Taperssection.com
Gear / Technical Help => Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity => Topic started by: ironbut on December 17, 2007, 01:12:18 AM
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I've had this app for a month now but just haven't had the time to really fool around with it till today. Well, I think a spent about an hour with it last week but that was more of just reading the manual. I do audience recording of jazz for the most part so chatter is a real problem. To minimize this, I use the card-cap on my AT 853's. I record to a Hi Minidisc so the recordings are uncompressed 16/44. An annual festival is one of the main venues I record and in the main arena, the seats are assigned so moving around isn't an option.
Enter iZotope RX. Billed as restoration application, it has several different modules, dehummer, de-clicker, de-noiser , de-clipper and spectral repair. Each module has plenty of adjustments and sub-modules to fit the offending sound/s. There are plenty of ways to eliminate steady state problems like compressors (from ice cream trucks or air brush artists enhancing the features of virginal ,.. well, you get the idea) or unruly ground loops. The module that makes this a tapers dream come true is the Spectral Repair module. There are 4 sub modules, attenuate, replace, pattern and damned if I can remember the name of the last one. The process goes as follows. Just like any other audio program, your looking at the waveform of your project. Only, with RX, the waveform is sitting on top of a spectrogram. For the most part, I dimmed the wave view so all I could see was the spectrogram. With a wave, your looking at the peaks of the sound. With a spectrogram, your seeing all the elements that are within the waveform. So first you have to find the problem. Let's say it is a cough from the person sitting in front of me. I would make as many passes as it takes to find the exact spot that the cough begins zooming in as I go. Then you look for an event that's different from the surround beats. The louder the sound, the lighter the event appears within the spectrogram. Once you've found a likely candidate, you can either select the entire area (all frequencies) or just drag a box around that light spot. Now comes the fun stuff. You punch up spectral repair and need to choose which of the sub modules your going to try. The Pattern setting is what I'll explain briefly and will give you an idea of the power of this program. With Pattern set you hit apply and depending on the parameters you set, RX looks on either side for a pattern similar to the one surrounding your selection. This happens in about 1/4 of a second and the light spot is replaced by what RX thinks should be there. It adjusts the surroundings so there's no abrupt change. The Replace setting just replaces the selected spot. I spent about 3 hours with it and about half of what I learned was to recognize the noise from the music. The other half was trying to figure out which technique worked best with each noise. In some cases, selecting the entire area (all frequencies) was best. With other ones, selecting just the loudest part of the noise (box) worked better. And sometimes, it was best to remove the loudest part and then remove the harmonics of the noise later.
The project I was practicing on had a range of problems. From faint chatter a few seats from me, to "Me" coughing once, and saying goodbye to someone I wouldn't see for another year. Whatever the origin, I was able to seamlessly remove all noises that I wanted to. Even when I was the offending source, with the mikes attached to my glasses just inches from my drooling gob. Whatever I wanted to remove, I could. No artifacts! I might be able to find those spots if I looked for them but not all of them. I was at the point where I had to decide to leave some low level stuff to make it sound live!
By the time I finished for the day ( I had some very important NFL games to watch) I knew that I no longer felt a need to use card.s anymore. So, DPA or Sanken? RX has freed me from worrying about audience noise. http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/ (http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/)
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It's kind of ironic that you posted about this software, as I borrowed a laptop with Izotope RX installed over the weekend. This is a really useful program for what we do. There is a bit of a learning curve, but it seems pretty easy to use. It works great for removing clapping and other unwanted sounds. I'll borrow it again after the holidays and post some before and after samples.
The lap top also had Nuendo with the full package of plug-ins. Wow, that's a powerful editing program as well. Pretty cool, even though most of it is way over my head. :o
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+T just for using the phrase "drooling gob"
8)
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Sounds interesting, but pretty expensive. $349 for the normal version and $1199 for the advanced version...
There is a download for trying it out, but with save disabled.
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Sounds interesting, but pretty expensive. $349 for the normal version and $1199 for the advanced version...
Yeah it is pretty $$$. I posted a link when I first heard about it and and you could pick it up at that time for $199 (intro offer) but by that time, there was about a week left to that offer and I just didn't have enough time to really evaluate it to lately. I think it's value really depends on the kind of shows you record. Like I said in my original post, the stuff I do can be real soft and at the most, just loud. Of course there's always those "nice people" that I want to ask " You know, I could ask the musicians to keep it down if it's disturbing your conversation" that will yell as loud as it takes for them to continue talking!
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Of course there's always those "nice people" that I want to ask " You know, I could ask the musicians to keep it down if it's disturbing your conversation" that will yell as loud as it takes for them to continue talking!
I'll never comprehend why people spend the money for tickets (plus parking/transport/etc.) and then talk through the whole show!
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There are four iZotope plugins for Soundforge 9.0 think they were FREE- master limiter, compressor, eq and reverb. All useful.
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Has anybody had the opportunity to compare the spectral editing tools in RX to those in Adobe Audition?
Steve
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Has anybody had the opportunity to compare the spectral editing tools in RX to those in Adobe Audition?
I don't have a windows machine (at least not one without using a VM), but I have compared RX to SoundSoap and RX is much better. I'm really hoping that they hurry up with their plug-ins. It drives me nuts having to use the stand alone application.
Wayne
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This sounds awesome. Using this program allows you to effectively eliminate/diminish clapping, audience noise etc? How easy do you find it to quickly modify a file? It sounds great but may be a lot of work to work on an entire concert with sporadic audience noise throughout. I'll give it a try tonight too and hope for the best! Thanks for the info.
I've had this app for a month now but just haven't had the time to really fool around with it till today. Well, I think a spent about an hour with it last week but that was more of just reading the manual. I do audience recording of jazz for the most part so chatter is a real problem. To minimize this, I use the card-cap on my AT 853's. I record to a Hi Minidisc so the recordings are uncompressed 16/44. An annual festival is one of the main venues I record and in the main arena, the seats are assigned so moving around isn't an option.
Enter iZotope RX. Billed as restoration application, it has several different modules, dehummer, de-clicker, de-noiser , de-clipper and spectral repair. Each module has plenty of adjustments and sub-modules to fit the offending sound/s. There are plenty of ways to eliminate steady state problems like compressors (from ice cream trucks or air brush artists enhancing the features of virginal ,.. well, you get the idea) or unruly ground loops. The module that makes this a tapers dream come true is the Spectral Repair module. There are 4 sub modules, attenuate, replace, pattern and damned if I can remember the name of the last one. The process goes as follows. Just like any other audio program, your looking at the waveform of your project. Only, with RX, the waveform is sitting on top of a spectrogram. For the most part, I dimmed the wave view so all I could see was the spectrogram. With a wave, your looking at the peaks of the sound. With a spectrogram, your seeing all the elements that are within the waveform. So first you have to find the problem. Let's say it is a cough from the person sitting in front of me. I would make as many passes as it takes to find the exact spot that the cough begins zooming in as I go. Then you look for an event that's different from the surround beats. The louder the sound, the lighter the event appears within the spectrogram. Once you've found a likely candidate, you can either select the entire area (all frequencies) or just drag a box around that light spot. Now comes the fun stuff. You punch up spectral repair and need to choose which of the sub modules your going to try. The Pattern setting is what I'll explain briefly and will give you an idea of the power of this program. With Pattern set you hit apply and depending on the parameters you set, RX looks on either side for a pattern similar to the one surrounding your selection. This happens in about 1/4 of a second and the light spot is replaced by what RX thinks should be there. It adjusts the surroundings so there's no abrupt change. The Replace setting just replaces the selected spot. I spent about 3 hours with it and about half of what I learned was to recognize the noise from the music. The other half was trying to figure out which technique worked best with each noise. In some cases, selecting the entire area (all frequencies) was best. With other ones, selecting just the loudest part of the noise (box) worked better. And sometimes, it was best to remove the loudest part and then remove the harmonics of the noise later.
The project I was practicing on had a range of problems. From faint chatter a few seats from me, to "Me" coughing once, and saying goodbye to someone I wouldn't see for another year. Whatever the origin, I was able to seamlessly remove all noises that I wanted to. Even when I was the offending source, with the mikes attached to my glasses just inches from my drooling gob. Whatever I wanted to remove, I could. No artifacts! I might be able to find those spots if I looked for them but not all of them. I was at the point where I had to decide to leave some low level stuff to make it sound live!
By the time I finished for the day ( I had some very important NFL games to watch) I knew that I no longer felt a need to use card.s anymore. So, DPA or Sanken? RX has freed me from worrying about audience noise. http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/ (http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/)
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Has anybody had the opportunity to compare the spectral editing tools in RX to those in Adobe Audition?
I don't have a windows machine (at least not one without using a VM), but I have compared RX to SoundSoap and RX is much better. I'm really hoping that they hurry up with their plug-ins. It drives me nuts having to use the stand alone application.
Wayne
Hey Wayne, just a heads up. The iZotope released an update on Rx and you can download it as a standalone and/or plug ins. They've added handles to the rectangular selector too.
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Yeah it is pretty $$$. I posted a link when I first heard about it and and you could pick it up at that time for $199 (intro offer) but by that time, there was about a week left to that offer and I just didn't have enough time to really evaluate it to lately.
+T, very useful!
There's an authorized dealer on Ebay usually selling it for $239:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250231968395
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Hey Wayne, just a heads up. The iZotope released an update on Rx and you can download it as a standalone and/or plug ins. They've added handles to the rectangular selector too.
Thanks! I just installed it this AM. I do wish they would let you know when the update appeared though.
Wayne
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"Has anybody had the opportunity to compare the spectral editing tools in RX to those in Adobe Audition?"
iZotope blows it away. The display is so much better than AA and you can much more easily remove various artifacts. It also works great on clips. I had a show that clipped quite a bit because my mics were so close to the source, and iZotope cleaned every one of them up. A must-have program for the recordist.
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Hey panther65, I haven't had a chance to try the de-clipping module yet. I do have a file that I never used because of it though. Any hints on how best to use it?
BTW, if anyone using it hasn't looked at the video tutorials, they're a little help. I think that because of the lack of detailed instructions on how best to solve our type of noise/problems, it might be useful to start a thread with what each of us has found works best in different situations. I've been concentrating on eliminating chatter but I haven't had a chance to use the new selection tool (rectangle w/handles) which I'll try and do this weekend. I've also sent in a couple of feature requests to iZotope. They seem very receptive to suggestions. I asked for some of the features that are in Audition,.. the lasso tool (kind of a pencil selection tool for odd shaped events), the before mentioned handles, a phase view, and a keyboard shortcut for toggling on the fly between playback of the selection and everything but the selection. I think while development of this software is still hot and heavy, the chances of getting suggestions implemented is far more likely.
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love it for dithering! other than that I can't figure it out.
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This is what I started using to down sample 44.1 > 48kHz. Love it and need to figure out more functions...
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Glad I found this software. I filmed a wedding this weekend and had a MM omni lapel/SP preamp/H120 combo on the groom. The recording is good to start with but with that much gain it obviously picked up a lot of ambient noise. I used Izotope and removed at least 50% of that sound without damaging the quality of the recording. It is slow however. The recording was about 16 minutes and it took over 1 1/2 hours on a 1.6GHz dual core laptop with 2.5GB of RAM.
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It is slow however. The recording was about 16 minutes and it took over 1 1/2 hours on a 1.6GHz dual core laptop with 2.5GB of RAM.
There are different setting that affect the speed. You probably have it set to the highest setting (non real-time). You might want to adjust that and see if it makes a difference.
Wayne
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I had it set to highest quality, so I expected it to take a while.
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Anyone compared IZotpe RX and Samplitude's Cleaning & Restoration Suite bundled with the Master version? I'm ready to pull the trigger on Samp Master and the Cleaning & Restoration Suite is part of what intices me.
There are other niceities in the Samp Master version but I could go with the $50 Samp SE version plus IZotpe RX for around the same cost.
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Anyone compared IZotpe RX and Samplitude's Cleaning & Restoration Suite bundled with the Master version? I'm ready to pull the trigger on Samp Master and the Cleaning & Restoration Suite is part of what intices me.
There are other niceities in the Samp Master version but I could go with the $50 Samp SE version plus IZotpe RX for around the same cost.
Go with the Samplitude. You wont be sorry. One stop shop.
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Roger. Ordering today.
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Roger. Ordering today.
good on you! if you need help, just holler.
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I know this is an older thread, but this addendum is appropriate:
If you're looking for a much cheaper, but very capable spectral editor, check out Spectro (http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=32). I've found it quite capable for a relatively inexpensive plugin. And you can download an evaluation version to try it out. (And no: I'm not affiliated to them in any way!)
Steve
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hoping one of you kind souls could help me out with this program. i have a short opening set with background chatter throughout, i understand it'd be a pretty exhaustive process but is it possible to remove most of the chatter?
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i understand it'd be a pretty exhaustive process but is it possible to remove most of the chatter?
Not really. The problem is you can't cut out the chatter without affecting the audio being played. Your best option is simply to live with it.
Wayne
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"@#$*in' amazing!"
QFT Once you figure it out... You can spot a single sneeze and take it out... I took out a whoooooooo.. a single whooooo among 3 in a chear. I think more importantly it displays the audio signal in a way that graphicly explains it all. you see the time.. you see the frequencies.. and the see the amplitede of these frequencies that make up the the signal.... You can see and play only an event in a selected frequency of a recording... I'm excited.. the little lightbulb came on. WHAT HE SAID Clipping in you recording??? select the whole recording... press declip.. it removers the clips (With out a flat top signel) and just kinda adjusts and normalizes the rest of everything. You can change the sound for the worst... can't be too heavy handed (odd how frequencies found by themselves)
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"@#$*in' amazing!"
QFT Once you figure it out... You can spot a single sneeze and take it out... I took out a whoooooooo.. a single whooooo among 3 in a chear. I think more importantly it displays the audio signal in a way that graphicly explains it all. you see the time.. you see the frequencies.. and the see the amplitede of these frequencies that make up the the signal.... You can see and play only an event in a selected frequency of a recording... I'm excited.. the little lightbulb came on.
care to tell what setting etc? as I said before I can't figure ANYTHING else out but the dither tool under loudness maximizer. would love to hear how you get "whooos" out etc.
edit: is iZotope RX different than iZotope ozone 3??
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edit: is iZotope RX different than iZotope ozone 3??
Yes.
http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/
http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/
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If you guys haven't checked out the "restoration guide" it's great. It explains some of the settings that I hadn't tried yet (in spectrogram display and just practical stuff) and lets you know what's happening rather than just a lot of trial and error. There are some presets and audio examples included (I haven't gotten to the examples yet). The link came with the iZotope newsletter last week. http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/guides.html (http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/guides.html)
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That guide taught me more in twenty minutes than I learned Saturday... It said it better than I can but you can remove much of a whoooooo by using the waveform display ( the all wayeform / all spectral display is your friend) to locate it in the recording.... use the matching spectral display to "see" (Horz line at one frequency range w/ lighter harmonics) the whooooo, zoom in (by moving the mouse on the sliders/scale to the right) on the area of the display... select it with your mouse.. play only that selected to hear you have the correct sound. Use the De noiset to remove it... BAM
one word though... De Clipping.
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Thanks for the thread folks - this is just what I need to clean up a recording I made where there was a blown speaker in the right stack resulting in a lot of clicks.
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Thanks for the thread folks - this is just what I need to clean up a recording I made where there was a blown speaker in the right stack resulting in a lot of clicks.
If this can fix crappy sounding sound system gear, you'd think improving the 'talent' would be just another minor step away.
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Thanks for the thread folks - this is just what I need to clean up a recording I made where there was a blown speaker in the right stack resulting in a lot of clicks.
If this can fix crappy sounding sound system gear, you'd think improving the 'talent' would be just another minor step away.
one blown speaker element in a stack just results in a lot of clicking at high SPL moments - this is easy to fix with a declicker.
improving talent on the other hand requires a lot of money and good people.
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Hello,
I have a recent recording where the signal feeding from my pre "lightly" clipped the ad in my recorder. I wasn't aware that the clipping occurred until I viewed the waveform. The clipping is NOT evident while listening to the music. The clipping occurred at around -6 -> -7 dB on the recorder.
I don't know why but I can't get the declipper to work despite trying NUMEROUS settings. Could someone give me a few basic declipping instructions so that I can maybe figure out what I'm doing incorrectly?
Thanks!!
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Hello,
I have a recent recording where the signal feeding from my pre "lightly" clipped the ad in my recorder. I wasn't aware that the clipping occurred until I viewed the waveform. The clipping is NOT evident while listening to the music. The clipping occurred at around -6 -> -7 dB on the recorder.
I don't know why but I can't get the declipper to work despite trying NUMEROUS settings. Could someone give me a few basic declipping instructions so that I can maybe figure out what I'm doing incorrectly?
Thanks!!
If your digital levels are around -6 or -7dBfs, and the WAV looks flattened out... then you're not clipping, you are brickwalling (aka overloading some analog portion of the gear chain prior to the A/D). I don't have experience with this software, but maybe the "declipper" is looking for samples that are actually digital clipping (i.e. pegged at 0dBfs), and you need to use some other wave restoration tool. Alternatively, if their is no audible distortion, another option is to leave the recording as is (but try to identify where the signal was too hot for the gear to handle, in an effort to prevent it from happening again).
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Hello,
I have a recent recording where the signal feeding from my pre "lightly" clipped the ad in my recorder. I wasn't aware that the clipping occurred until I viewed the waveform. The clipping is NOT evident while listening to the music. The clipping occurred at around -6 -> -7 dB on the recorder.
I don't know why but I can't get the declipper to work despite trying NUMEROUS settings. Could someone give me a few basic declipping instructions so that I can maybe figure out what I'm doing incorrectly?
Thanks!!
If your digital levels are around -6 or -7dBfs, and the WAV looks flattened out... then you're not clipping, you are brickwalling (aka overloading some analog portion of the gear chain prior to the A/D). I don't have experience with this software, but maybe the "declipper" is looking for samples that are actually digital clipping (i.e. pegged at 0dBfs), and you need to use some other wave restoration tool. Alternatively, if their is no audible distortion, another option is to leave the recording as is (but try to identify where the signal was too hot for the gear to handle, in an effort to prevent it from happening again).
Jason, thanks for the education. PM sent...
;)
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If your digital levels are around -6 or -7dBfs, and the WAV looks flattened out... then you're not clipping, you are brickwalling (aka overloading some analog portion of the gear chain prior to the A/D). I don't have experience with this software, but maybe the "declipper" is looking for samples that are actually digital clipping (i.e. pegged at 0dBfs), and you need to use some other wave restoration tool.
Or maybe try adding just enough gain (between 6-7 dB) to bring the brickwalled peaks just up to full scale, and then run the declipper?
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anyone willing to run a couple things through this for me? I'd like to know how well it really works before i buy it.