Use Izotope 5 Rx With Sequoia

Posted : admin On 04.04.2020
Restoration Software [Mac OS & Windows]

With their hefty low–frequency content, vocal plosives are obvious as the blobs at the bottom of the spectral display.

The latest version of iZotope’s RX adds some interesting features — but do they have musical applications?

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Don't want to bag reaper as it is a good DAW and I use it often, however my main DAW is Sequoia. I use Izotope for mastering, but not the RX package. If you can afford RX, you might find in investigating one of the other DAW packages that it supports the workflow you require. Mar 20, 2017  In this video, iZotope’s Education Director, Jonathan Wyner, gives an introduction to mid/side processing for mastering, a technique that can. At its core is the new SOUND FORGE Pro 12 that features 64-bit processing, VST3 effect support, plug-ins from the advanced SEQUOIA system and many renowned audio shaping and enhancing plug-ins. Add the sound design inspiration of SpectraLayers Pro 5 and you have a suite of software that continues to set new standards for audio professionals. Jan 01, 2016 Review: iZotope's RX5 Advanced. But dropping the RX Connect icon clip onto an audio track will automatically roundtrip that clip into the standalone app for.

Restoration software of a kind which is relatively easy to use and which gives decent results is a comparatively new sector of the music software market. Someone will tell me that the DeNoise module in Sonic Solutions was probably in the vanguard here, but my own first encounter with this class of tool was CEDAR Retouch, fitted as an optional extra in the SADiE system which we used to record, edit and master classical recordings a decade ago. It was expensive, but invaluable: recording engineers’ nightmares such as piano pedal thumps, piano stool creaks, even lip smacks and the occasional cough no longer demanded a re–take, but could be eliminated, or substantially reduced, in post–production.

If that wasn’t enough, iZotope recently released a website with a ton of tricks called the “RX cookbook”, with a good search mechanism that allows users to sort articles according to each RX version, module or real-world application - definitely very helpful resource that adds further points to RX’s ease of use. Features - 5/5: Both. IZotope has released RX 5 Audio Editor, a significant upgrade to their well-stocked toolbox of audio repair software modules (previously at v4).RX 5 adds a number of new repair modules, and brings considerable enhancements to many of its tools, along with additional features that offer greater efficiency and better integration with DAWs.

I originally bought iZotope RX2 to do some fairly heavy restoration work on a series of 1970s live operas that I was remastering for issue on DVD and accompanying CD. Sod’s Law dictated that the job came in just after I’d sold my SADiE system, and the built–in Spectral Cleaning facility in Magix’s Sequoia could not do all that was needed. Other offerings were beyond the budget, so RX2 fitted the bill perfectly, and I still think that the Advanced version is a whole lot of professional software solution for a relatively small outlay. Only after those projects were completed did I begin to realise how tightly woven into my mastering approach it would become.

In For Repairs

I have now been using iZotope RX2 since it was released in 2010. Apart from the DAW itself, it is the one piece of software that I have found to be indispensable, and I have used it on pretty much every mastering session. RX can play almost any file, and has frequently opened recalcitrant formats which had standard DAWs flummoxed. It has exceedingly good sample–rate conversion (with MBit+ dithering) and, of course, it can repair sonic damage, ameliorating those bad–luck moments in live recordings and unnoticed horrors in studio recordings which cannot be recalled and undone. Even with projects that did not call for large–scale restoration work, it was good to be able to identify such momentary irritations as vocal glitches, the base of a mic stand being kicked, the studio cat, mic capsule distortions, clunks, coughs and so on, and quickly brush them aside. And that was only the Spectral Repair feature, which provides a highly informative visual interface for spotting and addressing these problems.

In my mastering suite, with its revealing acoustics and speakers with extended bass response, I often encounter vocal plosives and very fast transient clicks that have been missed by the client and the engineer. The pictures show how these look in the RX4 main display: the click is shown in Linear mode, as digital clicks have content across the whole frequency spectrum, while the vocal pop is shown in Extended Log mode because plosives have a great deal of low–end content. Each of these issues took just a few seconds to eliminate entirely in RX4: lasso the problem area, press ‘R’ for repair, and the offending item is attenuated to inaudibility. More complex problem sounds have more complex repair modes, but with a little experience, they are barely any more difficult to implement.

A rogue click is clearly visible in RX4’s spectral display.

It’s worth noting that iZotope present RX as software that can find application across all kinds of audio work. However, although many of the features of RX that I find useful when working with musical content are also useful for non–music audio work, the converse doesn’t always apply. In other words, there are some tools in RX which are very useful in non–musical applications, yet have less immediate use in music production. iZotope themselves sort the modules according to function, into Restoration, Production and Utility groups.

Three: The Magic Number

Late in 2013, iZotope released version 3 of RX. Not only did RX3 sport an entirely new, and very much more ergonomically optimised user interface, but it also included interesting new modules in all of the functional groups, and several previously Advanced–only features were incorporated into the much more affordable Standard version. As these included the excellent sample–rate conversion algorithms, this made the standard version of RX very much more attractive to a wider base of music engineers. Hugh Robjohns reviewed RX3 in full in the February 2014 issue (www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb14/articles/izotope–rx3.htm), so I don’t want to repeat too much of what was said then here, but it is worth re–emphasising the gist of the conclusion of that review, which was that RX3 is a worthwhile investment for anyone involved in professional music production, and that the upgrade from RX2 was also, as they say, a no–brainer.

In RX4 another advanced module, the Dialogue Denoiser, has made the same migration to Standard. iZotope are wise to have this divide, as not every engineer will need the Advanced–only functions, which are often quite specialised — and as I think the Advanced version is good value for money, this makes the Standard Version a bit of a bargain.

Pillar To Post–production

If RX3 represented quite a large leap forward from RX2, then RX4 is a smaller step in the same direction. New features include Clip Gain and a Clip Leveler, which do pretty much what their names suggest; less standard, and potentially more interesting, are features and modules such as RX Connect (see box), EQ Match and Ambience Match.

Use Izotope 5 Rx With Sequoia Pro

I mentioned earlier that some of RX’s existing features are targeted mainly at non–musical applications, and in fact, the two new modules in RX4 probably fall into this category. Ambience Match is not, despite the name, a convolution reverb, or indeed any kind of reverb. And while EQ matching — the idea of capturing the frequency responses of source and target tracks, and computing an EQ curve to make the former sound like the latter — arguably has a place in mastering and music production, the EQ Match feature in RX4 is so basic as to be of limited use. It is nothing like as sophisticated as Harbal (www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb13/articles/harbal-3.htm), nor even the Matching EQ feature in iZotope’s own Ozone mastering software. In the latter, the capture process produces visual curves for the overall EQ and difference EQ changes which can be overlaid to allow them to be compared and, if necessary, modified. EQ Match in RX is a greatly simplified form of this. The screenshot shows the UI dialogue, and the manual is quite succinct: after you have opened the EQ Match module, it tells you to “make a selection in a file; click Learn; make another selection; click Process.”

RX4’s EQ Match feature is more basic than its counterpart in iZotope’s own Ozone mastering software.

For musical needs, I would say that this implementation falls short of being really useful. Most music engineers would want much more information and much more control over EQ changes applied to their tracks. But as I’ve indicated, this module is probably more likely intended for certain non–musical applications where such immediacy (and very good results given the simplicity) is an advantage in itself. I can illustrate this better by introducing the Ambience Match module at this point and showing how they operated together when I revisited an audio–book project I worked on last year.

Voices & Choices

The main recording for the audio book, which featured a number of different voices, was done in a London hotel. But then sometime later editing changes were made to the text itself, and so certain passages of the book had to be re–recorded. Some of this took place in my own small studio in Norfolk, using the mic with which we’d recorded the originals; but one particular reader could not travel that far, so recorded the changes at a more convenient local facility with a different microphone and sent me the results to be edited in. At the time, this gave me an awful lot of extra work to do. There were clearly mismatches of vocal tone and also background ‘room tone’ (low–level ambient sound), and though I could EQ the vocal sound to minimise the differences, the only way I could make sure that there was no clearly audible difference in the rooms was to cut a small piece of room tone from the very beginning of the original recording, edit it to a usable length and mix it in, ducking it with the vocals. It worked just about well enough, but it took an awful long time.

For the purposes of this review, I revisited this nightmare with RX4 and it took me 15 minutes. Though the voices were the same, the use of different spaces, placements, mics and preamps meant there were tonal differences between the original and later recordings. The original recording was warmer and smooth, the re–recording to edit in was less so in both regards — but the RX4 EQ Match module made a very passable attempt to live up to its name, and I think I would have been happy to use the result had I had the chance to do so.

The new Ambience Match feature is designed to ensure that room tone can be made consistent when editing together recordings from different sources.

The room tone was very different between the two versions: although the original recordings were not exactly noisy, there was a very specific ‘hotel room’ sound to the silence, with a faint air–con motoring away somewhere in the basement. The re–recordings, made in recording studios, had much quieter, almost silent backgrounds, and this was easily perceptible when the original section segued into the edit. This is where Ambience Match came in. As you can see from the screenshot, it has the same minimalist interface as EQ Match. Fingerprinting the room tone from the original and adding it to new edits was very easy, and it took just a couple of experimental passes to get the level right. I had hoped that Ambience Match was going to be rather more — conceptually, it’s really just the Denoise module working in reverse, as the manual almost admits — but fitting horses to courses enabled it to show its proper strength. It also found a use in classical editing: many producers still insist that recordings do not fade to digital silence between movements and between separate pieces, so the editor has to edit in room tone recorded at the beginning of the session to give the illusion of a continuing live recital (ha!). Editing virtual silences together is a pastime for the seventh circle of Hell, so Ambience Match could be a real boon there.

Conclusion

As I have made clear, I find iZotope RX4 indispensable in almost every post–production project, including mastering and its manifold responsibilities. I also think the asking price is not a great deal for a professional facility to pay for a professional product, and that the ‘missing’ features of the Standard version that allow it to be offered pretty much at bargain price are less likely to be missed by music users. So RX4 is a great upgrade for users of RX2, and a great buy for those who are yet to feel the love at all. But is it a good upgrade for present users of RX3? I think it all depends on just how much use can be made by the purchaser of the half–dozen or so substantial new features. For those in film and speech post–production, this might be all of them; for some, like myself, who specialise in music but have a serious sideline in speech and restoration, that might be two or three; but for some music–only facilities, it might not be quite enough to justify the move just yet.

Only Connect

It is possible to use iZotope RX in two different ways: as an adjunct to a DAW, or in stand–alone mode. Even in RX2, there was already a facility which enabled Spectral Repair as a plug–in from within a DAW. In RX4 this has been replaced by a more fully featured ‘round trip’ capability called RX Connect. The idea is that, without leaving your DAW, you can either send a clip from your DAW for Analysis in RX (a one–way ticket) or you can send it for Repair and then return it to the DAW (a two–way ticket). One issue that can arise is that if your DAW does not ‘surrender’ its audio channels to RX when that is operating, then nothing routed through RX can be monitored. Enter an ingenious solution called RX Monitor, which gets around this problem by operating in the DAW as a virtual instrument through which the RX output can be played via the DAW’s non–surrendered channels.

I tried RX Connect in a mastering context, and it worked as advertised, but because there were a few menu items to negotiate and you need to pre-open the stand-alone version of RX, I found that it was just as easy for me to minimise the DAW, open RX in stand-alone mode, and work directly on the WAV file. Things changed dramatically, though, when I was working on a classical editing project where the fragments of music to be edited together were drawn from up to 100 different takes, hence 100 different WAV files. When doing this kind of work in the past, the technique I use now when mastering would not have been viable, as it would have meant opening all of those 100 different files, rather than the single one being worked on in mastering. Instead, I would deal with noises and suchlike by noting their time position in the overall piece, compiling the final edit and only then going to RX. It never occurred to me that there could be a better way — but this is where RX Connect starts to make much more sense. A process that is relatively unwieldy when compared to opening the stand-alone version for occasional work on a single WAV file becomes the clear winner when compared to opening and searching in 100 or more separate audio files! And also, as often happens, what seems a bit awkward when you are consciously concentrating on each step in the process becomes second nature and much easier as familiarity and muscle memory kicks in. Of course, there was a time when making up a DDPi file seemed like a lot of work..

Pros

  • Better integration for those who like to carry out their restoration tasks within a DAW.
  • EQ and Ambience Match can help when you need to edit together recordings made under different circumstances.
  • Still offers excellent value for money.

Cons

  • The new features are arguably more useful in post–production than in music work.

Summary

RX4 is a worthy update to perhaps the best–value restoration package on the market, though it perhaps won’t be an essential one for users who work only with music recordings.

information

RX4 £215; RX4 Advanced £729.02. Prices include VAT.
RX4 $349; RX4 Advanced $1199.

One thing I see a lot on audio forums is a person saying something like “I have all my songs mastered in my DAW (Logic/Pro Tools/Cubase etc.), now I just need to sequence them and convert to 16-bit/44.1k” for digital distribution and CD production. I’m a firm believer that your project isn’t fully “mastered” until it’s production and/or distribution ready without any further processing or changes. Using an audio editor/DAW with mastering focused features will make things like this much easier for you, save time, and improve results. Not so much sonically, but in the quality control department for sure.

There are many portions of the mastering workflow that can be done in any DAW really, but finalizing your project in an audio editor/mastering DAW that is specifically designed for mastering will not only save you time, but it will likely produce better results, and provide consistency between all the various master formats that are required these days.

These various master formats are typically a DDP image or physical CD-R for CD production, 16-bit/44.1k WAV files for basic digital distribution, and 24-bit/high sample rate WAV files for distribution via websites like Bandcamp, SoundCloud, as well as the Mastered For iTunes program. TIDAL and some others are also rolling out 24-bit/high sample rate streaming. You also may need to produce a vinyl pre-master, cassette pre-master, instrumental album master, and reference mp3 files which are sometimes also needed for download code cards that accompany vinyl and cassette releases nowadays. Reference mp3s can also include metadata and artwork which a mastering DAW can easily add automatically instead of managing this with another app for each project which can be too time-consuming.

Get Serious

If you’re serious about your project, it’s very important that the spacing between the songs and the heads and tails of each song/track remain totally consistent from format to format. Without a true mastering DAW, this can very easily get complicated and messy.

I do a lot of work for a major CD manufacturing broker. These projects usually involve assembling DDP images from individual WAV files that their clients send them claiming to be already mastered. Normally I do not touch the audio sonically, I just assemble the songs and create a DDP image for CD production. Many people don’t realize that individual 16-bit/44.1k WAV files are not a CD production ready format. Either a DDP image or CD-R master is needed.

When I’m doing these kinds of jobs, I see all sorts of problematic files as well. Some people will send 48k (or higher) WAV files, some files have undetected sounds or noises before or after songs due to inattentive listening or poor analyzation before sending them in. Sometimes files will be hitting or exceeding 0dBFS which can result in some nasty sounds/artifacts and audible distortion down the line with playback on cheap systems and inevitable mp3 or AAC encoding. Some clients are unsure if they need or want extra time added between songs, and some even ask for fade-outs. In these cases, the files they considered “mastered” are far from a final master. Doing any additional fades on a 16-bit WAV will introduce floating point audio again and either require additional dithering or result in truncated bits. Neither are ideal. Not only that, if they need any of the alternate formats I mentioned earlier, it becomes a virtually impossible task in some scenarios, or at least a logistical nightmare.

CD-R Master (luckily a rarity)

I’m a big advocate of DDP images as CD production masters for many reasons but sometimes a CD-R master is needed for smaller duplication jobs. Thankfully, it’s becoming a rarity to actually burn a CD these days though. Burning the master CD-R with a trusted CD writer and media is strongly recommended. A common trusted combo is a Plextor Premium CD writer and Taiyo Yuden (now JVC) CD-R discs. Then, the intended master CD-R is ideally checked with Plextools software for errors (Windows only). Although it’s been a few years now since I had a problematic burn, it’s the mastering engineer’s duty to test a physical CD-R for errors before it’s used for CD production.

Sequencing a Project

A dedicated audio editor/mastering DAW allows you to lay out and sequence your project (using 32-bit float or 24-bit/high sample rate files) whether it’s one song or a full-length album, non-destructively trim and clean up the heads and tails of songs, apply any short or long fade ins/outs, crossfade or overlap any songs if necessary and precisely determine where the track IDs are, apply plugins to certain songs, parts of songs, and across the entire album which is usually useful for limiting and dithering processes. Once everything is dialed in, you can easily render all the various master files you may need, and be confident that all the things that need to remain the same between all formats will remain the same. These are things like spacing between songs, fades, crossfades, titles, metadata etc.

Sample Rate Conversion

Sample rate conversions also come into play if you are working at sample rates above 44.1k. Many mastering engineers agree that processing audio (both “in the box” and via analog gear) sounds better at higher sample rates. If I receive files from a client that are at 44.1k or 48k, I’ll usually upsample them to 96k before working. At some point I must return to 44.1k for DDP (or CD-R) masters, and 16-bit/44.1k WAV masters for digital distribution. A high-quality sample rate conversion software is recommended as opposed to using the sample rate conversion within your traditional multitrack DAW.

Some Things Can Be Done in Any Daw

I actually use REAPER (not a traditional mastering DAW) for the first stage of my mastering process. REAPER is highly customizable and saves me so much time compared to doing this in any other DAW I’ve previously used. This involves some light to medium plugin processing before sending the audio out to my analog equipment which is usually an analog EQ (or two) followed by an analog compressor that feeds back into my analog-to-digital converter. This is all done at either 88.2k or 96k sample rate (depending on the source files I receive) because as mentioned before, I feel that plugins and my analog chain perform better at these higher sample rates. Now and then I get a project in at 192k sample rate so in this case, I do the initial pressing at 192k as well and go down from there as needed.

Once all the songs are captured, trimmed up, and properly named, I export them from REAPER using defined start/end points which comes in handy in the case of when new mixes are sent to me, or I have to redo any work in the analog domain. Then I load the files into WaveLab for final assembly and processing. This is where I usually apply my final limiter which is usually doing no more than 2 or 3 dB of gain increase on the limiter input. This is because I have printed the audio back into REAPER at or near the desired level but I still have some wiggle room for going louder or less loud without having to revisit the analog chain.

Many mastering engineers stick to one DAW for the entire mastering process, but I personally find the scripting and flexibly of REAPER, and ability to use iZotope RX as REAPER’s primary external editor invaluable so that’s where I prefer to do the initial audio processing. It’s just a personal preference as I’ve really dialed in my REAPER workflow over the years. However, if I’m doing an entirely “in the box” mastering session, I’ll usually use WaveLab for the whole process. WaveLab can route audio to and from your analog gear but I personally find its workflow for that clunky at this time so my combo of REAPER and WaveLab compliment each other really well.

When 44.1k masters are needed, I could use the sample rate conversion within WaveLab (which would be slightly easier) but I prefer using external sample rate conversion software made by Weiss (Saracon). Other good options are the iZotope Resampler found in RX, and Goodhertz (found in Myriad by Aurchitect).

Metadata

Aside from the sonic aspects of mastering, WaveLab allows me to very quickly populate all the CD-Text info of the project and each track, enter ISRC codes for each song, and enter the UPC/EAN (barcode) for the project itself. One huge time-saving feature that is unique to WaveLab (to my knowledge) is that all of this info can be easily transposed to metadata when I render master WAV files, or reference mp3 files including the artwork. All these seemingly small features can really save a lot of time and allow you to focus more on the music. Other mastering apps/DAWs can do this, but I think WaveLab is the most thorough and efficient at this right now. Especially when you consider the options available for both Mac and PC.

Most audio editors/mastering DAWs offer similar features but some are better than others in this regard. It all depends on your workflow needs, and how you prefer to get there. I do a lot of mastering so getting the most out of my data input is important to me. I like avoiding repetitive or extra steps when it comes to data entry and file management.

With WaveLab, I never have to enter in the song titles (unless there is a last minute name change or correction). The album track names for each song are populated from the source file names for each song which I already have properly named when I export files from my REAPER processing sessions. Then, that file name is populated to the track marker name and CD-Text track names automatically by WaveLab. From there, it’s auto-populated (with a preset) to the ID3 metadata for any WAV/mp3/AAC files I render. With the click of a button, rendered files can have a numerical prefix to keep them in order within a folder or file system, but the numerical prefix is not present in song title metadata, which is an important detail to me. WaveLab also automatically adds the track number/track total to the ID3 metadata so that iTunes and other audio player apps keep the songs and album in sequence. WaveLab can also easily embed the artwork into most file formats (WAV, mp3, and AAC).

MacOS

I could go on but I’ve done a lot of research and trial and error with mastering DAW options for MacOS. Nothing comes close to WaveLab when it comes to producing and tagging files when I need to output master files in a variety of formats with little hassle. I absolutely love how easy it is to produce thoroughly tagged files from WaveLab with minimal data input, or the need for an additional app after rendering files in WaveLab.

Other potential MacOS mastering DAWs, besides WaveLab, are Triumph by Aurchitect (excellent value with a bit of a learning curve), DSP-Quattro, SoundBlade, and PreSonus Studio One. After trying all of these, I didn’t find that any of them met my needs as a “go to” daily mastering DAW. That doesn’t mean they’re not good or not right for you, just not right for me at this time. I could see using Triumph or Studio One if I only needed to master a few projects a year, but there are currently too many workflow slowdowns for daily use in my opinion.

Windows

I’m not a Windows user but I hear good things about Sequoia/Samplitude, Sadie, and Pyramix. I’m personally too locked into the Apple/MacOS/iOS ecosystem to add a Windows system to my workflow but maybe sometime in the future, I can explore the Windows-only options for mastering DAWs. For whatever reason, there seem to be more options for Windows than Mac when it comes to mastering specific DAWs although the list for MacOS has grown in the last five years. Even though the first version of WaveLab for Mac was rough (version 7), I stuck with it and now I’m quite happy with version 9.5 and I’m optimistic about the future of it.

Simplicity

Some people may be able to get away with a simple app like Sonoris DDP Creator or HOFA CD Burn.DDP.Master but those still fall short when it comes to producing masters in a variety of formats, sample rates, bit-depths, and other variables so they’re not a complete solution like some of the previously mentioned apps.

Conclusion

If you regularly (or even occasionally) find yourself in a situation where you need to be the mastering engineer, due to lack of budget or ability to convince the client that you’re not a full-time mastering engineer, I highly recommend using software that will work with your needs and ultimately make your job easier and final output better and more consistent.

In my earlier days of music recording/engineering/production (before mastering full-time), I sometimes found myself in situations where I had to also be the mastering engineer. Looking back, getting on board with a mastering focused DAW would have made things a lot easier…and that was back when there was really only one target format, which was the audio CD. Now we have so many more target formats to consider that using something like WaveLab to produce your final masters is pretty essential in my opinion.

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