Recording - June 2015 - 36

&
iZotope RX4

Advanced

The well-liked audio restoration suite
adds fantastic vocal/voiceover tools
by Paul Vnuk Jr.

It's been almost a year to the day since we
took a look at iZotope's RX 3 Advanced in our
June 2014 issue. Now it's time to check in on
what's new in RX 4 Advanced, but first let's take
a quick refresher on exactly what RX is.
RX 4: an overview
RX 4 Advanced is a comprehensive set of
audio restoration tools available as a standalone audio editor program, and many of the
editor's modules are also available as plug-ins
for use in your favorite DAW. RX 4 contains a
new plug-in called RX Connect, which acts as a
bridge to export files out of your DAW into RX
4's standalone editor and back again.
In addition to the Advanced version, which
retails for $1199, there is also a standard version
for $349. While many of the modules are available in both versions, they often offer more features in Advanced, as well as adaptive modes.
There are too many processes to list them all here,
but if it's dedicated to audio restoration and
repair-from Denoise and Declick to Hum
Removal, Spectral Analysis, and even advanced
processes like full-on Spectral Repair-it's in there.
In RX3 we saw the addition of Dereverb,
which both tames and removes unwanted reverb
and ambience in your files, and Dialog
Denoiser, a noise removal plug-in with a focus
on speech, complete with an automatic/adaptive mode. RX 4 Advanced also includes a
healthy complement of other iZotope processes,
such as the revered Sample Rate Converter, the
Insight Metering software suite (reviewed in our
2013 Gift Guide), and more!
The new 4 x 4
RX 4 Advanced adds four new processes: EQ
Match, Ambience Match, Leveler, and Loudness.
Each of these provides a focus on consistency
and control for speech and dialog work.
36

RECORDING June 2015

...where we bring you follow-up articles
with application hints and upgrade news
about gear already reviewed in Recording

There are also four additions to the regular version of RX 4 as well. The first two
processes are RX Connect (mentioned above) and Clip Gain-a new nondestructive manual volume envelope feature in the standalone RX editor that can be found
in both RX 4 and RX 4 Advanced. Dialog Denoiser and Adaptive Hum Removal,
originally part of RX 3 Advanced, are now available in the standard RX 4 program.
EQ Match
Last week, I had just finished a voiceover edit when a coworker casually walked
by my office door and informed me that part of a reference in the dialog was
wrong. Of course I had to punch in the part with the corrected dialog, and even
though it was with the same mic, in the same space, it was now 6 hours later. The
new audio had a slightly brighter tinge compared to the previous, deeper "morning voice". Simply put, EQ Match fixed it in a very impressively quick and simple
way. I also used it with similar results on a corporate video with a client where one
shoot used a lav mic while a later shoot used a camera-mounted shotgun mic. EQ
Match did a great job of bringing both clips much closer together in tone and feel.
I did try it on a full song mix, matching a professional master to a final unmastered mix of my own. It did indeed add the EQ curve of the one mix to the other.
Even though both songs were a similar alt-folk style, I would put the results in
the realm of "nifty tonal trick" vs. "now I don't need a mastering engineer". It
worked best when blended at about 40% or less in the mix.
Ambience Match
This process is not what its name might imply-it will not take the reverb from
one mix and change another mix to match it. Instead, it takes background
noise, ambience, and depth from one mix and does one of two tasks with it.

Recording - June 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - June 2015