Has anyone here purchased iZotope RX7? A friend of mine spoke very highly of the Voice De-noise feature so now I’m intrigued. If you’ve bought it and used it, I’d love to read your thoughts, both good and bad. Thanks in advance!
What are you hoping to use it for?
Here’s what my friend said about it:
“Our engineer was using a really cool plugin on a few things. iZotope Denoise. You have to record in front of it to let it detect ambient noise then it cancels the ambient noise from the track without affecting the instrument.”
If I understand correctly, this could be helpful for recording in a room that’s less than stellar. Does that make sense?
So are you trying to remove the “room tone” from room reflections, or the ambient noise of things like central air blowing or refrigerators running? I don’t think it’s going to help with the room sound itself, though I guess it’s possible with technology continually advancing. I have RX2, haven’t updated though I’m sure the tools are a bit better now. I found there’s quite a learning curve to that stuff, to tweak all the options to get it to work optimally. Some presets might work fine out of the box, but I think that’s depending on luck.
If you use Reaper, the ReaFIR plugin “Subtract” function can do very well with background noises (like central air), and it’s basically ‘free’ with Reaper. My question for RX7 is will it provide some ROI for you?
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That’s exactly what I was going to suggest. Maybe RX will do a better job… but I’m not sure. And I agree that it won’t help with a poor sounding room, but could help if you have extra background noise or a high noise floor or something.
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That company makes the craziest most mind blowing software I’ve ever seen. Its hands down the most innovative product line I’ve seen in the entire recording industry. I would seriously loved to buy stock in this company, but its not publicly traded lol.
RX7 and RX7 advanced are like the Waves Restoration bundle on steroids times infinity. Its way way better, faster to dial in, and easier to use. So voice de-noise scans the audio track sample by sample, analyzes what is dialogue and what is not dialogue, and either attenuates or replaces the noise that it determines is not dialogue. When the AI decides to replace it, it makes a judgement call based on what its before it on a timeline, and then what is above and below it on the frequency spectrum. It then synthetically re-constructs audio that it thinks it wants to hear in real time. So after it removes noise it may see…
He lo _y na-- is J nath
And then it goes Ah: I think they want this!
Hello my name is Jonathan
So it has a very different way of eliminating noise. The Waves version does this.
HELLo my NAMe is jonAThan
to
hello my name is jonathan.
So it just shrinks or attenuates the noise profile.
So for room tone and room reflections (imagine trying to shoot a dry vocal sounding in a bathroom shower). Yes, Izotope does that extremely well. Better than anything else on the market right now. You can take the software and tell it to target room ambience on dialogue. The software will then examine each line of dialogue word by word, and then eliminate room reflections based on what it interprets the speaker to be saying. Contrary to something like the SPL de-verb which is a glorified gate, the Izotope verb remover is managed by an AI system that makes second by second adjustments based on what it sees when it scans ahead in the file.
AL, I should give you a heads up that while some of the tools in the RX bundle are click/preview/process one click solutions, some of the tools have a complex learning curve. Its not as bad a learning a DAW, but it takes a lot of time to get used to them. I would compare RX in complexity to attempting to thoroughly master a software program like Uhe Zebra, or NI Massive. When I first started working in film and broadcast it took me months of training and practice to get good with RX.
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Great info! I just have the elements bundle, and maybe I wasn’t using it right, but it always seemed kinda lackluster to me. But I’ll take your word for it! I would still think it’s more useful in non-music audio… like field recordings and broadcasting. Would you agree?
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The question I’d ask myself is whether or not having a really good denoiser will make your recordings better than having just an average one. I don’t think there’s a lot of debate about whether or not izotope does a really good job of it.
But I’ve personally found that noise reduction is rarely a needed thing when making music. Unless there are some really bad issues, it seems like it would be overkill. What sort of noise issues are you having that you think you might need this?
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Ha, I should have known, AI invades the audio industry! 
Yes I do pick on AI, though over on my ongoing thread “The race for AI-based technological dominance” I’m calling most if not all of it “machine learning”. True AI would act completely independently of humans, in theory. Smart and self-learning algorithms may be getting closer and closer, but for now I think in most cases AI is more of a “pop” slang usage than technically correct. Anyway, I digress. 
I guess I didn’t realize they had taken the tools that far. I may have to upgrade when a sale comes along, so I can play AI with the cool kids. 
(<— I just remembered that’s why BigAl started the thread …)
From the iZotope site for RX7 Standard:
RX 7 Standard features the latest advances in machine learning and assistive technology including Music Rebalance, Vocal Isolation and Removal, Repair Assistant, a full suite of music and dialogue repair tools, and more. Upgrade today for a special price.
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So far, nothing I’ve purchased has provided any ROI since it’s mostly hobby stuff I do.
Thanks for the heads up.
I honestly don’t know.
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If you don’t know, then the answer is probably that it won’t. It’s way more effective to say “I have this specific problem that I need fixed,” then find a product that will fix it rather than “This product looks super cool. Hopefully I’ll find a need for it.”
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Fair enough. Maybe if I see it in action sometime, I’ll have a better understanding.
I don’t know if this speaks to your interest and needs, but it’s the closest I could find in a quick search. No need to watch the whole video unless you want to, 23+ minutes, but watch until you get an idea about it if you wish. It gives you some idea of the tools and what it looks like to work with it.
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As Stan said, Reaper’s Reafir does the trick for me. I don’t use it often but when I have it’s been great.
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Thanks. I’ll check it out today!
I wish Reaper would do the stand alone plugins on Mac like they do for Windows. I’d really like to try this!
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