Isotope RX Elements/speech cleanup

[swilow11]

Howdy,

I've got a friend making a podcast. Honestly, it's going to be a nothing burger imo but they're keen and I've been asked to help with some musical stuff and audio correction. They aren't recording under great conditions, so I need to clean up some of the issues- noise, pops, clicks, etc. But it's not abysmal, just quite replete with random noise.

Was thinking about Izotope RX elements. I'm disinclined to spend much at all, and this is on sale so hoping some KVR users here have some feedback for it. I will also probably use it for speech samples ripped from whatever, so I do want something that can do the job quite well- any other suggestions that are relatively inexpensive would be great.

[kidslow]

Try some free things first, and then if they don't get you there, give RX Elements a go. It is always on sale and you can also get it on knobcloud, all day every day, for about $10 (less for an earlier version than 10).

Do you want a single knob or a learn audio engineering route?

Viator DSP has a few free single knob voice tools that I (have not yet but) will check out. They seem well suited to podcasts. Voice Leveler, Voice Sweetener, Voice De-Noiser
https://viatordsp.gumroad.com

Bertom Denoiser another pay what you want.
https://bertomaudio.com/denoiser-classic.html

Accusonus ERA bundle was temporarily set free after Facebook bought them, and can be found without much effort. Depending on where you get it, could be dodgy. It's a decent substitute, but a dead product and not at all something to invest a lot of time learning. Not that it requires much but dead product all the same.

You could always look into more general purpose gates and expanders, which are tried and true for these things. That's a skillset you take with you in life and don't have to rely on any one plugin. Depends on your inclinations.

I can't speak specifically to RX Elements as a toolset. I use RX Advanced, and for some things it's still the king but the world has caught up. In the online / cloud / AI realm there are a wealth of new options sprouting up, some of which may be free if you go digging. Paid products like Hush +/-Pro and Supertone Clear (aka Goyo+) entered the scene recently to compete with the likes of Izotope RX.

Lot of fairly low cost plugin options that may work better or worse depending on where the noise falls. Acon has a great set of tools, way better than RX Elements, that go for cheap. Waves has a good to excellent lineup. Klevgrand Brusfri is a nice easy way for background cleanup.

[noiseboyuk]

Another free one to try that can be quite extraordinary is Adobe Enhance. Drop your WAV(s) in it and they come back fixed, and sounding studio quality.

Like anything it can be a bit hit and miss but it hits quite a lot in my experience. It's often jaw-dropping. I've been in pro audio nearly 40 years (good grief) and today I just put a brodcast colleague on to it to fix a tech fault he had. It's designed to be simple for people with no experience, but believe me, pros use it too.

https://podcast.adobe.com/enhance

[gjunk]

I’m happy enough with rx elements so far it seems to cover most basic needs without having to leave the DAW. It has an “ai repair assistant” but it seems better AI audio repair is out there

[swilow11]

Thanks for the suggestions, people. Ultimately, I guess I am looking for something that I don't need to spend much time at all on, the podcast work is purely pro bono and unlikely to amount to much. Will try some of the free options, but I ultimately do want something better to clean up speech samples which I use relatively regularly in a musical context. As much as AI or single knob magic is great, it's always more fun/rewarding to do the work oneself.