Izotope or Soundsoap?...

[mhschmieder]

Interestingly, the revised version of SoundSoap Pro from BIAS has just won an innovation award for an apparently unique corrective linear-phase noise reduction algorithm:

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2010/11/ ... echnology/

[mhschmieder]

Holy cow, RX 2 Advanced goes WAY beyond my expectations!

I'll try to find my other post when I'm done working for the evening, to close out the question I posed, as RX 2 Advanced answers how to take care of the audio problem described.

Basically, I have an early soundtrack project whose final mixes wound up a fifth below the original 96 kHz tracks, and the producer preferred them at that pitch, so the "accident" wasn't corrected, but as we will eventually revisit this project, I wanted to "correct" the original tracks in the projects to match the designated pitch.

These are ALL soundscapes and EXTREMELY complex, with no clearly defined pitch. Nothing that I tried produced usable results.

That is, until I opened up RX 2 Advanced tonight just to see what additional tools it provides.

Lo and behold, it includes Radius, which is practically an industry standard for pitch shifting and time shifting on a file basis (vs. detailed editing like Melodyne).

The results are without artifacts. I couldn't be happier!

Boy, am I glad I took advantage of that promotional to upgrade to RX 2 and the Advanced edition at the same time! It's already saved me on two projects!

[martian]

it sounds like it could save me hours of work with a particular actor... who will fluff every 2nd word and has very poor lip syncing ability to boot!

his sync sound was splatted with distortion! ( I would love to get a demo! )

are u able to use it inside the DP enviroment or as the stand alone editor?


thanks

mart

[mhschmieder]

Mart,

As you may know, iZotope is one of the few vendors to support MAS, and I'm pretty sure RX 2 is still available inside DP 7.21, but I haven't checked to make sure it passed the plug-in validity test.

Here's the thing: iZotope plugs are now all 64-bit, and DP isn't yet. So for now at least, I am running RX in standalone mode.

I'd probably do that anyway, as I tend to take a file-based approach to cleanup tasks, on a per-file basis, so it's simpler workflow-wise than creating new tracks or takes in DP for a cleaned-up track, and keeping track of which ones are the "clean" versions etc.

I can see cases where the RX toolkit would be useful on a track basis in the project context, however, so am glad that it is available as a plug-in as well as a standalone app/suite.

[martian]

sure I can see that work process now, you just copy the bites in need ?- merge them and then u can set RX as external editor? so would be a single Keystroke to send it over to Izotope? then when saving the "cleaned" result - overwrite the "merged" file and it's already in your DP timeline?

I have a cedar DNS unit - and we have a input and output set up in our templates, so I do have that process, I wonder if the quality is as good as cedar? certainly looks easier - witht he "fingerprinting" train mode.

Please PM me if you would be interested in a doing a quick 5 second sample of dialog that is splatted with distortion!

I would love to hear it removing that!

[mhschmieder]

Cedar is probably still tops, but some who've done shootouts claim RX 2 Advanced is getting pretty close to what a turnkey standalone system like Cedar can do.

I'm slammed right now with too many past-due deadlines (related to my three weeks of down time while setting up the new computer), but would be interested in helping you do a test of dialog cleanup once I have some spare cycles (maybe by Thanksgiving weekend).

[mhschmieder]

As mentioned in the general restoration tool posting, Soundsoap 2 Pro is now available for only $99 crossgrade.

I haven't compared thoroughly yet, but I'm pretty sure the adaptive approach to broadband in this new version is unique and not covered by RX Advanced.

[mhschmieder]

Hmm, in my BIAS-format plug-ins list inside Peak, SoundSoap 2 Pro shows up with "PL" after it, just like their mastering suite plugs. The GUI looks complete.

This came up in an earlier discussion regarding the PitchCraft no-brainer at AudioMIDI, as it seemed I already have it. I think I did some sort of short-term special upgrade at one point, but it definitely doesn't cover Audio Units format.

Now I'm confused, but I would probably only use this tool inside a two-track editor anyway, for simplicity of workflow.

[danworks]

Have you tried this one? Pretty amazing …
http://www.duystore.com/com/silence.html

[mikehalloran]

>Lo and behold, it includes Radius, which is practically an industry standard for pitch shifting and time shifting on a file basis (vs. detailed editing like Melodyne).<

Let us all pat ourselves on the backs. Rx and Rx2 can be used inside DP but not Logic. Logic has its own version: iZotope Radius for Logic and Soundtrack Pro, not as feature rich.

[Armageddon]

I have iZotope, but I always find myself reaching for Waves' X series. That said, the "Learn" function in iZotope comes in pretty handy (I've even used it to remove music from dialogue tracks) ...

[Shooshie]

Watch the Waves Sales closely, because their "Restoration Bundle" has gone on sale before, and probably will again sometime in the coming year or two. I got Z-Noise and three others. Z-Noise is my go-to noise reduction plugin, and I must say that it works wonders.

I have SoundSoap 2, and when conditions are right and you manage to nail the settings and "learn" timing, it can do a very good job. But it's not in the ballpark with Z-Noise. For Soundsoap 2, it takes getting a feel for the app and the order in which to apply the controls. You can keep going back and trying again and again, often finding improvement as you learn the problem and intuit the fix.

Z-Noise is more intuitive and forgiving. It does more of the important guesswork (rather, taking the guesswork out of it and following extremely dynamic algorithms), and it can track moving noises. Say, maybe you have an airconditioner whose compressor kicks on, Z-Noise can change its sample pattern in real time and follow that changing sound of the air conditioner, or follow and remove most of the sounds of traffic, and much more.

I haven't used the sound cleaning tools in Izotope, so no comment there. I'm just commenting on the ones I have used in the past 10 years.

Shooshie

[danworks]

I've got the Waves and the DUY Silence which I wasn't aware of. Z-Noise works great but it has a huge latency and on extreme setting there's always a sort of phase problem.

DUY silence, for my experience and what I had to do, always worked great without affecting the resulting processed sound. Here there's a lil video, but it's much more than that:
http://www.duystore.com/com/silence-video.html

[Shooshie]

The way I look at extreme settings is kind of the way a doctor looks at a treatment for a terminal disease. If it's that bad, you're lucky to get anything at all. The fact that z-noise can actually rescue some of those cases makes it like a miracle drug, though it may have latency, and it's definitely not a "lossless" process. I'm not sure that Z-noise is usable in live situations, but the latency is avoidable by printing (freezing) the output. If one has the entire Restoration Bundle, you can always go back to X-Noise for tracks with lesser problems, where it works well. But those really screwy noise problems are jobs for Z-Noise, though there may be others that do it as well. I know that SoundSoap2 does a very good job, but it just can't do what Z-Noise can do.

Shooshie

[danworks]

The way I look at extreme settings is kind of the way a doctor looks at a treatment for a terminal disease.

Much simpler than that
I've got both (Waves and DUY). On a 30 years cassette tape full of hiss (for example), Silence has been more effective that Z-Noise, which introduced a sort of aliasing-phase thing that Silence didn't.

Latency w Z-Noise is a bit painful, when you start-stop the project there's always a delay, while on Silence or on the newer Waves WNS or W34, there isn't any latency.

About extreme setting, restoring some very very old stuff or simple forensic restore, require extreme setting. Tools that make it easier life are welcome.