# Game Changer for Voiceovers and Dialogue



## robgb (Jul 26, 2018)

If you're doing voiceovers or dialogue this plug-in is a game changer. I'd also be curious to see if it works on vocals.


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## d.healey (Jul 26, 2018)

robgb said:


> If you're doing voiceovers or dialogue this plug-in is a game changer. I'd also be curious to see if it works on vocals.


I wouldn't call it a game changer, nothing there that can't be done by several other pieces of software. But in terms of simplicity of use it seems very good.


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## fiestared (Jul 26, 2018)

robgb said:


> If you're doing voiceovers or dialogue this plug-in is a game changer. I'd also be curious to see if it works on vocals.



Agree...


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## robgb (Jul 26, 2018)

d.healey said:


> I wouldn't call it a game changer, nothing there that can't be done by several other pieces of software. But in terms of simplicity of use it seems very good.


I've gotta say this is the best noise reduction I've seen, even using multiple pieces of software. The speech seems to be completely free of artifacts, which is the problem I run into with most noise reduction software. You always have to settle for a happy medium, but I don't really see that here. That's why I called it a game changer.


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## studiostuff (Jul 26, 2018)

I hear it adding flangey artifacts... If it's a game changer, it seems like the sort of thing that could change your game from being employed to being unemployed.

Seems like iZotope RX-6 Advanced is still the top dog plug for this sort of work. That, and of course, recording what you want in a correct manner to begin with.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 26, 2018)

Ouch, that's some wooden dialogue. Quick, add the noise back in.


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## jneebz (Jul 26, 2018)

studiostuff said:


> I hear it adding flangey artifacts...


Totally agree.


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## d.healey (Jul 26, 2018)

Most voice over guys don't record in a noisy environment  my main problem with voice over is not background noise but mouth sounds, pops, clicks, and the occasional knocked microphone. If you're recording outdoors a dead cat (wind muff) helps a ton. If you're recording dialogue for a movie half of it (if not more) will probably be ADR'd anyway.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 26, 2018)

d.healey said:


> half of it (if not more) will probably be ADR'd anyway.


But you'd have to give up these "natural" performances in ADR.


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## rrichard63 (Jul 26, 2018)

Before calling something a game-changer (and before deciding that it's not), I'd like to be able to test it myself. As far as I can tell, the comments in this thread are based on the developer's demo files. If anyone is a beta tester and has tried this for himself/herself, please let us know. Thanks.

Very interested in this because I frequently try to rescue bad field recordings of classes held outdoors with a lot of gnarly background noise.


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## gsilbers (Jul 26, 2018)

Its is very good and seems easy to use. I did a lot of post mixing and indeed seems like a very good tool. You can hear some artifacts or that de-reverby hollowish sound but its still very good and after adding a few tracks of selected ambiences and "room tone" plus normal effects and music it will sound great.
Very useful for show that get international distirtbution that you need to remove dialogue and production sound so it can get dubbed.
Also i only heard the hollow ish sound on the full on setting. somewhere in between will be good enough.

Izotope seems to have a similar feature where it automatically reduces those unwanted noise but not sure how it compares.
From what i gather, audioinamix is all about dialogue or vocals so im guessing their algorightm is heavy on trying to keep diallgue intact so that might be a leg up against izotopes version/ 

I wonder how it will be for cleaning up sample recording for kontakt instruments


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## studiostuff (Jul 26, 2018)

Just discovered it's only $139... So, there's that.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 26, 2018)

Depending on the deals, I think you can pick up Izotope RX Elements for around $30, and that has voice de-noise, which in my opinion will do a better job, plus you'd get other modules like phase rotation, de-click, de-clip, etc. Last I checked you can demo free for 30 days. To my mind, this Instant Dialogue Cleaner isn't changing any games.


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## Satorious (Jul 26, 2018)

I tend to use Adobe Audition for this type of thing - it has pretty good noise capture and removal tools. The one thing it doesn't necessarily solve (and neither would this) - is removing any unwanted reverb (depending on how/where you record).


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## Land of Missing Parts (Jul 26, 2018)

Satorious said:


> I tend to use Adobe Audition for this type of thing - it has pretty good noise capture and removal tools. The one thing it doesn't necessarily solve (and neither would this) - is removing any unwanted reverb (depending on how/where you record).


It's no magic bullet, but I've had relatively good results from Izotope's de-reverb. You have to live with some artifacts though.
https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/products/rx/reducing-reverb-with-the-rx-de-reverb-module.html


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## Satorious (Jul 26, 2018)

Yes, a sound engineer/mixer saved my bacon with RX6 on my film's shoot. An incredible tool! We shot two rather emotional scenes in an atmospheric (but horribly-echoy) corridor. Both actors were "in the moment", really wanted to keep their original performances rather than add less natural sounding ADR. The moral of the story is - sometimes things are beyond your control - but always try to get it right at the time if you can!


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## robgb (Jul 26, 2018)

studiostuff said:


> I hear it adding flangey artifacts...


Not hearing it.


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## robgb (Jul 26, 2018)

rrichard63 said:


> Before calling something a game-changer (and before deciding that it's not), I'd like to be able to test it myself.


Point taken.


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## Satorious (Jul 26, 2018)

@robgb The flanging is definitely coming out on my headphones (or in my ears - I guess I do this a lot). That said - it does a pretty good job. As already mentioned - there are a number of other tools which can do the same job (ie. you might want to check out a free 30 day trial version of Adobe Audition CC to hear the noise reduction first-hand). I use an older version (CS6). Whilst it doesn't have a simple dial (you'll need to capture a noise print first, it analyses the frequencies), but it's fairly easy to get pleasing results. It also gives you far greater control over how much is actually removed (I like you can preview exactly what has been removed).


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## studiostuff (Jul 26, 2018)

robgb said:


> Not hearing it.



Perhaps you don't do a lot of work with this sort of tool... It's a common result of having the tool (noise removal) intensity set too high. Easy to hear if you know what you're listening to hear. I would suggest having your hearing checked, but in this high-talent group that might be considered rude...



Satorious said:


> @robgb As already mentioned - there are a number of other tools which can do the same job (ie. you might want to check out a free 30 day trial version of Adobe Audition CC to hear the noise reduction first-hand). I use an older version (CS6). Whilst it doesn't have a simple dial (you'll need to capture a noise print first, it analyses the frequencies), but it's fairly easy to get pleasing results. It also gives you far greater control over how much is actually removed (I like you can preview exactly what has been removed).



I have a ton of these tools including current versions of RX-6 Adv and all the Adobe Creative Cloud tools. I agree with you, Adobe Audition does an OK job for me when I am already in Premiere Pro or Audition. But if the target stuff is really exposed and needy, my personal fave is RX-6. As someone said, "Magic".

There are other tools that are serious forensic voodoo, but I'm a composer/producer, and usually am doing this sort of corrective stuff as a favor to a director who got rushed, or with clicks and other crap on vocals.


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## robgb (Jul 26, 2018)

studiostuff said:


> I would suggest having your hearing checked, but in this high-talent group that might be considered rude...


Yet you managed to suggest it anyway. Imagine that. 

It's true enough that I don't often use these tools--no need to--but I've used them enough to know what the artifacts sound like, and nothing in the example is close to as bad as what I've heard in the past. It sounds pretty natural. Now that may be due to the recordings used, but to my ears this is far better than anything else I've heard. I wasn't, however, using headphones.

But the point was made that we'd really need to work with the app to know the truth of it, and I agree.


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## studiostuff (Jul 26, 2018)

I'm just tipping you over because it's so easy and so much fun, M8. 

One of these days your strong opinions will be informed by your vast experience. (I don't think this plug is a game-changer when compared to well-known other stuff.)

So, next time we're in the same pub, the first round is on m... oh, sht! uh... never mind. My bad.


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## will_m (Jul 26, 2018)

The recordings sound quite poor to begin with (tonally) so its harder to tell but the results sound unnatural to me, although it might be a case of going too far with the noise reduction. RX is still the king of this area for me though, the basic auto de-noiser is great and I've not seen anything come close to spectral repair for precision.

So yeah not a game changer for me but nice to see some more competition I guess.


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## rrichard63 (Jul 26, 2018)

Satorious said:


> ... you'll need to capture a noise print first, it analyses the frequencies ...


Algorithms that rely on a noise print can be great when the noise you a trying to reduce is relatively constant in pitch and timbre. My nightmare recordings are ones where the background sounds vary from moment to moment. By reputation, at least, Audionamix has some way to separate dialog from non-dialog. Since their previous products have been mostly for Macs, I haven't tried them yet myself. This one will be available for Windows, and has me intrigued.


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## pderbidge (Jul 26, 2018)

studiostuff said:


> I'm just tipping you over because it's so easy and so much fun, M8.
> 
> One of these days your strong opinions will be informed by your vast experience. (I don't think this plug is a game-changer when compared to well-known other stuff.)
> 
> So, next time we're in the same pub, the first round is on m... oh, sht! uh... never mind. My bad.


So you're saying you like "tipping" people off for fun? Geez, I'll bet people love hanging with you


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## studiostuff (Jul 26, 2018)

Yes. Yes, I do. 

And it's tipping people over, not "off".


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## pderbidge (Jul 26, 2018)

studiostuff said:


> Yes. Yes, I do.
> 
> And it's tipping people over, not "off".


I stand corrected.


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## jcrosby (Jul 27, 2018)

studiostuff said:


> Seems like iZotope RX-6 Advanced is still the top dog plug for this sort of work. That, and of course, recording what you want in a correct manner to begin with.


 This does seem cool and quite decent as a standalone plugin, but yes, RX6 already has this... They call it 'Dialogue Isolate'. Does a remarkable job. As far as the flangey-nees... Any decent editor wouldn't remove that much noise. The point is to remove enough so speech is clear and artifacts are as unnoticeable as possible. (The traffic in those examples is actually pretty manageable.)

As far as recording? Good luck with that... Things like planes are unavoidable no matter where you shoot, traffic is too depending on budget/location. And wind's unpredictable and can destroy a take if you don't have tools to remove it. (Even then there's a limit to what any of these tools can remove. Some noise you just have to live with, and know when you're stuck having to live with it.)

If you're working on a film with a small budget no one's doing ADR, the dialogue is what it is, and whoever job it is to do dialogue cleanup has to get rid of it... TV as well... Dialogue's almost always from location, the average show doesn't have the time for it. ADR's also easy to notice. It's spatially disparate, and doesn't have the life of a really good performance. As long as the audio from a take can be cleaned up the scene will be a whole lot more alive for it.

RX6 Advanced is the obvious choice, but out of your the average person's budget so I could see this being a nice solution for people who can't afford RX... Sounds better than Waves, and from what I can tell this is using some kind of machine learning similar to how Izotope to identifies speech.


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## fiestared (Jul 27, 2018)

jcrosby said:


> This does seem cool and quite decent as a standalone plugin, but yes, RX6 already has this... They call it 'Dialogue Isolate'. Does a remarkable job. As far as the flangey-nees... Any decent editor wouldn't remove that much noise. The point is to remove enough so speech is clear and artifacts are as unnoticeable as possible. (The traffic in those examples is actually pretty manageable.)
> 
> As far as recording? Good luck with that... Things like planes are unavoidable no matter where you shoot, traffic is too depending on budget/location. And wind's unpredictable and can destroy a take if you don't have tools to remove it. (Even then there's a limit to what any of these tools can remove. Some noise you just have to live with, and know when you're stuck having to live with it.)
> 
> ...


Very useful comment, if you could develop it, it would be VERY interesting (at least for me). Why not a thread about your experiences in that domain, if you have time ? Thanks


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## rrichard63 (Jul 27, 2018)

jcrosby said:


> ... RX6 already has this... They call it 'Dialogue Isolate' ...


Thank you! When RX6 came out, I more or less decided not to upgrade my license for RX5 Advanced until they give me a fabulous deal. But the demo linked below could change my mind.

https://www.cinemasound.com/cleaning-dialog-izotope-rx-6-dialog-isolate/


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## studiostuff (Jul 27, 2018)

rrichard63 said:


> I more or less decided not to upgrade my license for RX5 Advanced until they give me a fabulous deal.



I have had amazing luck in appealing to the fabulous iZotope Support Team regarding upgrade pricing. While I have quite a few of their products and have for years, and teach college (which means their products are exposed to my students), when I write support about upgrade path pricing, they frequently sweeten the offers available here and there on the web with an additional discount percentage. 

None of that would mean anything if their products were crap, but I find many of their product "suites" (post production, mixing, etc.) and individual plugs in my workflow on a regular basis. 

You didn't hear it from me, but why not invent a reason to appeal to iZotope support for a little sweeter deal. If your Kung Fu is stronger than the usual bitchy complaints they get at support, you might just be glad you took the time to create an interesting and reasonable appeal. 

Don't quote me.


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