Izotope RX4 on sale

[billf]

Just an FYI, I received an email this morning from Izotope about the new RX 4 release. For those interested, it is on sale until Sept. 25th at the Izotope website.

[mikehalloran]

Now through September 25

RX 4 Advanced Price: $1,199.00 $999.00 USD
RX 4 Price: $349.00 $299.00 USD

The upgrade for Advanced is $299 from earlier versions of Advanced. $99 upgrade from earlier versions of RX. Clicking through to Sweetwater gives you those same prices plus $700 upgrade from RX 1/2/3 to Advanced.

Since I purchased RX 3 Advanced two months earlier than I would have qualified for the no-charge upgrade (July 1 or later), I've written to see if they will cut me any slack on the price. Worst that can happen is they say, No, and I'll decide that RX 3A is working great (it is) and I don't need the new features at this time (not certain that I do).

RX 2 worked pretty well but the GUI was hard on system resources. With the window open, I could do little else. Running in the background, I had no problem. I upgraded to Advanced with RX 3A for the additional ability to tweak the individual modules rather than the new tools, some of which are quite cool–and the GUI freeze issue was gone.

[billf]

I am on the regular version, so for me it was $99 upgrade, which was worth it. RX isn't something I use every day, but currently I have project where I have to take some old 4 track tapes, pull those into DP and use RX to clean things up. It's certainly worthy of the task.

Hope you get a good deal on the pricing Mike.

Cheers.

[Shooshie]

I haven't even upgraded past RX2, because I rarely use that. As for the advanced version, I'll wait until I have a file that's worth that much before I get that!

Shoosh

[mhschmieder]

I would say that I use RX Advanced as often, if not more so, as Digital Performer, as I need to perform its tasks almost daily, even if too busy with my day job to be recording, mixing, and arranging.

Even so, $400 is a lot for an upgrade one year after the last one, and given that it mostly seems to be about some new features (which I may not have a chance to use for long enough to not just wait a year for RX5, if this is their new plan).

The RX3 upgrade was a no-brainer due to all the reasons mentioned earlier. The workflow and performance of RX3 far exceed RX2, and I do use its new features regularly.

I can't imagine life without RX Advanced. It's a life-saver. Not just for SRC and the like (we could do that already with similar quality in other tools that used the iZotope technology), but for making rehearsal and gig recordings (done by someone inexperienced in most cases and with crappy easily-overloaded portable recorders) listenable and semi-professional.

[mikehalloran]

Audio Deluxe just emailed the following:

RX 4 Advanced (From RX 1-3 Advanced) $257.49

You have to go to this site and punch in your serial number to get the quote. They claim similar sale prices on the other versions of RX 4.
http://audiodeluxe.com/izotope-upgrade? ... 2b6fab38f0

[mhschmieder]

Yep, did that a second ago; got the email late last night and received the confirmation link this morning.

$250 is way better than $400.

[mhschmieder]

I had to open a support ticket as RX4 Advanced refuses to authorize, and throws out a different error message each time.

First it said I didn't have an iLok, so I hot swapped it and this seemed to help some (I had the same problem earlier this week with Peavey ReValver 4 not seeing an iLok unless it is hot swapped during authorization as it needs a "new" device for it to work).

Then I tried from the website but it made me choose a new password as it's a new website. So I started from scratch at that point, and then got an error message that the license is not valid for iLok authorization or the iLok already has an RX4 Advanced authorization on it and to use challenge/response instead (fairly contradictory to say the least, and also not true).

Yes, I watched the tutorial videos on iLok authorization, but I think this might be iZotope's first new product update (major revision, requiring new authorization) since iLok went to standalone vs. browser-hosted login. I'm betting it can't see the login from this new standalone iLok app.

I do not want to switch to challenge/response as I consider it risky to be connected to the internet (especially having a browser running) during a session. That's why I choose iLok.

[mhschmieder]

Here's another caveat:

RX4 Advanced does not have a Spectral Repair unit, so I'm not deleting RX3 Advanced until I figure out what's up with that.

Maybe it got merged into one of the other units.

Edit: This is going to be hard to figure out while I'm locked out of using the product. In Trial Mode though, the Standalone version shows a Spectral Repair module. Maybe that's no longer available in the Audio Units version, or as I suggested, got merged.

I'll see if I can safely try the AU versions in DP or another host, but that usually causes problems if there's authorization issues and sometimes a project gets "stuck" if opened a long time afterwards.

[mhschmieder]

OK, lots of red herrings, so they need to fix their authorization wizard for sure.

Somehow, in spite of all the error messages, the licenses finally arrived in my iLok account to drag/drop to my iLok from the iLok standalone app.

After that, relaunching RX4 Advanced produced more errors, but if I then click the Authorize button yet again, it finally gives me a successful authorization message instantly and says it's finished.

Too many scary messages that are off-base as to what's really going on. Maybe they hired the same programmer Peavey did for ReValver 4?

[billf]

OK, lots of red herrings, so they need to fix their authorization wizard for sure.

Somehow, in spite of all the error messages, the licenses finally arrived in my iLok account to drag/drop to my iLok from the iLok standalone app.

After that, relaunching RX4 Advanced produced more errors, but if I then click the Authorize button yet again, it finally gives me a successful authorization message instantly and says it's finished.

Too many scary messages that are off-base as to what's really going on. Maybe they hired the same programmer Peavey did for ReValver 4?

FYI, I don't have Advanced, I just have the regular RX4 and haven't had any of those issues. Did you try reinstalling it?

[mikehalloran]

With RX 3A, I had the same issues. The problem is that the authorised libraries don't always overwrite the demo libraries like they're supposed to in Mavericks.

Here's what worked for me: Library/Application Support/Izotope/RX_ You will find an Uninstaller. Run it. If this doesn't work properly in Mavericks, that's ok because it generates a Log. In the Log, you will see a few folders containing all of the files that weren't removed. Find and drag those folders to Trash and empty.

Re-run the installer again. You shouldn't have to re-authorise.

Izotope told me this would be fixed at Winter NAMM. They also told me that RX 4 wasn't on the horizon for this year.

They're also doing nothing for me on the price because I bought two months early. Since I bought from Sweetwater, I will give them a chance to intercede on my behalf - I talked to them about this last July,

Oh well...

[mhschmieder]

Cool; I was wondering where the uninstaller was hiding. I did look for it but couldn't find it. Luckily, with enough bootstrapping, the problem worked itself out, but this advice should help those who haven't upgraded yet.

[mhschmieder]

They were gracious and thankful for my detailed description of the problems, so I feel good about that, as I feared perhaps hubris was setting in.

I think since the economic downturn, these semi-small companies have been desperate to get product out as fast as possible, to stay relevant and alive. So they probably haven't been able to afford dedicated resources to making things like installers as smooth as possible.

[mhschmieder]

Spectral Repair is in there, listed in the manual, and for the standalone version is in the top right where the modules are stacked. It brings up a small window with a bunch of tabs, and seems more full-featured than before.

Not sure which installed plug-in it's in as I brought them all up and didn't see it. Well, sort of. The "Connect" plug-in comes up with a recommendation to use RX as an external editor in DP, and has a greyed0out non-selectable "Reference" button and "Repair" button below that message.

It's no big deal as I wouldn't likely use that feature inside DP vs. in standalone mode, but I'm still surprised they removed it from the plug-in feature set as it was there in RX3.

Does anyone know how/where to get a PDF copy of the RX4 user manual? I really do not like having to click on something that brings up the browser, due to my need to keep a lot of active research tabs and how resource hogging browsers are, and also because I often will be off the grid when doing work with RX4. I hate this trend away from desktop user manuals.