I watched Ben Jordan’s video on AI mastering and the title is we proved it. AI mastering is a waste of money. The title gives away the conclusions a little bit. However, it is worth watching. He does share uh how he collected his data, what that data is, and how he came to his conclusions. Ultimately, at this point in time, he believes that the people that did the mastering uh of the music that he sent them were superior to the AI products that he used. Now, Ben Jordan’s a better producer than I am. He’s a better mastering engineer than I am. He could be very well be a better musician than I am. I have no idea. But we are going to have some differing opinions. Not because he is wrong, because he’s not. I listened to the whole thing, checked out his survey. He’s right. He’s absolutely right. However, I have no intention of becoming a professional mastering producer. Nor do I want to. It looks like a lot of work. That looked very hard what they’re doing. What I want to do is write music, record it in the privacy of my own home, and then make it sound good somehow. And how that happens, I don’t really care. In fact, if some company puts out a big button that says make it good and I hit that and then the song sounds good, I will buy the button. And there is always going to be, not always, that’s wrong. There is likely going to be a gulf between what AI can do and what professional human mastering producers can do in the short term.
Maybe that gulf will will decrease over time and it like it likely will. However, what I can guarantee is I’m never going to be good at it. So, the question isn’t which is better. The question is which is good enough for me knowing that I’m not going to dive into this, you know, head first and spend months and months training myself and maybe taking courses. That’s just not going to happen. I got a lot to do.
So, if I want to record music and master it in a way to where it glues it together properly, sounds good enough for me, uh, is AI going to get that done? And that’s what we’re going to find out today. All right, so let’s take a look at this thing. I have uh recorded a cover of Eddie Money’s I think I’m in love uh for the purposes of this video and the instrumentations have been slightly changed. Uh a couple of parts have been slightly changed and I am using this for instructional purposes. Please don’t copyright strike my stupid video. I’m not even going to monetize it. Leave me alone.
First thing we’re going to do is install ozone into the master bus. Let’s see here. Ozone 12. If you do not know how to download or install Ozone 12, uh you have bigger problems than we’re going to talk about here today. However, in the description, I will link out to where you can get ozone and it will have instructions on how to install it. I am using Reaper for my DAW. I recommend Reaper. It’s awesome. Uh, you can download it and try it for free. Actually, you can. It’s free forever.
However, if you’re going to use it, please buy it because it’s great. So, we’ve got Ozone installed. I’m going to open it up and we’re just going to do what it says. Let’s see. We’re going to the assistant. One click or custom. Skip the setup. Just like magic. That is, man, that is what we are all about. Play the loudest section of your mix. It’s probably going to be the chorus. So, I’m gonna hit play on the chorus. >> There we go. >> I think I’m in love cuz I can’t get enough. I think I’m in love. It’s got to be.
It’s louder. All right, let me turn that off. It’s going to screw everything up. So, I have disabled ozone now. But we ran it and what did we hear? A massive gain boost, of course. But what else did we hear? And what did it do? Oh, here we go. It added a master rebalance. Don’t know what that is. I’ll check it out. Equalizer one, impact imager clarify stabilizer. Oh boy, it keeps going.
Dynamic EQ and maximizer. I know what that is. EQ. We know what that is. It dropped significantly here at about 200 300 hertz, 250th hertz or so forth. Let’s see impact. And it says here that Impact will enhance the rhythm and feel of your tracks by intuitively controlling micro dynamics with the new impact module. And it looks to me like it’s a flatline. I’m not going to say it’s not doing anything because there’s something going on here, but we’ll have to dig deeper into that.
The imager now that I am familiar with. An imager in this regard is used to control the width and depth of the mix across various frequencies and bands. It tightens up lows uh and mids as well as highs. Keeps everything wide for a spacious sound. Now, that’s the marketing material, but it actually does all of that. Let’s take a look at it in action. >> I think I’m in love. I think I’m seeing the spread there is pretty cool. Next is the clarify module. And uh that’s supposed to shape the tone of the mix to bring out presence and sheen. So it probably augments the high-end.
Let’s turn this thing on and see. >> I think I’m in love. I think I’m in love cuz I can’t. >> Yeah, we’re seeing a lot of activity at about 9K 9 and 10K. So, it is definitely doing what it says it’s supposed to do. The stabilizer, let’s see, it works by detecting problematic frequencies and applying dynamic EQ transient shaping to create a more balanced sound. Let’s watch it work.
I think I’m in love. I love you. I think I’m in love cuz I can’t get no love. I can hear it at work. Uh, I think we’ll have to play around with this some more moving forward. Dynamic EQ. I don’t have to even look that up. That’s an equalizer that focuses on various bands. Let’s see it work. >> I think I’m in love cuz I can’t get enough. >> All right, that’s pretty cool. Let’s see. So, I’m right at about 8K. running at about 5K and 11K. It seems to be seems to be squashing some stuff. Very narrow bands, so it isn’t it isn’t all over the place.
That’s good. The maximizer is a limiter, I imagine. Let’s see what it says. A limiter that pushes the loudness of the track. No kidding. It got rid It got a lot louder, that’s for sure. It looks like it has used IRC2 and we we All right. See, I’m doing it again. I’m not going to push any buttons, but it looks like it added a 5.7 dB in gain. Let’s see it at work. >> All right, I’m going to It has a gain match.
And so what I’m going to do is use that so we can hear what this plugin’s doing other than increasing the gain. So we can actually remove uh all the added gain and just look at the the dynamics stabilization, the imager module and whatnot. Let’s take a look at that. >> I think I’m in love. I think I’m in love cuz I can’t get enough now. I think I’m in love. I’m also going to uh turn on gain match so we don’t get a big burst of gain. But then I’m going to disable the plugin so we can hear before and after without all the gain.
That’ll that might tell us something else. I think I’m in love. >> Oh yeah, it got a lot muddier. >> We’ll turn it back on. All right. There’s a lot going on there. Uh, I was af what I was afraid of was it was just going to be a big burst of gain and a bunch of garbage, but that’s not the case. Uh, I really heard the clarification of the clarify. I also could hear impact in that it was uh really pulling the mid. It was pulling the lows together and pushing them up without really uh overpowering anything.
But I think that the high-end ad was really where I was seeing the most. And that’s going to be seen in the uh clarify module to a lesser degree in the imager and uh of course the various EQs. So what we’re going to do here is listen to it one more time. We’ll listen to the whole chorus once with and once without. And I’m going to add the gain match back. First we’ll listen without. think I’m in love with my life. I think I’m in love cuz I can’t get enough.
No, no. I think I’m in love. You got to be love. >> All right. Now, let’s do it with I think I’m in love. I think I’m in love cuz I can’t get no love. You got to be all right. If you just discount my terrible singing alto together, I think that the AI plugin sounds great. I really do. Uh, and it it’s not just a whole truckload of gain. I’m hearing uh the high-end is much more it’s it’s clear. Uh I think I hear a wide separation between the various frequencies. There’s one, two, three.
There’s five guitar parts going on during that and I can hear each of them clearly. So, did Ben Jordan prove that AI mastering is a waste of money? I think he proved that AI mastering is a waste of money if you are a good mastering engineer. If you want to be good at mastering or if you have the resources to hire someone that is very good at mastering because he’s right, the masters that he shows in his video sound better than the AI stuff.
My premise is AI mastering is good enough for me because I don’t want to be good at AI m or excuse me I don’t want to be good at mastering. Uh so was it good enough for what I want? And right now I’m saying yes. I thought that sounded great. I’m going to go into the custom tab and start messing around and seeing if there’s more I can do in there. If I can get something more out of it. I’m sure there is. Uh, but uh, I’m very excited about learning more about this plugin and using it. IZotope Ozone. Uh, I’ll link to it below.
There is a subscription fee for their various suites. You may be able to buy it individually. I don’t know, but I doubt it. Uh, Reaper is the DAW I’m using. Check it out for free, and if you do like it, buy it. I think it was 60 bucks. Whatever it is, it’s crazy cheap and very good. So, uh, also go check out Ben Jordan’s channel. He has a lot of great stuff there. Uh, as far as his produ his music production, he is outstanding and there’s a lot to learn. So, thanks for checking out. We’ll see you next time.