RX Restoration Guide (8.5 MB) & Audio Examples (18 MB)

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/guides.html

A most welcome addition to RX documentation, and audio restoration generally.

Yes Grazie - I'm busy reading the 75 page PDF !!!!

- to try and minimise my carbon footprint I'm sitting here looking at a screen, but I'd prefer to print and sit under a tree ....... and any traffic noise I'd get get rid of with RX.

(p.s. If Peter Gabriel likes it, maybe even superstars like us might find it useful !!)

Yes Pete.

I just wish Izo would get some better transport commands going. I keep reaching for my CSP and nothing happens! The Keystroke options are pretty sparse, otherwise I'd convert em to CSP shuttle and button controls. Maybe all us Izo-philes should be bombarding them with K-S wishes and CSP wishes.

Grazie

Yes - you're right Grazie - I'm a CSP user (just a user, not a dealer) and it would be great to have that as a control in RX. I shall write to Mr Izotope and to that well known hyphenated couple, the Contour-Shuttles


edit : spelt hyphenatde wrong

LOL!!

I would make IzoRX more of s consistent and seamless Audio Tool for Vegas. If that is the case then more people would use it too. Maybe you would want to mention THAT to them!! I have!

Is there a Public IzoRX Forum? I have a mass of ideas and techies stuff I want answered?

Grazie

Is there a Public IzoRX Forum? I have a mass of ideas and techies stuff I want answered?

Not exactly an RX forum, but an audio forum that has some RX content:
http://forums.oreilly.com/category/6/Audio-Community/

I would welcome an official RX forum. In the mean time RX is willing to listen (if not forum):


"Sound Off! iZotope wants your insight.

What new features would you like to see in your favorite iZotope product? What would you like to see iZotope make next? We want to know what you think!

Send your feedback directly to our product development team at ideas@izotope.com."

Graham , that email address looks tailor made for you. Maybe the first idea submitted should be to have an RX forum.

> For those of you who DO get the newsletter do NOT let this one fall through the grating.

Ya' know I saw the email and didn't pay much attention but this couldn't be more timely. I need to edit the audio from a play that I shot last Friday night and there was something wrong with their PA system because the feed from the board is clipped at -20dB which tells be the clipping was before the tape outs that I was using for my field recorder. I tried RX declipper briefly on Saturday but couldn't figure out how it worked. I have to have the final edits complete by tonight. Well... I just read the PDF from the newsletter and there on page 36 is a step-by-step on how to use the declippper. Thanks Grazie, You saved me hours of frustration!

If any of you don't have iZotope RX... do yourself a favor and download the trial. You will be totally blown away by this tool. It is almost Voodoo. I mean it can fix problems that we use to tell people were unfixable. RX is definitely a must-have if you do any on-location recording.

> like "Strawbs and Cream"

Funny you should mention the Strawbs... I just saw them last night at BB King's in NYC and they were fabulous. I had a table in the front center stage and was actually listening to the live sound coming off the stage instead of the PA. For guys in their 60's... they still got it! If any of you old progressive rockers (like me) get a chance to see them, don't pass it up. It will definitely take you back 'cuz they still sound just like they did 30 years ago. (OMG did I just say "30 years ago"?... the next thing you know I'll be saying, "when I was your age...") ;-)

~jr

I've spent the last week editing old audio tapes, one from 1950. RX was a major part of that. I use it both standalone and as a plugin to SF. The spectral repair, of course, is pure voodoo, like JR said. However, each of the others has "issues." The hum reduction doesn't actually do much unless you check that first checkbox, and then it introduces lots of "pre-ringing," something the manual warns about. I could have sworn it worked better in version 1.04, so I went and briefly installed that, but no, it never worked any differently.

The declicker is definitely not as good as the SF NR declicker. The de-noiser works well on some noise, but is inferior to the SF NR denoiser on others. (I have just the plain-jane Izo RX, not the Pro). The problem is the "crinkly" noise. The "musical" suppression and the threshold adjustments don't seem to reduce this, and even the old standby of doing multiple passes doesn't really get rid of them.

Finally, the declipper is brilliant. I haven't read the newsletter yet, but setting the threshold correctly -- either within the plugin or by normalizing the audio before you do the repair -- is the key to getting great results.

The transport interface is totally frustrating, however. Lack of keyboard shortcuts for basic transport functions; the lack of markers to set in/out points or places to go back to; the inability to have BOTH a key that returns the cursor to where it was, and another key that stops the cursor at the current play location (space bar and Enter in SF) -- well I could go on, but it's pretty primitive.

So for me, RX is a brilliant two-trick affair with the spectral repair and the declipper being absolutely essential. But the declicker is poor; the denoiser introduces artifacts; and the hum removal doesn't work in the basic mode, and introduces all sorts of weird ringing if you use the linear phase filters.

I'll definitely have to read the newsletter and see if some of this is just cockpit error.

I'm really thinking about buying this software. Is the RX version sufficient? The expensive version is out of my price-range.

I noticed that it is quite a bit better at dealers like B&H than it is off the website directly.

I like it 'cos of the visual way it presents the stuff to me; allows me to draw on the Spectrogram and loop and adjust and loop and listen and loop and erase . . and so on. Don't think I could do that with NR? Adjust on the fly? I have tried and ruined much work, and spent masses of time with NR. John Meyer has a major jump on my IT knowledge. But, for ease and my right brain it does me - quicktime! I can "see" the damage. That is what it is amazing at. If I hear nonsense then I backtrack and readjust .. on the fly.

And yes, as I pointed out, the transport controls are lacking. But as the company appears to be responsive to ideas and sharp, I would hope their updates will include better controls.

Grazie

I just ordered Izotope RX: $279 from Musician's Friend (USA) including shipping.

Edit: corrected a typo on the price.

> I'm really thinking about buying this software. Is the RX version sufficient?

That's the version I have. I've only tried spectral repair and now declipper and they work great. I can't speak for denose, dehum, etc. as I haven't really had to use them yet but the spectral repair is worth the price alone.

> I noticed that it is quite a bit better at dealers like B&H than it is off the website directly.

Most manufacturers will not undercut their dealers so you almost always get a better price with dealers and B&H prices are hard to beat. I even purchased an item at NAB that was supposed to be an NAB "special" price and B&H had it cheaper! Now I always check B&H before buying anything.

~jr

Here's a link to all their newsletters:

Izotope Newsletters

I don't see a June newsletter, but the February 2008 newsletter is 74 pages and contains the material Grazie has referenced. Maybe the email delivery is a little slow across the pond?

Well, I just doubled-checked and it quite clearly says: "iZotope Monthly Newsletter June 2008" weird?

Anybody else see the date on this too?

Grazie

. . just opened the link to the Feb Newsletter, I and can't see the 74 pages there?

"I just ordered Izotope RX: $179 from Musician's Friend (USA) including shipping."

Laurence, where did you find that specuial? Cheapest I've found it for on the website is $279.

Plas

The linking on the Izotope site is bonkers. I have no idea how I got from that link I posted earlier (which only lists newsletters until Feb 2008, and then doesn't actually link to any of them). However, here is a link directly to the page that has the newsletter that is the subject of this thread:

Izotope RX Audio Restoration Guide

does it do rms normalizing? cause that is the absolute essential sound forge function for me...never had much luck with waves denoise, i'll give this one a shot...thanks for the note

"I just ordered Izotope RX: $179 from Musician's Friend (USA) including shipping."

Sorry. That was a typo. I paid $279 including shipping.

does it do rms normalizing?

No. This is a specialty tool, not a full-fledged DAW. There is some sort of basic EQ and "gain" control, but no normalizing, compression, etc.

Yes, John, and that's where I got to this morning, when I read the JUNE Newsletter and hence my enthusiasm & posting here. Now, was that PDF there in February?

Grazie

"the denoiser introduces artifacts"

Curious. The thing that impressed me the most about RX was the absence of artifacts in the denoising algorithm. I always use the "Type C" setting for my final output. It used to painfully slow until the last version of RX which takes advantage of multi-core machines.

As much as I respect Waves (I use their plugins all the time) their noise reduction plugins, X-Noise and Z-Noise, just suck. Until RX, I had used the Sony SF noise reduction exclusively, but now it's 100% RX. It's got a long way to go in the interface department, but it's core audio restoration abilities are miraculous.