iZotope RX 8

[bitflipper]

I bought myself an early birthday present and picked up RX 8 Standard a couple days ago. Yes, I should have waited until Black Friday, but I had an immediate need for it and forked over the $328 with tax.

For surgical editing I have relied on Adobe Audition for 15 years, and have been consistently impressed with how good it is. But it's 32-bit code and crashed when attempting to load a particularly large file in the spectral editor. I have no interest in later versions of Audition, since you can only rent it nowadays. So RX 8 was my only option.

First impression was that RX is nowhere near as easy to use as Audition. Just navigating the main window was frustrating, with something as basic as looping on a section being unnecessarily hard. The de-clicker wasn't as precise as Audition's, leaving several pops that had to be manually treated. Spectral editing took a lot more time than with Audition, but I'm sure it'll get quicker as my familiarity improves. I like that it supports fx chains, even if I'll probably never use them.

What really intrigued me was this feature called "Music Rebalance", which I thought might help me with my immediate situation, which is remastering an album without access to the original multitrack files. It lets you separate bass, drums, vocals and "everything else" into separate stems and rebalance them. Sounds pretty cool, huh?

So I tried it out on an old tune, just bringing up the drums by 2 dB. I loaded it onto my pocket player and later that night A/B'd it against the original. My critical-listening environment: lying in bed in the dark, on my best headphones with a headphone amp and the highest-quality pharmaceutical cannabis. It's a setup in which even the smallest detail doesn't escape me.

True to their word, the song now had louder drums. RX had even figured out that the tambourine should be included. But to my great disappointment, it also had an unpleasant midrange boost and overall loss of clarity. Not exactly Celemony-level transparency. To be fair, the source material was an MP3. It might do better on a higher-quality file. But for now it looks as though RX 8's coolest-looking feature may not actually be all that useful.

Anyhow, I thought I'd solicit others' experiences with RX and maybe pick up a tip or two.

[Bapu]

I'm still on RX 7 and I thought RX 5's de-clicker was the best, now you're making me rethink an upgrade.

[craigb]

I had a really nice RX 7 for over eight years.  Looked just like this one below (the last year of this body style, my friend went for the RX 8 which we used to call the "poor man's Porsche").

(I hope I'm being on-topic, but it's still early and I haven't had my first coffee yet...)

[Bapu]

I owned a 1983 Mazda RX 7, black with maroon interior. Also, owned it for about 8 years and then passed it on to family member.

[paulo]

37 minutes ago, Bapu said:

I owned a 1983 Mazda RX 7, black with maroon interior. Also, owned it for about 8 years and then passed it on to family member.

Just 'cause they're related doesn't mean you have to like 'em, right?

[paulo]

53 minutes ago, craigb said:

my friend went for the RX 8 which we used to call the "poor man's Porsche"

The RX8 must have looked a lot different on your side of the pond. Over here they looked like this......

 

Whereas a poor man's Porsche looks like this....

[Sheens]

me back then in a silver Corrado G60 w black leather interior like below pic.

loved how it looked/drove...the aftermarket installed alarm drove me nuts.

never buy a car with a not original alarm.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Sheens

[bitflipper]

OK, I realize now that I've asked the wrong crowd for advice. Not complaining. I always thought the RX7 was a pretty nice-looking car, if a bit cramped and noisy. And though mechanics invariably greeted it with "wtf is that?". And if you collided with anything denser than a VW bug you would almost certainly die.

  

8 hours ago, Bapu said:

I'm still on RX 7 and I thought RX 5's de-clicker was the best, now you're making me rethink an upgrade.

In all probability the de-clicker in version 8 is the same exact software. At least, they did not claim it to be improved. Truth is, that tool isn't bad at all. It just didn't work as well as Audition's, which eliminated 99% of clicks. RX 8, however, eliminated 33%. There were probably some tweaks I could have done to make it work better, but I defaulted to what I already know, which is how to de-click by hand using a spectral editor.

The de-hummer, OTOH, has been improved. So if you get a hummer you can (probably) be successfully de-hummed.

 

[bitflipper]

Say Ed, since I've got you on the line, let me ask you a question.

Every time I start up RX, I get a messagebox saying

Quote

Can't open use session data folder
---------------------------
The currently selected session data folder cannot be used.
Open preferences, and choose a new session data folder.

Any idea what it's trying to tell me?

Everything actually works fine. The folder in question is C:\Users\davet\AppData\Roaming\iZotope\RX 8 Audio Editor Session Data (the default), and I've confirmed that the folder exists and that I can write to it. 

While I'm at it, I also have this weird rash...

[Bapu]

Is RX error in standalone or VST? If standalone, maybe try Run As Administrator?

I've not seen that error, nor do I know anything about that kind of rash.

 

[bitflipper]

Standalone, invoked via CW's Utilities menu. So it's likely already running as Administrator given that it's invoked from CW which is. I've never interacted with iZotope in the 14 years I've been a customer, guess I'll see if there's a FAQ or a forum or something.

Did I say "rash"? I meant "trash". You know, that weird distortion plugin from iZotope.

[bitflipper]

I put in a support request to iZotope. First time, so it'll be interesting to see if, when and how they respond.

BTW, that Interpolate tool is almost worth the price of admission by itself.

[SteveStrummerUK]

bump