Izotope Rx Spectral Repair Tutorial

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In this video, I’m going to cover how to use the brand new Spectral De-Esser in RX 6 in a music production context, using a vocal sample.

Once you’ve downloaded the test file called, “Vocal Production_Spectral De-Ess” for this tutorial from the RX web page and opened it in RX by clicking and dragging it into the RX application window, or by opening RX and pressing Command+O or Control+O on a PC to locate and open it, your RX window should look like mine, with the file, “Vocal Production_Spectral De-Ess” in a tab on the top-left of the screen.

In this vocal sample, I’m hearing a lot of sibilance. Harsh frequencies usually audible in words that have an “s” in them. I’m going to play back this sample and see if you can hear those harsh frequencies that I’m talking about. They’re especially present when the vocalist uses the words, “sunrise,” “anticipant,” and “sway.”

I’m going to press return to bring the playback head to the beginning of the sample, and then space bar to play the sample.

Mar 30, 2018  A few weeks back I was introduced to iZotope’s RX6 noise reduction and audio repair software. From my first look at this industry leading software I was amazed at how authentically it is able to achieve what is does, whilst maintaining integrity of the original audio asset whether it be music or in a post production scenario.

[vocals]

RX 6 includes Spectral Repair allowing you to surgically remove noise issues that can ruin an otherwise flawless performance. Instantly paint away recording issues like air conditioners, fret noise, outdoor traffic, cell phones, and mic bumps in a matter of seconds. Perfect for home recording studios and live performances where ambient noise is an issue. Video Description: The Spectral Repair module in iZotope RX can work like magic on recordings that might seem beyond repair. In this video you see it in action on a siren in the background. Forum discussions on this course. PROBLEM WITH RX -7 CONTROLS. Dec 18th, 2019, 06:46 by Joe A. Video Description: The Spectral Repair module in iZotope RX can work like magic on recordings that might seem beyond repair. In this video you see it in action on a siren in the background. RX 6 Overview. IZotope’s award-winning RX 6 Audio Editor is the industry standard for audio repair, restoration, and enhancement. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools focused on alleviating common to complex audio issues. The latest version of iZotope’s best-selling restoration software adds powerful new modules, as well as a Post Production Suite bundle aimed at film and TV applications. It seems that along with Christmas, another regular annual event we can rely upon is a new version of iZotope’s RX Audio Editor software. RX Elements is a budget-friendly version of the RX noise reduction and audio repair tool for small home studios that need the basics. It includes the standalone audio editor and spectral editing so you can visually identify audio problems then use familiar editing tools to fix the issue.

Not only can we hear those “s” sounds, but we can see them very clearly in the spectrogram, which allows us to visualize frequencies from zero 20,000Hz on the y-axis.

We can visualize the amplitude of frequencies too, depending on the loudness. Cyan if quiet, and bright orange to white if very loud.

I’m going to use this slider on the bottom left so that I can get a better look at just the frequencies, and not the waveform in blue running across the x-axis. I’ll slide it all the way to the right.

So, the sibilance that we were hearing is visualized really nicely with these bright orange streaks. Let’s take care of the sibilance by using the brand new spectral de-esser in RX 6, which I’ll locate on the right in the de-esser module.

I’ll click on that and set it to spectral from classic. Classic works well too, but the spectral de-esser affords us a more transparent, intelligent, and frequency specific type of de-essing in classic mode by only attenuating events where sibilance is most active.

Let’s quickly go through these parameters, and then we’ll dial in some settings to tame those “s” sounds.

First, we have the threshold. This determines the level at which the de-ess module begins compressing sibilance. The threshold control has two modes that determine how it reacts to incoming signal level. It’s specified in decibels relative to the speech level, that’s relative mode, or full scale in absolute mode.

You’ll see that when I click on absolute, you go from dB to dBFS. I’m going to leave it in relative mode and un-click absolute right now.

The cut-off frequency specifies the crossover point between the speech to be preserved, and the sibilance to be reduced. I can see from the spectrogram that the sibilant events begin at around 4,200Hz and are active upwards from there, so that’s where I’m going to tell Spectral De-Ess to start detecting sibilance.

I’ll just double click here, then type in my values. Perfect. In other words, we’re telling the de-esser to shine a flashlight to look for sibilance up here above 4,200Hz, and don’t bother looking below 4,200Hz.

Now, to be sure that the Spectral De-Esser is only listening for harsh “s” sounds, I’ll click, “output ess only,” and what this will do is it will allow me to hear only what the de-esser is hearing. I’m doing this to make sure that the de-esser isn’t messing with audio that isn’t strictly sibilance.

So if I can hear entire words, or other events not associated with the sibilance when I preview this, it means I’ve gone too far. I need to adjust some parameters to make sure that only sibilant events are being affected by Spectral De-Ess.

Let’s do just that. I’m going to press preview and have a listen.

[Spectral De-Ess, ess only preview]

Great. I feel confident that the de-esser is only listening for harsh sibilant events. I’ll un-tick this box, now let’s keep going through the parameters.

We have fast and slow. Think of these like attack and release settings on a compressor. Settings that are too fast will reduce the high frequency signal too much in the initial transient phase, and create a sound that is too smooth.

Spectral

If the settings are too slow, the processor won’t recover quickly enough, resulting in too much high frequency compression overall. I’m going to leave it on fast, because some of these sibilant events are close together, and I want to make sure that the de-esser can recover fast enough to catch them all, and personally, it just sounds better to me, given this vocal material, and if it sounds good, it is good.

Next is spectral shaping. This determines how much of the spectral shape the sibilant is changed. A setting of 0% leaves the natural shape of the sibilance by applying uniform compression across all bands. A setting of 100% flattens the shape of the sibilant towards a specified noise profile that we’ve chosen in spectral tilt, which I’ll explain really quickly.

Spectral tilt creates a noise profile for the sibilance. A setting of zero, as we have it now, creates a natural spectral decay, similar to pink noise. Values below or above zero create a profile that is heavier in low frequencies, like brown noise, or high frequencies like white noise.

In other words, moving this shape towards brown noise moves it towards a darker sound. Moving the shape toward white noise provides a brighter result.

Izotope Rx-7 Spectral Repair Tutorial

I’m going to stay with my pink noise profile, and I’ll push my shaping to around 70% so that it really conforms to the noise profile that I’ve picked in the spectral tilt section.

Now that I’m happy with my settings, I don’t want to forget them, so I’ll save them as a preset by clicking here and choosing “add preset.” I’ll name it “Pink Preset” and press enter.

There’s a few ways to preview these settings. I can choose to preview them using the preview function, or I can quickly A/B this setting among other settings using the compare feature.

However, I’m pretty confident with my settings, and I don’t feel the need to spend time comparing them to a whole bunch of other parameters, so I’ll press “preview” and listen back.

[vocals, previewed after Spectral De-Ess]

That sounded great. So I’ll commit my changes my pressing process.

I’ve clicked out of de-ess, and now I want to focus your attention to this little box on the bottom right. This is our undo history window, and what we can do here is toggle back and forth between the original, initial state, our before, and our newly de-essed track.

Let’s do just that. So here’s before we did any processing with the de-esser.

[vocals, no processing]

Izotope Rx Spectral Repair Tutorial Youtube

And now I’ll switch over to my newly de-essed file. Here’s after.

[vocals, after de-essing]

Hopefully this gives you a good starting point for taking care of sibilance in RX 6 using the new Spectral De-Esser. Be sure to download all the test files, and check out our other in-depth tutorials to make the most of your music and RX 6.

RX Advanced is iZotope’s flagship audio-correction/fixing application. A couple of versions ago, the app became a true editor with the ability to record and edit audio and to fix, correct and adjust using sophisticated machine learning algorithms. As with all technology, the app continuously evolves and improves, and the latest version, RX 7 Advanced, is now capable of intelligently identifying vocals, bass, percussion and other instruments in a mix. In addition, RX 7 Advanced now also supports surround sound.

The RX interface gives users a synthesized overview of recorded audio, with the waveform in blue on top of the sound’s spectral information. In order to understand exactly what you’re fixing or editing, you need to understand that the waveform only represents the sound’s volume, whereas the spectrograph shows the sound’s energy, i.e. the different frequencies, harmonics, etc. How to fix write protected windows omnisphere 2. You can process a complete file or selections of it.

With RX 6 Advanced, you could change music in ways that sound perfectly natural — not a hint of having done it in software. With RX 7 Advanced, you can do the same to dialogue. In fact, RX 7 Advanced is so good at correcting imperfections in recordings, in many cases you will be able to use it as a faster and cheaper alternative to ADR.

RX 7 Advanced with Dialogue: an Alternative to ADR

I quickly realized this when I experimented with the Dialogue Contour module. When I’m recording a video tutorial for some app, I have a tendency to increase my voice’s pitch as I approach the last part, but then realize I still need to add a closing thought. Often, that turns out to be totally uncalled for — at which point I find myself with an end that sounds like it’s a question.

The only fix so far has been to start over again or record a voiceover. That’s hard to synchronize with the rest of the video without software like VocAlign or Revoice Pro. With RX 7 Advanced’s Dialogue Contour, however, I can now just lower my voice in the module, and you won’t hear that it was not recorded that way, no matter how hard you try.

With RX 7 Advanced, you can also isolate or remove dialogue or vocals from music. When in a video of a restaurant with background music, for example, the dialogue is hard to hear, you can fix that with Music Rebalance. This also allows you to create instrumental (or acapella) versions of songs by removing the vocal elements and isolating the vocals from the background music. I had my doubts about this, but after trying it out myself with different settings, I am truly astonished that it works so well. I could even isolate Cecilia Bartoli’s voice from the violins in an aria on The Salieri Album. Admittedly, with the default setting there was a tiny bit of bleeding from those violins in her voice. But a bit of experimenting with the slider delivered a pure vocal signal.

De-Reverb is a module that has been available in RX Advanced for some time, but now there’s also Dialogue De-Reverb for removing unwanted reverb from dialogue clips using an algorithm optimized for a “spoken signal”. I tried that with a recording of an announcement over the intercom by a museum guide in a cathedral. That didn’t work because the signal was 99% reverberation. However, speaking myself in a microphone in that same cathedral worked much better than I could have imagined. This module, too, could be used in place of ADR.

Surround Sound

RX 7 Advanced now also supports 7.1.2 multichannel surround sound. It lets you work on multichannel projects by toggling between all channels in one view or displaying a summed view. You can also turn individual channels on and off, summing only the ones you want to work on.

Finally, iZotope’s RX 7 Advanced has assistive audio technology. This module is an intelligent repair tool that can detect noise, clipping, clicks, and more. It’s designed to speed up correction and edits. All you need to do is select the type of material (music, dialogue, other) and let RX 7 Advanced analyze the audio. The Repair Assistant then offers different suggestions for processing, using multiple modules, as well as three different intensities for each.

Your task is reduced to reviewing and auditioning, hitting Render, and letting Repair Assistant perform its magic.

I found the Repair Assistant to be really helpful with certain audio files and less so with others. Unfortunately — and as far as I could see — there’s no fixed rule to determine whether or not files are suitable to run through the Repair Assistant. The only rule I could deduce was that, if the audio has many sudden, unexpected artifacts that you can’t categorize as noise, clipping or clicks — and certainly when they sound like they’re really part of the signal you want to rescue — Repair Assistant sometimes isn’t going to cut it. Yet. I expect it to keep improving in future releases.

Insight 2

Besides RX 7, iZotope also upgraded its audio analysis tool, Insight. Insight 2 works in tandem with an iZotope plug-in, Relay, that allows you to monitor the interaction of two or more tracks or channels with the track you’re analyzing. If you insert an Insight 2 instance on the Master track, you can analyze up to eight different tracks upstream.

Insight 2 has new features as well. For example, the Intelligibility module allows you to measure whether your dialogue mix holds up in different listener environments. With the Intelligibility meter inserted on the master track, you can ensure that a dialogue is clearly understandable in low, medium and high noise environments. How those are defined remains somewhat obscure, although it does work as you’d expect. The meter requires that a Relay instance, which is inserted on a track or bus that feeds into the master output, be selected as the Source instance.

Izotope Rx Elements

Another module that can tap into the Relay feature is the Spectrogram (2D or 3D), which provides a spectral representation of audio varying over time, allowing you to analyze individual elements within a mix. It can display data for up to eight sources simultaneously by selecting Relay instances in the source selection menu.

Izotope Rx Spectral Repair Tutorial Download

As with RX 7 Advanced, Insight 2 supports surround sound. For example, you can monitor the loudness of your surround sound mixes with support for Dolby Atmos 7.1.2 track configurations, but you can also monitor the surround sound field with a surround scope that shows the amplitude of surround channels. The Surround Scope not only monitors the phase relationship between neighboring audio channels, but also displays an alert when there is a negative correlation or phase cancellation taking place.

Conclusion

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The RX 7 Advanced upgrade focuses on the human voice in both musical and noisy environments. It succeeds brilliantly at extracting vocal signals for you to manipulate. The vocal capabilities of RX 7 Advanced are so good that you can use RX 7 Advanced to fix dialogue instead of performing ADR.

Izotope Rx 5

Both RX 7 Advanced and Insight 2 now support surround sound, which makes them very suitable for cinema and video. Combined with the rather spectacular results you may expect from the machine-learning algorithms, there are now numerous cases which you don’t really need an experienced sound engineer for anymore.

In short, both apps deserve at least a closer look — a demo download is available — after which I think you will find them both must-haves.