Clean Up Noise with iZotope RX 7 - Tutorial ① Basics

We will be taking a look at iZotope’s audio repair tool “RX 7” over the course of a few articles.
RX 7 helps get rid of unwanted noise in a recording, fixes distorted/clipping audio, and more at a level which would otherwise seem impossible without using this tool.
It is an incredibly high quality tool and is considered to be an industry standard.

Of course, recording a clean signal in a noise-free location would be ideal for most situations, but sometimes noise ends up making it on the recording and in many cases, you may not be able to rerecord.
You can bring your valuable recordings back to life using RX 7.

In addition, ver 7 comes with the new Music Rebalance feature. You can break a mixed L/R track into parts and balance volume, mute, or even hear them in solo using this revolutionary feature.
We will look at this in detail later, as it is a unique function found in the RX 7.

iZotope RX 7 Tutorial ① – Video Access

Opening Files

In this tutorial we will be using the standalone “audio editor” version of RX7.
When you open it, you’ll first see this file window.

You can choose to drag and drop a file or open a file.

We’ve opened the file as shown.
As you can see, we have purposefully chosen a sample that has clipping (digital distortion) in it for this example.
We will be using RX 7 to fix this issue.

Using Repair Assistant

RX 7 comes with various modules displayed on the list to the right, but you may not know whats what on this list if its your first time seeing it.
But no worries, by using the Repair Assistant feature, AI will automatically detect the issues in the audio clip and select/apply various tools to it.

A pop up window will appear after clicking Repair Assistant, so select the appropriate audio type.

Dialogue refers to narration and conversation recordings, while Music refers to instrument, vocal, and other musical recording, and everything else falls into the Other category.
Press the Start Analysis button to begin analysis.

When analysis is complete, you can compare the original to 3 repaired version options.

The strength of the repair effects can be adjusted in this preview mode as well. Lets try clicking on the fader mark below.

A strength preview will be created, and a slider will pop up allowing you to adjust the strength. Move this fader to adjust the strength of the repair effects.

We could go ahead in Render the audio here, but why don’t we look and see what kind of processing is being done here first.
By putting the cursor over A, B, or C, you can look at the module names included in its module chain.

To see in further detail, click the Open as Module Chain button below.

A pop up window will appear where you can see the details of the module chain.
By clicking on the fader marks, you can view/change the settings within an effect module.

Now that we took a look at the settings, lets render this audio.
Click on the Render button to begin rendering the audio.

Once the rending is complete, the effects will be visible on the new waveform, and repair history will be added below to History.

Each module setting is also recorded in History, allowing you to change the audio to any previous version in History.

Last, Save As to complete the audio editing process.
Though in this example we looked at using the Repair Assistant to get a basic fix of our audio, the potential of RX 7 goes above and beyond this. We will be looking at other modules in our following articles which allow you to edit sounds that RX 7 may not be able to intially pick up.

About Music Rebalance

Last but not least, we will take a look at Music Rebalance for this article.
Music Rebalance breaks a mix track into Vocal, Bass, Percussion, and Other and allows you to adjust each part.

Prepare a mix file with these instrument parts in it to utilize Music Rebalance.
Select Music Rebalance from the module list on the right.

A pop up window will appear, and we can make adjustments while playing using the preview button.

• ①Gain：Adjusts the volume of an individual part
• ②Sensitivity：Raising it raises the clarity of analyzed signal from the source, but introduces sounds from other instrument parts. Lowering it creates more separation, but leads to more unnatural editing noise. The key is to find a balance of numerical amounts between other parts to get the best effect.

You can select algorithms for separation from Separation algorithm.

Under Separation algorithm, Channel independent allows you to run the fastest analysis of parts, but the separation quality will be lower. By going to Joint channel, Advanced joint channel, and so forth, the analysis quality increases but will run heavier on your computer.
Using advanced joint channel would be best when Rendering, but you may want to make adjustments when Previewing depending on your computer specs.

Click the Render button to complete setup and begin rendering.

This completes our first look at iZotope RX7 starting with a tutorial on Repair Assistant and Music Rebalance.
In our next video, we will be taking a look at some of the individual modules.