Ozone 3 by iZotope

The following contains recording jargon. You may or may not understand a word of it.

When I think of good plug-ins, I have a relatively short list. Renaissance EQ is good. Auto-tune is great when I need to fix a syllable that's out of tune. Renaissance delays and reverbs are wonderful. But honestly, so many plug-in's I've seen and demoed aren't very good.

Recently, I found a plug-in that I can't do without. I think of my life before Ozone 3 and my life after Ozone 3. Made by iZotope, Ozone 3 is a mastering application...by design. It has a spectrum analyzer, a sonic maximizer, and a multi-band compressor. These things come in handy all the time when working in the digital domain.

I use it to see which frequencies need to be cut when I'm tracking. I apply it to a final mix to match it's EQ with other songs that I like.

Ozone 3 has an unprecidented "matching" EQ system that allows an engineer to literally match an EQ of another song...with a stunning degree of accuracy. I couldn't believe how much better it made my mixes sound.

At a retail price of around $250, this plug-in is hard to beat. The same spectrum analyzer alone used to cost in the neighborhood of a grand.

There is no substitute for a good mastering engineer, I know. But, when it comes down to working on projects on a budget, I can't imagine using anything else to give mixes that final touch.