The Vectorscope provides a view of the stereo image of the signal. You can check mixes for stereo separation and use Ozone controls (stereo widening and room width) to provide more or less separation. Ozone 5 adds Polar Sample and Polar Level modes for more in depth analysis.
Display Types
You may toggle through the following different display options for the vectorscopeby clicking on the button in the top right.
Polar Sample Vectorscope
The Polar Sample Vectorscope plots dots per sample, but uses a polar coordinate display that is more useful in highlighting the stereo image of the incoming signal. Patterns that appear within the 45-degree safe lines represent in phase signals while patterns outside these lines represent out of phase audio.
The history of the Polar Sample Vectorscope also fades out slowly. The infinite history is shown as the faintest shade of green while the last few seconds are displayed as slowly fading data points. You can reset the display by clicking on the meter.
Polar Level Vectorscope
The stereo energy of a recording is clearly represented by the Polar Level Vectorscope which plots rays on a polar coordinate display that represent sample averages. The length of the rays represents amplitude while the angle of the rays represents their position in the stereo image. Rays within the 45-degree safe lines represent in phase audio while anything beyond these lines represents audio that is out of phase.
History is represented on the Polar Level Vectorscope with the shrinking of the plotted rays slowly over time. The rays shrink towards the center of the vectorscope leaving the outer portion of the display for real-time analysis.
Lissajous Vectorscope
Like the Polar Sample vectorscope, the Lissajous Vectorscope plots per sample dots on a traditional oscilloscope display. Typically, stereo recordings produce a random pattern on a Lissajous Vectorscope that is taller than it is wide. Vertical patterns mean left and right channels are similar (approaching mono, which is a vertical line). Horizontal patterns mean the two channels are very different, which could result in mono compatibility problems.
The history of the Lissajous Vectorscope fades out slowly instead of remaining forever. The infinite history is shown as the faintest shade of green while the last few seconds are displayed as slowly fading data points. You can reset the display by clicking on the meter.
Balance Meter
Below the vectorscope is a meter that illustrates the overall balance between the left and right channels of your mix. A lighter bar illustrates the balance in real time while a slower dimmer bar follows the real time calculation to be more easily readable.
Meter Tabs
Channel Operations
You can perform a quick check of mono and phase compatibility by clicking on the Channel button below the vectorscope. This provides a menu that allows you to sum the output of Ozone to mono, swap left and right channels, or invert the polarity of left or right channels.
Phase
You can enable phase rotation on the audio signal by clicking on the Phase button below the vectorscope. This feature can help reduce asymmetric waveforms that are found in dialog and voice by rotating the phase up to 90 degrees. Making the waveform more symmetrical allows the voice to ride perceivably higher in the mix. This is useful in broadcast radio and dialog mixing. When wishing to correct an asymmetric waveform, simply adjust the Phase Rotation Amount until you get the lowest consistent peak levels. The Phase Rotation Amount is set too high if the peak levels begin to increase again.
Offset/Delay
You may affect the offset or delay of individual bands by clicking on the Offset button below the vectorscope. This allows you to offset one channel (left or right) by a specific amount of milliseconds. This is not designed to be used as a delay effect, but instead as a tool that can balance the stereo image by providing a corrective delay to one channel. This is useful, for example, in a situation where a mix was recorded with stereo microphones that were slightly off axis. By default the band delays are grouped to provide the same delay offset across all bands, but you can ungroup them and adjust the imaging for individual bands.
Other Options
You can click on the phase meter to reset the peak hold display.
You can turn the peak hold display off in the Meter Options Screen.
Clipping
The Vectorscope will draw any clipped samples in red.
An additional meter for analyzing stereo spread is the Correlation Meter.