iZotope RX 10 is here with some interesting new features and under-the-hood improvements. Let's take a brief look at them.
RX10 has completely revamped the Repair Assistant, RX's intelligent tool that uses AI and machine learning to analyze the audio for problems, and automatically apply appropriate processing. This latest implementation features a brand new GUI which makes it easier for users to tweak the automatic results generated by the Assistant.
To optimize the initial analysis, you now choose from four modes: Voice (sung and spoken vocals), Musical (regular instruments), Percussion (instruments with strong transients), and Sound FX (film/video sound and ambience).
Once the Assistant has done its analysis and generated a suggested processing chain, the user can directly enable/disable the different processes directly from the front panel of the Repair Assistant module, and even audition the repaired/removed audio, to make sure the processing isn't being applied too aggressively. In the standalone version of the new Repair Assistant you can still access the underlying processing module chain for more detailed tweaking.
RX 10 has also introduced a plug-in version of the Repair Assistant, making it possible to utilize the Assistant's analysis and processing directly within the DAW.
The plug-in version works pretty much the same way as the version in the standalone RX application, despite slight differences in the analysis stage. You choose from the four modes, and after the analysis is done, you can tweak each process directly from the plug-in window.
A brand-new feature in RX 10 is Text Navigation. This automatically analyzes and transcribes a dialog recording, so that text can be used as an aid in navigating and editing a longer dialog recording.
Scrolling through a long file looking at the text can be quicker than playing or spotting through the file audibly, trying to locate specific sections earmarked for editing, and that alone makes Text Navigation a useful and welcome new tool. But it also incorporates a Search engine, which lets the user enter a word or phrase, and then finds instances of that text throughout the file, allowing for quick text-based location in long files without even having to scroll through the file.
The Search uses fuzzy logic to find not only exact matches of a word, but also similar words--it was often able to locate a word even when that word had been slightly mis-spelled or mis-transcribed, greatly enhancing its usefulness. Text Navigation is also able to identify multiple Speakers in a group discussion (up to eight).
Each Speaker is color-coded, and the text boxes for that speaker display the color coding as you go through the file. Selecting a Speaker selects all that Speaker's dialog in the file, making it easy to locate when a certain participant is active in the discussion.
The Spectral Recovery module has been significantly tweaked under-the-hood.
Spectral Recovery is designed to take band-limited speech (like the low-quality audio we encounter so commonly nowadays) and generate the missing harmonics, to restore sound quality and improve intelligibility. In RX 10 the algorithms have been enhanced to greatly improve the resynthesis of higher frequencies, and now to even resynthesize missing lower frequencies, if necessary.
And the De-hum module has been improved as well.
De-hum already included a Static mode, for simple hum removal, and a Dynamic mode, which can address more complex hum & buzz. RX 10 adds an Adaptive mode to Dynamic hum removal, avoiding the need for analysis of an isolated section of the unwanted noise (which is sometimes not readily available), making it easier to identify and remove more complex, changing hum & noise.
Of course RX 10 also incorporates many small tweaks & improvements, like relocating the user options for Feathering processed audio to the main display (from the Preferences), and automatic preset migration from the previous version of RX. With its under-the-hood tweaks, improved performance and interface, and new features, RX 10 should be a very welcome update to the industry's leading audio repair suite.
iZotope has released the latest version of their premiere audio repair suite RX 10. See the powerful new features in RX 10 in this FREE course by audio engineer Joe Albano.
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