![]() ![]() Now engineers can take care of all the problems of dirty audio-unwanted ambiances, clip distortions, hums, clicks, crackles, pops, sudden noise drops, et cetera-with one set of algorithms, algorithms which “get better and better and better” with each iteration, as Frank told me. “The great thing was that it’s always been able to do several different processes,” Tom Marks said, “Before, it was like, ‘oh, this piece of hardware can do this one thing great,’ and that was it. Indeed, part of the reason engineers have come to iZotope RX en masse has to do with the software’s innate versatility in tackling all these harmonic problems. “It’s all the harmonics that it gets out the same time, which you can visually see…it just gets right in and takes it all out totally.” “It’s not just a door squeak,” he told me, “it’s all the harmonics”-iterations of the initial door-squeak up the frequency chain. A notch filter on an hardware unit might get out the door squeak, but chances are it won’t be able to adequately treat the door squeak's harmonics, meaning traces of the sound will remain. This pictorial representation of frequencies has become a selling point amongst people in the top level of the industry: Frank Morrone lauded its applications when talking about an unwanted door-squeak in an otherwise pristine audio track. Hence the orange spectrogram on a blue-black background (observed at the top of the image)-the choices were made in concert with neuro-scientific research: one sticks out and is readily apparent, the other fades into the background due to a slight lag time in the brain. The same doesn’t hold true for the color blue: “Blue is actually made in the brain, and it actually takes a little bit longer for the brain to comprehend that, so it’s great as background color.” They colored it thus because “the eye is actually really good at telling details in those color spectrums.” “The spectrogram looks like a sunset-orangey and red,” Jefferson Hobbs told me. ![]() Let's find out why, exactly, the visual component was programmed in such a way: That such sonic problems have been made so visually apparent in iZotope's platform (pictured above) is a testament to their success.īut let’s peek behind the curtain of this visual engine. Instead, we have curtailed the noise-made it manageable, allowing the dialogue to stand out better.Īnother piece of audio restoration software-say Waves Audio's corresponding technology-wouldn't offer the same visual accountability in such matters, making the process of taming the unwanted frequencies much harder to do. Notice we haven't completely eliminated the horizontal strip of unwanted noise, for that would sound completely unnatural, and indeed, give away the fact that we're using this technology in the first place. The visual result of such a reduction would look like this: This is a screenshot from my own personal workload: notice the highlighted horizontal strip scratched against all that orange vertical shading? That strip represents a prolonged, unnecessary noise made at very specific frequencies-a problematic sound that must be reduced. Hobbs went on to tell me about the research studies iZotope conducts when fashioning their UI and UX (user interface and user experience) much of it involves heat maps of clickable images, histograms, “statistical analysis with R values, and all sorts of crazy stuff.” According to Hobbs, iZotope hired someone with a PHD in neuroscience in order to field these matters.Ĭlearly, such care to detail has yielded successful results: the most lauded aspect of iZotope’s software continues to be its powerful spectrogram, which allows you to see every little bit of sonic detail in an extremely intuitive way. Part of the reason has to do with user experience: according to Jefferson Hobbs, Lead Developer on the RX team, iZotope has been “investing more and more into the looks user experience of our products” precisely because “your experience with the product really impacts how well you can actually use it.” ![]() Why do so many people in the field prefer iZotope over something as historically venerated as Waves? So what separates iZotope from the pack? Indeed, other pieces of similar software do, in fact, exist. Upon discovering the product, he found that “you could take care of everything yourself, essentially in real time.” Does Marks still outsource his most problematic material? “I have not in a long time because of RX,” he told me. ![]() Indeed, the process itself cost a fortune to set up: “I don’t even know how much those systems cost-it’s at least forty, fifty, sixty grand I think.”īut the old way of doing things changed for Tom Marks “when RX came around.” ![]()
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