You guys can fight over what's preservation, restoration, or falsification, but I can say that for making new recordings, the Izotope stuff can be indispensable. Where I am, there isn’t a venue in town that combines good acoustics with a quiet enough background to make commercially acceptable recordings. Software makes it possible.
But, now that I have some exposure to the effects of this stuff, I think it's obvious why so many contemporary classical recordings sound so anonymous - the over-use of spectral cleaning. Who needs 24 bits when the content is restricted to - what - 14 bits? The cure is worse than the ailment. The beauty of the RX3 tool is how finely it can be targeted. I use it mostly to reduce rumble, leaving higher frequencies alone. But, even when I have to attack higher-frequency tonal noise, it is very good at telling the difference.
I have to thank Lou for encouraging me to overcome my audiophile purity and try this product.
-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Haley
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2014 4:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] AZIMUTH (was recording "cleanup" plugins and 192/24)
Tom, I have to agree with your last sentence, and also with your comments about the hype that surrounded CEDAR and Sonic Solutions in the past, both highly flawed programs as initially released. Those tradenames became more like selling points than any guarantee of good sound or excellent restoration work. Also, if you are remastering great sounding analog recordings, I agree that less is more in terms of "fixing" them. But the great worth of Izotope RX3, which I have been using for several months, is that it does a lot of things better for sources that are NOT pristine or wonderful. You can't make something sound wonderful that inherently doesn't, but it is amazing how much better compromised sources can sound when they are well restored. This is especially true for live recordings, which almost always have serious sonic defects built in. Even recordings of broadcast material almost always have problems.
This all relates to your musical point of view as a listener--my own is that with a whole century of great recordings available to pick from, I do not want to be limited to any particular time frame or era when recordings sounded a certain way. I don't expect 78 recordings to sound like they were made in a later era, but I do want them to sound as good as their limitations will allow.
Best,
John Haley
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 4:30 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> The hype about RX in the engineering community is somewhat worrying to me.
> I remember this hype for CEDAR and for Sonic Solutions NoNoise. A
> bunch of really bad-sounding reissues touted CEDAR and Sonic in their
> liner notes. I will just about guarantee that RX will be purchased by
> every tin-eared hack and will be misused to the point of cliche.
>
> We should remember that digital processing AFTER analog playback is
> ALWAYS a crutch. In theory, a great analog recording should need no
> processing if it's been played back correctly into a "transparent" high-resolution ADC.
> "Fixing flaws" for all the other recordings ever made is a very
> slippery slope and should be approached with great caution and taste.
> Digital technology has not yet figured out how to create out of thin
> air some sort of "good" that was never there in an analog recording
> (or photo or 3D object). It merely gives us ways to try and make a
> digital transfer (virtual facsimile of something once real) "less
> bad." The track record of typical audio engineers with newfangled
> powerful digital tools in their hands is not impressive.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Aaron Coe"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2014 4:04 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] AZIMUTH (was recording "cleanup" plugins and
> 192/24)
>
>
> I think your last two lines about the hum and tonal noise removal
> just
>> cost me $299!
>>
>> -Aaron
>> _______________________
>> The Cutting Corporation
>> 4940 Hampden Lane, Suite 300
>> Bethesda, MD 20814-2925
>> P: 301.654.2887 ext.19
>> http://cuttingarchives.com <http://cuttingarchives.com/>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 11, 2014, at 3:52 PM, Richard L. Hess
>> <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes, I see that the announcement is out and I love CONNECT. I was
>>> involved in the Beta test of RX4, but I couldn't say it until it was
>>> announced.
>>>
>>> In Samplitude, you make a cut in the timeline (leave it long enough
>>> to do a crossfade), Open Connect as an object off-line effect and
>>> send it to RX4. You then open RX4 to process the clip and send it
>>> back to Samplitude where you then reopen the Connect effect and it
>>> pops into the timeline in place of the piece you originally sent.
>>> Caution--allow long handles if you're sending out for de-clip as you
>>> will need to seamlessly adjust for the level differences.
>>>
>>> It worked wonders on a concert I recorded last Friday -- first one
>>> with my RME BabyFace which was useful since the power was out for
>>> the whole concert. Fortunately, candle light was part of the planned
>>> effect, so only the PA went away. The organ was still hand-pumped.
>>> But, I had not aligned the gain in the BabyFace to the gain in the
>>> FireFace--it was just there in case of a power failure of more than
>>> a few minutes (I had the FireFace on a UPS). I heard the clipping
>>> and dropped the gain for the rest of the concert
>>> -- back to 20 dB which was where the FF had been set. Grrrr.
>>>
>>> Connect works with other editors as well.
>>>
>>> The de-hum now has a tracking mode because the hum frequency is
>>> never the same at the start of the tape as at the end -- not the
>>> same enough to allow you to use very high Q notch filters -- now you can.
>>>
>>> The main screen allows selecting full-length very narrow frequency
>>> bands
>>> -- and several of them -- to treat tonal noises that are able to be
>>> removed with this method as opposed to the noise reduction and are
>>> above the 8 harmonics in the tracking hum filter.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2014-09-11 12:56 PM, Aaron Coe wrote:
>>>
>>>> Richard,
>>>>
>>>> Looks like RX 4 has a new "RX Connect” that may solve your issue:
>>>>
>>>> "Use RX in conjunction with your video or audio editing software of
>>>> choice without slowing down productivity. A round-trip workflow
>>>> enables you to send audio from your host application to RX, so you
>>>> can repair and enhance and then send the new audio back to your host."
>>>>
>>>> I love this app!
>>>>
>>>> -Aaron
>>>> _______________________
>>>> The Cutting Corporation
>>>> 4940 Hampden Lane, Suite 300
>>>> Bethesda, MD 20814-2925
>>>> P: 301.654.2887 ext.19
>>>> http://cuttingarchives.com <http://cuttingarchives.com/> <
>>>> http://cuttingarchives.com/ <http://cuttingarchives.com/>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sep 10, 2014, at 10:16 PM, Richard L. Hess <
>>>>> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> <mailto:
>>>>> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi, Aaron,
>>>>>
>>>>> I stopped using Insight for a while as I was using Alloy for my
>>>>> processing and RX only had one plug-in slot. Insight has not been
>>>>> high on my list of sub-systems to learn, but your suggestion just
>>>>> bumped it up when I get RX4.
>>>>>
>>>>> Samplitude has a sound-field view, but I will check out Insight's.
>>>>>
>>>>> The challenge is I need it farther upstream in the workflow than
>>>>> where I generally use iZotope RX.
>>>>>
>>>>> StereoTool's automatics can sometimes be a useful starting point
>>>>> for further work on the access copy, hence my dual record.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>
>>>>> Richard
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2014-09-10 8:48 PM, Aaron Coe wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Richard,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Have you checked out the Sound Field meter in Izotope’s Insight
>>>>>> metering plugin (comes free with RX Advanced)? I used to used
>>>>>> StereoTools too but prefer using Insight now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Aaron
>>>>>> _______________________
>>>>>> The Cutting Corporation <http://www.cuttingarchives.com/ <
>>>>>> http://www.cuttingarchives.com/> <http://www.cuttingarchives.com/
>>>>>> < http://www.cuttingarchives.com/>>>
>>>>>> 4940 Hampden Lane, Suite 300
>>>>>> Bethesda, MD 20814-2925
>>>>>> P: 301.654.2887 ext.19
>>>>>> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> <mailto:
>>>>>> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]
>>>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]
>>>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]
>>>>>> >>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>> Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
>>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> <mailto:[log in to unmask]
>>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>>>> Aurora, Ontario, Canada 647 479 2800
>>>>> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm <
>>>>> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm> <
>>>>> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm <
>>>>> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm>>
>>>>> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>> Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>> Aurora, Ontario, Canada 647 479 2800
>>> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
>>> <http://www.richardhess.com/ tape/contact.htm> Quality tape
>>> transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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