ozone "check my work" with the dynamic eq is pretty nice. Then i tweak the maximizer a bit and call it a day.

That said, with regards to the overall thread, if i had to pick one or the other I'd go with fabfilter. For a plethora of reasons. Better interface and usability. Holds its value better - not sold at a premium initially and then heavily discounted six months later. More consumer friendly update/upgrade practices, and (drum roll) user specific upgrade paths which has long been a sore topic for those of us with many products of izotope's line. More practical for using in mixing as well as mastering.

Overall, they're more or less "equal but different" in terms of their use as mastering tools. But there are a whole host of peripheral reasons why IMO fabfilter is a better choice in a one or the other scenario

I will say that iZotope puts it’s software and upgrades on the pricer side. RX is a fortune to upgrade. I often end up skipping a year to make it more viable. Last time I upgraded to the Production Bundle thinking it was the better value for money. It may just be. Although I’m pretty sure that FabFilter software isn’t all that cheap either.

Usability does count a lot to a software’s value almost as much as the tech does. It’s certainly something that shouldn’t be ignored. Given that I’m pretty sure that UIs will continue to evolve and adapt to our needs as time goes on, There will be some hits and misses. More misses if the developers don’t listen to their consensus.

Update time is around the corner for Ozone. I’d hold off on any pru has and wait to see what they have on offer.

[metaside]

Imho, iZotope has some great products, especially RX, but I also like the transient shaper in Neutron, but for EQ, multiband compression, and since the latest Pro-L update also for limiting, I prefer FabFilter plugins, mostly for reasons of usability and flexibility. I didn't upgrade to the latest Ozone/Neutron versions, so no idea about the new features - I really don't like iZotope update and crossgrade prices and options especially when you own multiple products, so I completely stopped updating, but I expect that I will keep updating RX while skipping 1-3 versions in between updates.