1. Izotope Rx 7 Audio Editor Advanced
2. Izotope Rx Create Room Tone 2
3. Create Room Plans
4. Izotope Rx Create Room Tone 1

• Sound Quality
• Ease of use
• Features
• Bang for buck
• Overall:

Some dialogue problems can’t be fixed. Distortion, errant sirens, wind gumming the microphones—it’s impossible. The truth is, with iZotope RX, you can fix all sorts of previously impossible problems. Here are six tips to get you out of a dialogue bind. Some dialogue problems can’t be fixed. Distortion, errant sirens, wind gumming the microphones—it’s impossible. The truth is, with iZotope RX, you can fix all sorts of previously impossible problems. Here are six tips to get you out of a dialogue bind. Using Spectral Repair means you save your timeline. There’s no need to remove those five seconds of birdsong and lose the rest of the room tone, too. It may not matter as much for a room tone, but consider a jet pass. If you have to chop out the center of the pass to remove a problem, the fly by will be shortened, and may sound choppy.

Unwanted noise is the ultimate menace. This is one thing on which all audio professionals can agree! In music, post production, restoration and archiving, or even forensics, engineers everywhere are battling daily with a never-ending onslaught of buzzing, clicks, pops, hiss, clips, crackles and a heap of other unpleasant sounds that haunt our tracks.
Over the years there have been a number of plugin-based solutions to tackle these problems – some more successful than others. In the past few years, one name comes up over and over again among audio professionals as the “one stop shop” for audio noise reduction and restoration. Of course, I’m talking about iZotope’s flagship RX software suite. And now, with their latest and greatest version – “RX 3 Advanced” – iZotope has added two brand new plugins into the RX fold: Dialogue Denoiser and Deverb.
Let’s jump in, and see what RX 3 Advanced is all about!
TECH SPECS: RX 3 Advanced is a Native-only plugin for MAC and PC and retails for $1,199. Formats are AAX, RTAS, AudioSuite, VST, VST3 and Audio Unit. Compatible with the new 64-bit Pro Tools 11 and 32-bit hosts including Pro Tools 7.4 to 10 as well as Avid Media Composer, Nuendo, Cubase, WaveLab, Logic, EDIUS Pro 6.5, Final Cut Pro, Audition, Premiere, SONAR, ACID, Digital Performer, Sound Forge Pro, Vegas Pro, and many more.
WHAT IT DOES: RX 3 Advanced is a complete suite of audio production plugins for professional audio repair and restoration. RX 3 can be used as individual plugins within your host DAW or as a standalone application (included) for more detailed offline work. Also bundled with RX 3 Advanced is the brilliant iZotope Insight metering suite – of which you can read my in-depth review here.
IN USE:
RX 3 Advanced is comprised of individual plugins (both real time and AudioSuite) within your host DAW allowing users to fix tracks quickly and efficiently. All of these RX 3 modules are also available for use in the standalone RX application along with some unique extras.
Two brand new plugins have been added to the RX 3 Advanced version since its upgrade from version 2 – they are: Dialogue Denoiser and Deverb. Let’s take a look at each of the core units individually, as well as the new additions in the new “Advanced” version:
Denoiser – Denoiser is the plugin in the RX suite that gets the most consistent use on my sessions both in music and post. Denoiser controls the level of stationary noise present in an audio track. Stationary noise generally includes tape hiss, microphone hum, fans, highway traffic, HVAC systems and any similar sounds which tend not to change in level or spectral shape significantly throughout the recording.
To use Denoiser, simply identify a section of your audio track that is just the noise and select “LEARN” in Denoiser. This creates a noise profile that Denoiser uses to filter out the noise from your track. The two basic sliders for Threshold and Reduction allow users the primary controls over the noise reduction. Artifact Control and Quality sliders make up the main face of the Denoiser plugin with an additional set of Advanced noise floor settings available in a separate window.
With Denoiser, I usually work with the AudioSuite plugin to process the denoising directly to my track. iZotope’s RX 3 plugins have excellent finely-tuned default settings, which make for fast work. Simply load in your noise profile, select the whole file you want to denoise, and render. After spending some time with Denoiser, you will start to get a feel for when your tracks may call for slightly more or less on the Reduction fader.
Don’t forget to create a duplicate playlist for your raw tracks before processing! This will allow you to return to your original unprocessed tracks at any time should you decide to reprocess anything.
Declicker & Decrackler – Together, these two plugins tackle clicks, pops, mouth noises, thumps, and similar intermittent noises that are prevalent in modern recordings as well as older source material such as older vinyl and other degraded audio sources. The main difference between Declicker and Decrackler is that Decrackler is designed to handle a more continuous stream of irregularities in your audio whereas Declicker handles more sporadic clicks and pops.
Declicker is one of those magical tools that just works and is an absolute essential for me these days. The Declicker module alone has saved entire projects for me and for many other engineers I know. A good example of that is a live album I recently tracked where the multi-track capture rig was on a separate power current than the house PA. This is never an ideal situation, of course, but unfortunately these were the conditions of this site.
Listening back the night of the show, the tracks all sounded pristine. But, when listening critically at home during editing and mixing, I started noticing a consistent light clicking on the electric guitar tracks, vocals and keys. 60-70 percent of the clicks were borderline inaudible when the whole mix was up but the rest were very audible throughout the album.
I used RX 3’s Declicker module to clean up nearly all of the guitars, vocals and keys on the entire album. While the work was a bit tedious, Declicker alone absolutely saved this project for me. Declicker removed tens of thousands of errant clicks from my tracks without ever adding unwanted degradation or artifacts.
Declipper – Declipper repairs digital and analog clipping from A/D converters pushed too hard or magnetic tape that’s been over saturated.
The basic controls for Declipper are Threshold and Makeup gain. It does take some trial and error to find what will work best for your audio but Declipper does do an excellent job repairing the harsh distorted qualities that often spike in TV and film mixes and stick out unnecessarily. Watch the demo here.
Unlike Denoiser and Declicker, Declipper seemed to introduce some artifacting into the signal as a byproduct of the processing of the clipped signal. Great results can be achieved but of course the source audio will always be the most crucial factor in determining just how effective Declipper or any noise reduction plugin can be.
Hum Removal – RX 3’s Hum Removal tool is designed to target low frequency buzz or hum often caused by electrical grounding issues. Hum Removal includes a series of notch filters that can be set to remove the base frequency hum at 50 or 60hz as well as the resulting harmonics.
The Hum Removal plugin comes with presets for 50 and 60hz as well as a “Free” setting which allows the user to set the notch frequency, which is chased by each of the harmonic notches. Hum Removal does an excellent job repairing electrical hum without disturbing even the most delicate acoustic based instruments.
Spectral Repair – RX 3’s Spectral Repair is a tool that is most often used to repair sudden unwanted noises in a section of audio. Spectral Repair displays audio visually in both waveform and spectrogram mode simultaneously. This gives users both a time-based and frequency-based view of the offending audio in their project allowing for quick and easy repair of sounds that only a few years ago editors would have been forced to cut around or leave in unchanged. A good example of this would be a loud whistling during a concert recording, or a siren that appears in the background during crucial dialogue or an interview. These types of unwanted frequency specific problems are the perfect job for Spectral Repair.
RX 3’s manual lists a number of unwanted sounds that Spectral Repair can attack. Many of these sounds we’ve all dealt with at one time or another but frankly I’d never even considered them possible to fix! (i.e. squeaky chairs, coughs, mic stand bumps, clattering dishes, mobile phones ringing, metronome click tracks, background chitchat, dropouts from broken audio cables, fret and string noise and dog barks.)
To use spectral repair, load in a small section of your track that includes the offending audio. Once loaded, there are different selection tools such as Lasso, Time Selection, Frequency Selection and Brush, which allow users to select (as specifically as possible) the problematic piece of audio. From there, you can use either the Attenuate, Replace, Pattern or Partials + Noise modules to fix the problem depending on how badly damaged the audio file is.
Now that we’ve covered the core plugins in RX 3, let’s take a look at some of the new additions to the RX 3 Advanced package:
Dialogue Denoiser – The beauty of this plugin is its simplicity. Dialogue Denoiser is a stunningly powerful tool for high-quality denoising in real time with minimal controls and zero latency. In the vast majority of cases, Dialogue Denoiser works brilliantly in auto mode right ‘out of the box’. Simple controls for Threshold and Reduction make for extremely quick work.
Most recently, I’ve used Dialogue Denoiser on several short film projects. I’ve settled on creating an intermediary Aux bus specifically for Dialogue Denoiser with the input routed from all my dialogue tracks and the output sending to my dialogue master bus which allows me to control the Reduction and threshold settings of Dialogue Denoiser with Pro Tools automation when necessary for dialing in exactly the right amount of background noise and ambience.
I really can’t overstate just how quick and easy it is to achieve stunning results with Dialogue Denoiser. It is easily the quickest ‘set it and forget it’ Denoising plugin I’ve ever used.
Of course, users also have the ability to select “manual mode” and create a noise profile dedicated to the track that’s being worked on for more precise control of Dialogue Denoiser. Thus far for my projects, I’ve found the auto mode to be completely usable on its own without providing any sort of learned noise profile.
Deverb – Deverb is one of those “how do they do that?” plugins. Deverb allows users control over the ambient space captured in a recording. As with Dialogue Denoiser, Deverb works in real time either in automatic or manual mode to reduce unwanted room decay and reverb in dialogue and spoken word. Unlike Dialogue Denoiser, Deverb does introduce about 9,700 samples of latency which is more than enough for any DAW with delay compensation to handle.
Basic controls include: Reduction fader, four faders for Low, Low-mid, High-mid, and High on the Reverb Profile, which controls the amount of Deverb effect applied per-band; Tail Length which controls the decay of Deverb processing; and Artifact Smoothing which controls the frequency accuracy of Deverb processing.
Deverb does a commendable job tightening up roomy audio which can help achieve a sharper mix for post-production projects. Deverb will, of course, achieve better results when it has better source material to work with. Dialogue that is already very upfront and present will yield extraordinary results from Deverb while very roomy/distant voice and dialogue recordings can also be helped but will also have quite a bit of artifacting.
These two powerful new plugins add tremendous value to the Advanced version of RX 3. Dialogue Denoiser in particular is really a must-use plugin for me on all dialogue heavy post-production jobs.
RX 3 Standalone Application
In addition to the DAW accessible plugins, RX 3 Advanced comes with its own standalone application for tackling problematic audio issues offline. The standalone application gives users access to the full palate of RX 3 Advanced tools for cleaning up audio. All of the above-mentioned modules are available inside the RX 3 standalone application.
Deconstruct – Deconstruct is an additional tool available only in the RX 3 standalone application. Deconstruct allows users surgical control over the level of noise and tones in an audio track independent of each other. An example of where to use Deconstruct would be to reduce breath noise in wind instrument recordings such as flute or saxophone.
The controls for Deconstruct are simply faders for Tonal Gain and Noisy Gain. The results of Deconstruct are so unique, you’re really taken by surprise the first time you hear its results.
Several engineers I’ve showed this feature to expressed total disbelief at Deconstruct’s ability to remove not the noise but the pure tone leaving behind just the noise. Of course, Deconstruct can work both ways to subtlety reduce air and noise qualities. This particular demo (above), however, highlights the creative possibilities of Deconstruct.
Additional New Features
This review would feel incomplete if I didn’t include at least a quick rundown of some of the additional new features available in the RX 3 Advanced bundle:
iZotope Insight – This comprehensive metering tool, which is a must-have for compliance with broadcast standards, comes bundled with RX 3 Advanced.
Multicore Processing – RX 3 has been optimized to use every available core in your machine to make quick work of intense audio processing jobs.
Multi-file workflow – RX 3 can open, edit and process multiple files at once for a true multi-task workflow.
Advanced Declick Parameters – Additional targeting of Click, Thump and Discontinuity can be done individually in Declick, with click widening and Frequency skew modes.
Redesigned User Interface – The overall graphical design of RX 3 has been given a facelift since RX 2 and it looks gorgeous.
TO BE CRITICAL: While I’m sure there’s always room for improvement, RX 3 Advanced leaves me with very little to criticize. I do find myself wishing there was a way for iZotope and DAWs like Pro Tools to work together to create a feature that would allow for integration between the DAW and the RX 3 offline application. It would be incredibly helpful to have the ability to select a clip in the Pro Tools timeline and have an “open in RX 3” feature which would allow users to work in the standalone RX 3 application and then process the audio clip directly back into the Pro Tools timeline.
As of now, I don’t use the standalone app very often simply because the process of exporting an audio file, opening it in RX 3, cleaning the audio, processing, re-exporting and then re-importing back into Pro Tools simply isn’t an efficient use of time unless it’s absolutely necessary to the project.
IN CONCLUSION: RX 3 Advanced is fighting the war on noise from every imaginable front possible. The tools available in the RX 3 Advanced package are quite simply the best collection of noise reduction and restoration modules available. With the addition of Dialogue Denoiser and Deverb, the price point for RX 3 Advanced is unbeatable anywhere else. RX 3 Advanced belongs in every studio and engineers toolkit. There is simply no excuse for noisy audio anymore!

Overview

De-reverb gives you control over the amount of ambient space captured in a recording. It can make large cathedrals sound like small halls and make roomy vocals sound like they were recorded in a treated space.

De-reverb processes audio according to the reverberant/direct ratio (also known as wet/dry ratio) detected in the signal. It can learn your audio to suggest some frequency and decay time settings, or you can estimate these yourself.

Controls

• LEARN: Teaches De-reverb how much reverb is in your signal.
  
  • The Learn feature analyzes the signal and determines the wet/dry ratio per frequency of your signal, as well as the overall rate of decay of reverb.
    
  • When the Learn operation completes, the Reverb Profile and Tail Length controls will be set to their suggested values.
    
  • The Learn operation can be performed on any reverberant audio.
    

    Recommendation

    • We strongly recommend using the Learn feature on a selection of audio that starts with some noise floor (or room tone), is several seconds long, and includes both the direct signal and its reverberant tails.
      
    
    
• METERING
  
  • The top meter shows a comparison between the input and output signal energy over the past five seconds of playback.
    
  • The bottom meter shows the amount of reverb reduction over time. It is the difference between input and output plotted on a flat line.
    
  • Both of the meters together give you an idea of what De-reverb considers reverb and help you refine your settings.
    
• REDUCTION: Controls the applied amount of De-reverb.
  
  • Larger amounts mean more reverb is removed.
    
  • Smaller amounts perform less processing.
    
  • This control represents the target wet/dry ratio for processing. In other words, if it is set very high, it will treat the signal as though it has more reverb and process it more.
    

    Note: Negative Reduction Values

    • Negative Reduction values will increase the amount of reverb in the signal.
      
    
    
• REVERB PROFILE: Controls the amount of De-reverb effect applied per band.
  
  • These controls are set automatically by the Learn feature.
    
  • If a group of reverberant tones are more prominent in a signal, increase the control for that band.
    
  • Generally you want to set these controls to match the reverb originally present in your signal. For example, if reverb takes longer to decay (or is more present) in a particular band, set that control higher.
    
  • These controls can also be used to address more prominent ringing or resonant groups in signals. For example, increasing the profile control for low frequencies can remove muddiness from a resonant bass guitar, while increasing the high band control can curtail ringing sibilance in live vocal recordings.
    
• TAIL LENGTH: Controls the decay of De-reverb processing. This control is an approximation of RT-60, the rate of time it takes for a reverberant signal to decrease in amplitude by 60 dB. This is automatically set by the Learn feature.
  
  • Increase this control if reverb tails reappear after processing, or if early reflections are too apparent.
    
  • Decrease this control if reverb tails and noise floors sound over-processed, or if the processed audio sounds dull.
    
  • Setting this control to the minimum value is effective at processing early reflections.
    
• ARTIFACT SMOOTHING: Controls the frequency accuracy of De-reverb processing.
  

  Artifact Smoothing Default Value Note

  Garageband guitar connetion to mac. Mar 24, 2011  How to connect Apogee ONE with iPad! You have a lot of options for mobile recording under 100$ I choose the ONE two years ago,. Use iRig HD 2 to record with other music making apps like Apple’s GarageBand and Cubasis, and all your favorite recording software like AmpliTube 4 (included with iRig HD 2), GarageBand, Logic Pro, Cubase, Pro Tools, Studio One and more for Mac/PC. Use the iRig HD 2 anywhere you play guitar – on the go, in the studio or on your home.

  • Because reverb is generally smooth across the frequency spectrum, the default value of this control is very high.
    
  • However, if you need more accuracy to address issues like resonant tones in a room, you can decrease this control. The tradeoff is generally more artifacts from strong processing, so you may have to balance adjusting this and the Reduction control.
    
  
  
• ENHANCE DRY SIGNAL: Increases the level of the direct signal.
  
  • Boosting the direct signal can help create more dynamic range in the signal, and is a good option to try when working with voice or transient material.
    
  • Enabling this option can also help prepare material for later de-noising.
    
• OUTPUT REVERB ONLY: Changes the output of De-reverb from the processed signal to the wet reverberant signal.
  
  • This is useful for monitoring the processing to get better results. Hearing just the reverb helps you understand the impact of controls like Reduction, Reverb Profile, Tail Length, and Artifact Smoothing.
    
  • When this option is enabled, the output may not sound much like reverb because it is the difference of processing against the original signal, with some enhancement to expose more of the reverb apparent in the recording.
    

More Information

What are early Reflections?

Izotope Rx 7 Audio Editor Advanced

Early reflections are the rapid echoes of a direct sound from a nearby surface. They are often distinct from the rest of a reverberant tail because they have a lot of energy but end quickly. Early reflections typically comprise the first 5 to 100 milliseconds of a reverb tail.

Using De-reverb as a real-time plug-in

• De-reverb is available as a VST/AU/RTAS/AAX real-time plug-in.
  
• However, due to the complexity of this processing, it can be resource intensive.
  
• To achieve high-quality results, it is always best to bring the audio file in question into RX Audio Editor (via RX Connect or by opening it directly), applying De-reverb, and then returning the file back to your original session.
  

Izotope Rx Create Room Tone 2

Tips for Learning a Reverb Profile

• To find the best settings for your signal quickly, find about five seconds of audio that starts with noise and has both direct signal and reverberant tails.
  
  • If you can find enough direct signal and reverberant tails to fill the De-reverb signal trace meter while using Learn, you will probably get a good reverb profile.
    
• Direct signal, reverberant tail, and noise are all important to help De-reverb understand your audio and set its controls appropriately. It needs to understand the ratio of dry signal to reverberant signal, how long reverb tails last, and where the noise floor of your signal is (to avoid excessive processing).
  
• If you have trouble getting good results from the Learn feature, you can try:
  
  • learning on transient broadband audio, like drums, claps, or coughs
    
  • learning on any audio that is obviously reverberant
    
  • learning for a longer amount of time. Most reverb can be analyzed in a few seconds, but some reverb profiles can require up to ten seconds of analysis.
    
• Does De-reverb processing sound unnatural?
  
  • **If the output of De-reverb sounds unnatural after Learning, try slowly decreasing the reduction control.
    

Create Room Plans

Visual Example of De-reverb processing

De-reverb has the effect of sharpening a signal in time. You can see this transition in the spectrogram: reverberant audio looks blurred, and cleaned audio appears more focused.
Here, a recording of a distant speaker (left) has had its long tails processed (center) before another De-reverb pass with shorter tail lengths to tackle the early reflections (right):

Tips for dealing with complicated reverbs

If the audio you are working with has a very complex reverb, such as a reverb with apparent early reflections, you may get better results after trying a few passes of De-reverb.

Izotope Rx Create Room Tone 1

1. First, start by training the De-reverb and set the Reduction amount to a value that yields good results on the long reverberant tail.
   
2. After processing, Learn a new reverb profile and try reducing the level of early reflections: set the Tail Length control to 0.5, Artifact Smoothing around 3.0, and increase Reduction.
   
3. A combination of De-reverb and Spectral De-noise can be used to tame very reverberant signals. It does not matter whether you process with De-reverb or Spectral De-noise first.