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iZotope RX 6 for Postproduction


Last month I was lucky enough to attend an event iZotope and the Motion Picture Sound Editors Association hosted at Warner Bros. NY Sound. The event's purpose was to showcase some of the new tools that are now available in iZotope's latest version of their audio repair program, RX.

While I was clueless about RX 6, I've been using iZotope RX 4 for a while and I wanted to know if the new 6 was worth the upgrade. I first started using RX when my alma mater Full Sail University hosted a promotion event for said company and the release of their latest product (RX 4 at the time). My Audio Postproduction instructor mentioned the event during one of our lectures and encouraged us to go and learn about iZotope. I was, surprisingly, the only person from the class that showed up. As my interest in audio post-production grew, I wanted to get my hands on every piece of software that was being used by industry professionals in the field. I wasn't familiar with any other audio repair programs as effective and easy to use as RX. After that day, I invested in the standard version of RX 4 which, up until today, it has been a massive help when it comes to working as an independent sound editor. Although I'm a Recording Arts graduate, I'm also a Film student and I work a lot with independent student directors and auteurs that may not be familiar with the audio postproduction process that a media object would go through during its final stages. When ADR means reaching for the stars, directors and producers depend on the quality of production sound and dialogue. As a sound editor, I spend most of my time cleaning boom handling noise, clicks, and pops. Without, RX, I wouldn't have been able to do this type of work as relatively fast as I do. For freelancers that work with low budget films where the audio isn't always at its finest, RX is there to save your gig and give you advantage.



RX 6 at Warner Bros. NY Sound
As I mentioned, working with low budget films means preserving as most of the dialogue as much as you can (sometimes it can't be helped but other times it can). RX 6 (Adv.) now has Dialogue Isolate which was my favorite because as a person that's constantly trying to save production dialogue, having a feature that is able to separate dialogue from undesirable street noise would save me extra time and it would give me a better quality result rather than the one the De-Noise feature on RX 4 gives me when I'm cleaning up dialogue. De-Wind, well, you "de-wind". This facilitates the process of preserving production sound hit by a wind punch. There's also De-ess, De-rustle, De-bleed, etc... which is a big upgrade in comparison to going from RX 4 to RX 5. All features were shown by repeating the process of the different scenarios and problems that the sound editor encountered when cleaning a music documentary. Apart from the documentary, we also had the opportunity to look at some of the new features with a vocal track as the example.

Other highlights of the night included a showing of the latest version of iZotope Neutron and lots of networking in the Warner Bros. dubbing stage itself! Definitely, a night to remember.

For more on information on RX 6 visit iZotope.











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