The Sound Board

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx.html

On paper I was scathing about this feature list. However the Spectral Recovery improvements suggested here make me think maybe I was too hasty. For a long time I’ve thought lower frequency reconstitution might be possible, and this could be a big deal for me - iF it works well.

The audio-to-text looks cute, but I think it won’t be all that useful - yet. First it looks slow to calculate. I can see people just turning it off if it’s also CPU intensive. Second, for it to be useful to search for words, it needs to have all audio in it, not just the small parts you are working on. In a film/TV post-production project, that’s not going to happen. Finally even if you DO have alt words in the session, they missed a trick where they can auto-preview / replace - it’s still a relatively clumsy copy and paste job. Maybe RX11?

Various upgrade deals, log in to check.

First tests.
The new Repair Assistant is brilliant.
Program feels snappier than RX9, have not compared render times so this could also be the shining new toy syndrome.
Will do more tests in the coming weeks.
But, happy with the upgrade.
The dialogue de-noise also "feels" like it's been improved.
But again a new toy....

/Anders

Glad to hear it Anders. I have a short film coming up with some dialog I know is going to be challenging. I only hope my computer can keep up with v10.

OK, here's my first tests on RX10 Spectral Repair's new low end, on my voice (sorry). For these tests I start clean, then take off a lot of low end, then attempt to put it back using Spectral Repair's LF set to 400hz, then finally compare with the clean again.

TEST 1
This used a very gentle shelf rolling off starting at 1khz down to be totally out at 200hz. I did 2 eq passes on the fixed section, first to roll off the extreme LF where there was just bumps and noise, and second to boost at around 500hz a little to compensate for that gentle shelf in the lower mids. It worked pretty well.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xrbn22yqxifab ... 1.wav?dl=0

TEST 2
I then tried it again, only this time using a much steeper 48db/oct shelf at 400hz for my destructive EQ. I did this because I thought it might match that cutoff point in Spectral Repair, and make a best case scenario. As you'll hear however, for whatever reason it made it much worse.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m8uwo1e51yqyl ... 2.wav?dl=0

CONCLUSION
Promising, but - as always with NR - sometimes it works much better than others. Inadvertently that first test I think is best case - I did a few other tests that all had that pumping noise in it. But in favourable conditions it can boost the fundamental and lower harmonics pretty well, and I'd be glad to have this in my toolkit.

TEXT DETECTION TEST

Here's part of that file put through text detection (you might need to zoom in the image to read it)



Not very accurate, and fairly slow to do. Nice touch - it didn't recgonise me saying "RX". Ignored it completely.

CONCLUSION
Pointless. Doesn't work well (iZotope claim it works better on US voices), clumsy in use.

REPAIR ASSISTANT

I didn't think I was going to use this much, and on a first test that seems confirmed. Apart from anything else, the only de-noising module in it is the basic real time vocal de-noise, which is the worst of the bunch (and nowhere near as good as Waves Clarity VX). There's no Dialogue Isolate, and no proper Spectral Denoise where you can capture a profile.

Almost certain it'll be quicker for me to have the modules I use most open as now and select what I need.

CONCLUSION
Not useful in my workflow.

FEATHERING

This might be useful, but it only seems to work in the specific Feathering mode - ie it doesn't work with the gain module or what have you.

ADAPTIVE DE-HUM

I so rarely need to use de-hum. But the new blurb said it works on other variable pitch sources, so I thought I'd try it on something I get a lot of - noisy engine sounds, where a whine or low engine noise can be overbearing as the speed changes.

It didn't really work at all. Now this probably isn't the use they have in mind, but nevertheless for me it's another module of only very limited benefit.

OVERALL CONCLUSION

As I suspected, for me there's really only one major improvement - Spectral Replace. It's hit and miss, but I do like the hit. I'm currently wavering over whether or not this plus other marginal improvements across three products justifies $199 for the Everything iZotope bundle

So I'm in a dilemma with this. Audio Deluxe are offering an additional $20 off, and I have $50 of whatever their sort of credit points thing is, so I can get the Everything bundle for about £110. What a deal.

Yet... I've been through everything again. There's really nothing in Neutron 4 or Ozone 10 I'll use, above what I have (I doubt I'll ever use Ozone until their VST hosting supports Waves, which will likely never happen). Neoverb, I just don't want yet another reverb. Also I'm sick of another dozen new plugins appearing everywhere, most of which are the same as the previous ones (this is mostly a deal in Pro Tools where customisation isn't really possible and I have to remove the plugins by hand).

In practice, I think it's literally just that Spectral Recovery module which I know will be patchy, but just occasionally save my bacon.

Everyone is ragging on all the Soundwide companies all the time, and it's often empty and tedious noise. But at this point, I think iZotope has a lot of questions to answer. Even the ultra-loyal Pro Tools Expert expressed quite strong disappointment in their review. All these updates just feel like a whole lot of noise for close-to-nothing. And yes, I'm pretty irritated that I spent a long time with them last year demonstrating that the dialogue detection algorithm in Dialog Isolate had got worse, they seemed to agree and absolutely nothing has been done. Instead they ploughed resources into a useless speech to text feature that hardly anyone will use. They're neglecting their core business, and just offering new packaging to distract us.

So even though the deal looks like a no-brainer, at the moment I'm thinking I'll most likely skip. I could just update RX for $149, but again I'm not sure it's worth it. This update should be $49, not $149. That might just be worth the slew of repetitious installs.