# Best de-verb option?



## davidson (May 30, 2020)

What are you guys using for de-verbing duties?


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## Satorious (May 30, 2020)

Izotope RX7 Advance (also useful for other reasons - but in the deverb is especially useful). You could also take a look at Acon's deverberate for a less expensive option - but I can't comment how good it is.


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## wst3 (May 30, 2020)

"de-verbing" remains one of the bigger challenges for DSP programmers, or at least that is how it appears.

To my ears it comes down to Zynaptiq UnVeil & Intensity, and iZotope RX (in my case v7 basic). Sometimes I will use the spectral editor that is part of Wavelab, I have also spent a little time with Steinberg Spectral Layers. Here's my take...

First, you can get decent results using a transient shaper - this is probably "old school" at this point, but tightening up transients can offer at least the impression of less reverb. In some cases! Which leaves the big guns.

My personal favorite is Zynaptiq UnVeil, when it works it is borderline voodoo. That said, it is not the easiest tool, you will spend quite a bit of time tweaking to get a great result. And even this won't clean up every recording, but for me it handles the messier cases, and always with the fewest artifacts.

Next up would be Zynaptiq Intensity - it won't fix every problem but for those problems it can fix it is much easier to use. In fact I've started to use this first just to see what it can do.

And then comes RX 7 from iZotope. I really want their deverb tool to work, nearly all their other tools work well, and are easy to use, and don't leave messy footprints, but this one just doesn't work for me. It is easier to use than either of the Zynaptiq plugins, but sadly it leaves all sorts of artifacts. I use RX7 for a lot of things, but can't recommend it for repairing reverberation problems.

Everyone's ears are different, and there is always a good chance I'm an idiot, so you may still want to give it a try. They do have a trial version.

Finally, if the track is really valuable, and I feel like I have all the time in the world, I will use a combination of more conventional plugins and a spectral display. Expanders can push the reverb down a little bit, gates can too, but are just too abrupt for my tastes. EQ can remove sections of the spectrum that aren't contributing much except the reverb. Enhancers allow you to put back some of the information you removed (caveat, not really, but the impression is that they do<G>) And then it comes down to editing, either in a waveform or spectral display.

That's a ton of work, hours upon hours in most cases, so think last resort, only existing recording of Moses talking to the tribes sort of thing.

Let me know if you'd like to know more about any of them. Both iZotope and Zynaptiq offer trial versions.


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## Satorious (May 30, 2020)

I can't comment on the basic RX7 (I think you get less control), but as a filmmaker - RX7 Advance has saved my bacon fixing a lot of dialogue issues (and it's for the most part easy and intuitive). I've recorded stuff I thought was totally unusable (eg. narrow corridors with terrible verb) and it's worked wonders. There are of course limitations to what is fixable/possible, but this tool genuinely surprised me. If you crank any of these tools up to 11 - you are going to get artifacts - so it's all about knowing how and where to use them.


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## davidson (May 30, 2020)

@wst3 @Satorious Thanks guys, I'm going to dig into your recommendations. I'll let you know how I get on.


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## creativeforge (Feb 19, 2022)

davidson said:


> @wst3 @Satorious Thanks guys, I'm going to dig into your recommendations. I'll let you know how I get on.


Hi, curious how you got on?  I'm facing a similar need. Thanks!


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## musicalweather (Feb 19, 2022)

I can recommend Plugin Alliance's SPL Deverb. I was once hired to video tape a university lecture (a music professor, in a sort of recital hall.). I used separate mics and was not permitted to place them close to the lecturer. Didn't realize how reverberant the hall was until I played back my audio. Couldn't make out what he was saying. Catastrophe! Deverb saved my hide.


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## poly6 (Feb 19, 2022)

There's also Novonotes Ambience. It's relatively new and they only have the "Lite" version available for free - they haven't release the "full" version of it yet. It allows you to enhance the ambience of a the input but it also allows you to de-emphasize the ambience, which effectively is de-verbing. Only available for MacOS though at the moment.


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## rrichard63 (Feb 19, 2022)

Another possibility to consider is Acon Digital DeVerberate 3. I haven't tried this one, but a lot of Acon Digital's tools are excellent values for the money.


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## creativeforge (Feb 19, 2022)

musicalweather said:


> I can recommend Plugin Alliance's SPL Deverb. I was once hired to video tape a university lecture (a music professor, in a sort of recital hall.). I used separate mics and was not permitted to place them close to the lecturer. Didn't realize how reverberant the hall was until I played back my audio. Couldn't make out what he was saying. Catastrophe! Deverb saved my hide.


Thank you! Installed the demo and started tweaking i but nothing seemed to be happening much, until I would crank it to the max and then I could hear the artefacts but still no "deverbing" noticeable. So maybe I'm going at it the wrong way. I'll go back and find an original version of the tracks pre-reverb. 

I wanted to use it on strings pads I originally created as MIDI track with reverb applied. Then I merged both into an audio track (not recommended). So now I have to go back 10 versions of the song back to find an original MIDI and remove the reverb before saving to audio.


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## creativeforge (Feb 19, 2022)

poly6 said:


> There's also Novonotes Ambience. It's relatively new and they only have the "Lite" version available for free - they haven't release the "full" version of it yet. It allows you to enhance the ambience of a the input but it also allows you to de-emphasize the ambience, which effectively is de-verbing. Only available for MacOS though at the moment.


Thanks, but PC guy here...


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## creativeforge (Feb 19, 2022)

rrichard63 said:


> Another possibility to consider is Acon Digital DeVerberate 3. I haven't tried this one, but a lot of Acon Digital's tools are excellent values for the money.


I'll check that one, though. I do own one of their suite, and they have a demo for Deverberate 3. I'm using Valhalla Room, and there are helpful setting there too in order to EQ the decay.


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## Petrucci (Feb 19, 2022)

UAD C-vox is really good for voice and other sources for noise and room removal)


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## md11 (Feb 20, 2022)

I have deverberate 3 and got great results with bad voice-over recordings and dialog cleanup.


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## davidson (Feb 20, 2022)

creativeforge said:


> Hi, curious how you got on?  I'm facing a similar need. Thanks!


To be honest, I never found an acceptable solution. The hunt continues, good luck!


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## dainiak (Feb 20, 2022)

rrichard63 said:


> Another possibility to consider is Acon Digital DeVerberate 3. I haven't tried this one, but a lot of Acon Digital's tools are excellent values for the money.


Indeed, Acon Deberberate 3 is very good. Worked better in some cases for me for dialog deverb than RX 9. Also you can try a demo of Accentize Deroom.
The most recent WaveLab 11 also has introduced a DeVerb plugin from Steinberg, exclusive to Wavelab as of now.


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## AnhrithmonGelasma (Feb 20, 2022)

Unveil is the best, but unfortunately it doesn't aim to distinguish between (what it considers) to be "mud" and reverb. In my (limited) testing it took out too much of the richness and body of vocals. It seemed like maybe it can't distinguish between unwanted external reverb and desirable reverberation from within a singer's (or instrument's) body (resonating cavities etc.)?... Though if you just want bright vocals or clearly intelligible vocals it's probably great.

I tried removing the baked in reverb from some of my samples during the free trial, but as has been mentioned getting it to sound good can be really time consuming. For bass drums I'm not sure it's even possible without messing up the sound.


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## creativeforge (Feb 20, 2022)

AnhrithmonGelasma said:


> Unveil is the best, but unfortunately it doesn't aim to distinguish between (what it considers) to be "mud" and reverb. In my (limited) testing it took out too much of the richness and body of vocals. It seemed like maybe it can't distinguish between unwanted external reverb and desirable reverberation from within a singer's (or instrument's) body (resonating cavities etc.)?... Though if you just want bright vocals or clearly intelligible vocals it's probably great.
> 
> I tried removing the baked in reverb from some of my samples during the free trial, but as has been mentioned getting it to sound good can be really time consuming. For bass drums I'm not sure it's even possible without messing up the sound.


In my case, the reverb is not on vocals (mostly) but on vi or synths. And it is reverb I added at some point during production and baked in to free some resources as the number of tracks was getting in the 40s.

I was able to find an original (no added reverb) of two of the tracks I was trying to correct and that worked to clear up the muddiness, although not at every junction yet.

So that is another lesson I need to remember about reverb and mixing: the cumulative effect of 40+ instruments tracks, many with reverbs from various origins (synth, vi, VSTs) can become a nightmare to handle. Try not to bake anything in permanently!


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