Review by Sam Hughes
Developer: iZotope
Reviewed on: Windows 10 PC
We’ve all heard of the black magic that is iZotope RX5. All those years as sound designers, amongst many other audio professionals, telling people “No we can’t do that, that’s impossible!”. Well RX has been constantly reducing the amount of truth to that sentence. Every iteration of RX still amazed me with it’s ability to reduce noise, clean audio and generally fix a lot of issues.
Don’t get me wrong, the power is out there, but to these people that have no knowledge of audio and still assume we can: It’s still not easy and it’s definitely not cheap. So don’t expect your freelancer to cop out for it if they don’t own it.
However, there is so much you can do with RX5 that I will cover the main highlights that I used so far for me to ensure you’re not reading for hours!
I am a new user to RX in general so I will approach this with a fresh intake as I go along and hopefully it gives you some insight!
Before we go too in-depth there are options for you. The most basic version is the iZotope RX5 Audio Editor. Then there is the iZotope RX5 Advanced Audio Editor and if you want to stretch it that little bit further then there is the RX5 Post Production Suite. This review will be focusing on the Advanced Audio Editor but let’s fill you in on what you get for your money with each.
At a quick glance here’s the workstations side by side so you can check them out (Click for full size).
At $349, the standard iZotope RX5 Audio Editor is easily the most affordable. It will also be everything you need most of the time unless you need to implement some more “advanced” tools, for want of a better word!
The standard editor comes with most of the stuff you will need, including the
The Advanced version adds “industry-first enhancements” such as the De-plosive and updated Leveler modules, which “instantly eliminate plosives in your dialogue with total transparency and smooth out volume inconsistencies.”, which to be honest is up to you if you need this tools as the whole Advanced package comes to $1199!
If you want to stretch even further to $1499, the RX Post Production Suite includes: iZotope RX5 Advanced Audio Editor, RX Final Mix, RX Loudness Correction, and Insight. You can find out more about these features and the Production Suite here: https://www.izotope.com/en/products/bundles/rx-post-production-suite/
Interface
Now lets be honest, any program that’s going to be able to do the intelligent work that RX5 does is never going to be a couple of buttons. However, it is very scary upon first appearances.
No need to be afraid! It’s very simple and easy to use. You import your audio and then depending on what you need to do, you select which modules you want from the menu on the right.
Once you’ve decided what you want they then appear on your screen for you to alter the setting for.
Now to discuss the main features I used in this excellent piece of software.
De-noise
I use the noise removal tool most actually. I find it fascinatingly brilliant. I tried it both as the standalone program, and as a plugin on Pro Tools. I used it as a plugin recently on my interview to remove PC noise in the background, and it is excellent. I just asked it to learn the sound and then it was removed from the whole track with no latency issues at all. Normally when I use some noise removal tools, such as Z-noise, it works but the playback is then disjointed and I get latency issues.
I have used this in many interviews since owning RX5 and below you can hear the difference in a before and after of a clip from my interview with Galadriel Stineman.
Before:
After:
This was used very simply as a plug-in in Pro Tools as seen below:
You hear the significant difference between them and RX5 instantly removed the noise from my computer from the whole track, without any side effects or disruption in the quality of the audio.
It’s just as simple to use in the stand-alone version too as you can see here:
Corrective EQ
Again, another brilliant area. Dedicated EQ plugin can sometimes be better for the more specific actions and versatility you might need, but to be honest this is excellent and has most, if not more, of the features that you’ll need to use. Hard to say more about EQ really apart from that there are a lot of options and you can tweak with fine detail as you’d expect from such a beastly correction software. 
De-reverb
Very obvious what this does again. I like that though, very easy to find what you need just from the titles! The best way to show the capabilities of this one is to show you another audio clip.
Quick note on this: One of the things I love most about RX5 is the simple way you can compare files. As you can see above there is the “Compare Settings” box. You can check real-time while playing the file and simply quickly between for seamless comparison of the files before and after processing(This is for all processes). It’s non-destructive even once you process as well, and it keeps a record of all your changes. You can see in the bottom right where it says “Initial State”. This is where the log is and you can jump to any stage of the chain at any time, which is brilliant. You can also save chains and make
Here are some samples of what you can achieve while adjusting different settings on the De-reverb with an explosion. Yes you can just remove the reverb, but the possibilities of what else we can do is also what we should be thinking of. It’s not only a corrective tool but can be a creative tool! Check these out below and have a play around yourself.
The explosion is from 2014 Unreal Engine 4 pack – 81 Explosion. The first is a standard reverb removal, but the rest are very quickly made examples of messing with the settings to use them in more a sound design way of working.
Extras
If you’re not feeling like you want to go the extra mile and get full editor but do need some clean up tools, iZotope did recently release a plugin pack for $129 which includes: De-Click, Dialogue De-noise, De-hum and De-clip which is pretty reasonable!
Click image to view more.
Summary
iZotope RX5 lives up to the high expectations I had and some. On experimenting with a lot of the settings, I can tell that there is so much more that it can do. There’s some fine-tuning to be done for sure but even a lot of the basic elements will fix whatever problem you have. Don’t just whack everything all on without tweaking though as that’s a sure fire way to ruin your audio, but the presets are definitely a great place to start.
There are also so many tutorials out there and a lot of advice on how to use the software, even on the official site. The ones below are just some of the ones I found particularly useful, there are many more!
RX 5 Quickstart: Cleaning Up Audio and Reducing Noise with RX 5 Audio Editor – I highly recommend this one, fantastic way to introduce you to iZotope RX5.
Dialogue & Voiceover Track Editing in RX 5 Advanced – Again very useful for me as I work with dialogue a lot, and a great place to learn how to use the advanced tools.
RX Tutorial: Using RX Post Production Plug-ins & Pro Tools – This one was also great and seeing what else iZotope could do inside a DAW (Pro Tools in this case).
The Audio Editor by itself should cover pretty much all bases and compared to the costs of other software out there it is very reasonable (considering it could literally save a project!). As for the big cash jump to the Advanced Editor that all depends what you need. If you’re going to need those extra features then it’s worth it, if your not, then it’s not, simple as that really!
Now even after playing with RX5 extensively I’ve barely uncovered the surface of what it can do, so take this powerhouse for a spin and let me know what you get up to!
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The Sound Architect
