On Saturday May 16th, 160 CAS members from around the world joined a panel of iZotope super-users as they dove into some of the best-known features in the Emmy-award-winning RX 7, the CAS-award-winning Dialogue Match, and the powerful Insight 2 metering software. Panelists discussed features and best and worse case scenarios while answering questions live from the audience.
Below you can watch a recording of the panel, see info about the panelists and read part of the Live Q&A from the event.
About the Speakers
Bob Bronow CASMODERATOR — Re-recording mixer working in television and film for over twenty-five years.
He has received three Primetime Emmy Awards with an additional eleven nominations, four CAS Award wins and two MPSE Golden Reels. Projects include: American Soul, Genius: Einstein and Picasso, Barkskins, Tacoma FD, A Christmas Prince, The Last Ship, Graves, Nightcap, Z: The Beginning of Everything, The Family, Fourteen seasons of Deadliest Catch, Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins, American Masters: Marlon Brando, Carol Burnette & Bob Newhart, What We Carry, and The Wrecking Crew. He currently serves as the Television Academy’s Sound Peer Group governor and on the Cinema Audio Society’s Board of Directors.
David Barber CASSupervising Sound Editor and Re-recording Mixer at Juniper Post, Inc
Crossing over from the music world in 2004, he has been editing and mixing for film and television for the past 16 years. He is a 3-time winner of the MPSE Golden Reel Award, most recently for his work on Taron Lexton’s In Search of Fellini. Current projects include Season 2 of the Netflix Original Series “Special” as well as the feature films, After, Escape Plan: Extractors, and the soon to be released Force of Nature starring Mel Gibson. David currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Motion Picture Sound Editors.
Dominic DeloreiZotope Social Care Specialist.
Based out of Boston, Dominic Delore is a contemporary composer and sound designer. He has earned a Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring with a minor in Video Game Music from Berklee College of Music. Currently, he’s working at iZotope, helping customers over social media channels and assisting the company’s Beta program. Outside of iZotope, Dominic composes, does photography, and produces other artist’s work.
Sherry Klein CASRe-Recording Mixer at Smart Post Sound.
Sherry is a Post Production Re-Recording Mixer for Television and Film. She is currently living in Los Angeles, Ca. working with Smart Post Sound. Some of her credits include New Amsterdam, Queen of the South, Deputy, Burn Notice, and The Shield. Throughout her career she has worked with an array of outstanding talent in both the music and film/television industry. She is on the Board of Directors for both the Cinema Audio Society (CAS) and the Entertainment Industry Professionals Mentoring Alliance (EIPMA).. She is also the Chairperson of the CAS Student Recognition Award (SRA).
Mike ThorntonPro Tools Expert
Mike Thornton has been working in the broadcast audio industry for some 45 years. He started at Marconis, the home of radio, before moving into commercial radio. Then he set up and ran his own sound mobile truck, being the first person to mix a live sports broadcast in Dolby Surround. He has worked with Pro Tools since the mid-90s, when is was just 4 tracks on a good day ;). He has been recording, editing and mixing documentaries, comedy and drama for both radio and TV as well as doing the occasional music project. Mike is the co-founder of Pro Tools Expert and is now Managing Editor of the Production Expert family of sites.
Rolla CampbellRolla Campbell — Chat Moderator
Rolla is an iZotope Customer Care Agent and Music Producer, based in Cambridge MA. Majoring in electronic production and design, Rolla graduated from Berklee College of Music and now works under the alias Cloud Cluster.
Event Q & A
| Sam Casas | I wish there was an additional module for delay as well as reverb. |
| Rolla Campbell | Great idea Sam! |
| Scott Farr | Do any of you find it helpful if the production sound mixer Includes Cedar DNS along with a clean mix track? |
| Kenn Fuller | Relative to your Izotope experiences, are there any notes you’d like to give to production mixers? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Scott & Kenn I’ll flag this question for the panel! |
| Terence McCormack-Maitland | Are there things that production sound people could be doing to make these tools work better? |
| Terence McCormack-Maitland | Like would recording a pesky noise clean of the dialog make it easier to isolate? If we provided the audio “clipping mask” |
| Terence McCormack-Maitland | I don’t mean using the tools on set ourselves |
| Rolla Campbell | @Terence I’ll flag this question for the panel! |
| John Pritchett | sounds amazing but i fear this may make us location mixers lazy. |
| Bin Lin | @John P, I think it will be better for the production sound mixer to know what kind of noise will be able to fix and other noise still need to try their best to avoid them on production. |
| Steve Urban | It’s ALWAYS better if we don’t have to deal it on the back end @John P |
| Gavin Fernandes | Is there a global balance of all processes? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Gavin there’s no global mix, just the three individual Mix controls |
| John Pritchett | does it maintain subtle things like breaths? |
| Rolla Campbell | @John yes, Breaths are considered part of the voice recognition |
| John Pritchett | How about backup beepers, the bane of our location work |
| Rolla Campbell | @John, yes! that should be recognized as not-dialogue (backup beepers) |
| Karol Urban | John Pritchett: I can almost always remove back up beeps with iZotope without any noticeable aliasing or error |
| Glenn Eanes | Are there plans to have reverb match profiles exportable to Stratus (or other iZotope reverbs)? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Glenn, great idea! I’ll take a note of that and ask out product management team |
| Matt Mulvihill | Do you get better results by using gradual processing multiple times to attenuate extraneous sound or by doing it in one shot? |
| Rolla Campbell | Good question, Matt, I’ll flag this for the panel to respond. |
| James Coburn | I have a question about the machine learning? Do these software packages use the sound which people are working on to add to the machine learning data set? |
| Rolla Campbell | @James, great question. We don’t collect your audio to add to our dataset, this is done with direct permission from our sound design team from other sources |
| Shawn Holden | I know the panel spoke about adding reverb back into the mix but what can Izotope do for dialogue recorded in an overly reverbreant space? |
| Todd Grace | If there is time to address this: In this time of isolation, many of us are being fed REALLY badly (iPhone) recorder ADR … Often recorded in bad locations with tons of Early reflections. De-Reverb can help a little, but doesn’t help much with EARLY reflections .. How might you all be handling this type of thing? |
| Todd Grace | I guess my question and Shawn H’s are the same. |
| Rolla Campbell | Nice question Todd, I’ll flag it! |
| Charles Dayton | Dialog contour is great. I’ve saved a lot of frankenbites with that. How about stepping it up? Maybe a vocoder style contour plug in. Hook up a mic. Record the intonation and pitch by speaking, and apply it to the clip? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Charles, great idea – that sounds awesome |
| John Pritchett | Can Contour add stress? |
| Rolla Campbell | @John, there’s not a stress macro control. But there is Smoothing, formant scaling, and a pitch offset |
| Jeff Wexler | in production, I try and institute my own version of “contour” by speaking to the director and mentioning that performance and intonation is not working, story-wise or take to take |
| Brandon Loulias | I’m used to using dialogue denoise, and it seems like dialogue isolate and match have sort of become the first go-to for dialogue editing. Sometimes when I get a real low-talker in a noisy environment, its a tough dig. does anybody find it takes multiple layers of each plug-in to avoid like that artifacting |
| Rolla Campbell | @Brandon, this was briefly touched on earlier, yes! Layers of each plug-in can be very effective in situations |
| Glenn Eanes | Would it be possible/worth it to include contour match into a future version of Dialogue Match? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Glenn, careful with these ideas you’re about to be hired hahah |
| John Pritchett | Can Contour eliminate a distorted mic |
| John Pritchett | eliminate the distortion |
| Rolla Campbell | @John, not exactly, distortion is best tamed with other tools like Spectral De-Noise and De-Clip |
| David Barber CAS | Hi John P, De-Clip is the go-to to get distortion or over-modulation |
| Christopher Shilakes | De clip is incredible for distortion! |
| Alexey Lukin | my tools for distortion are: De-clip, Deconstruct, and Spectral Repair |
| Karol Urban | @John I find a combination of De-clip and De-click on random work great for me on distortion. |
| bruce greenspan | yes, we’re waiting for the next unimaginable algorithm from Izotope… un-combfilter! or would that be de combfilter? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Bruce that would be De-Comb for sure |
| Steve Urban | May need a tutorial video on putting these other izotope modules in RX like Dominic is talking about…never knew that. |
| Rolla Campbell | @Steve You can read about this in the help docs here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/izotopedownloads/docs/rx700/en/plug-in-hosting/index.html |
| Terence McCormack-Maitland | Hi, I wanted to clarify my question: I wouldn’t ever deliver effected sound, always as clean as we can get it. But are there things that would be useful about these tools for us on set to know? What would you want us to give you that would make these tools easier for you to use |
| Karol Urban | @Terence The best signal to noise floor without processing is the most useful on the dub stage. |
| Terence McCormack-Maitland | @Event OK, keep on as normal then! Thanks |
| David Barber CAS | @terrance echoing Karol Urban, good signal to noise is the best possible thing we can get from you. It allows for these tools to be used to their fullest. Thanks for what you do! |
| Karol Urban | @Terence yes, but do know we are getting better tools. We can save so much more than we used to but nothing will even beat a great natural record. |
| Patrick Hanlon | Besides noise control in post, has it ever been tested in a live enviroment. Is there much latency or can the invidual tools run on live channels in real time. |
| Alexey Lukin | @Patrick H, RX has a range of denoisers, with latencies as low as 0 (Voice De-noise) or 100 ms or more (Spectral De-noise) |
| John Pritchett | a problem we often have in the field is convincing an actor to be loud in a noisy bar scene when there is no noise on the set. How does Contour help? |
| Rolla Campbell | @John, Dialogue Contour can’t really enhance their performance in the scope of stress. But that’s a good idea! |
| Alexey Lukin | @John P, RX’s Dialogue Contour can alter pitch of the voice, but it does not no much beyond that. It can’t turn a whisper into a cry. |
| Jeff Jones | Music Rebalance is in RX7? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Jeff, yes! RX 7Standard and Advanced |
| Brandon Loulias | insight 2 question: from my understanding, the most recent deliverables for most networks is about -24LKFS, plus or minus 2, and I’m curious how this translates to the theatrical loudness standards. For example, my room is tuned at 80db for features, and 85 for TV. So if theres a theatrical release for streaming, does that mean we have to create multiple mixes? Or is there a middle ground? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Brandon, I’ll flag this for the panel! |
| John Pritchett | is 48K sufficient or should we go to 96K |
| Rolla Campbell | @John, good question, I’ll flag this for the panel 🙂 |
| Jeff Jones | RX Post Production Suite 4 gets it all correct Rolla? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Jeff Jones – one more note on your earlier question, there will be a CAS discount for PPS4 this coming week! |
| Patrick Hanlon | Would there be a way to use on Live desks in the future, like an onboard feature/fx. Like on Allen and heath SQ 5 or similar digital desks. |
| Rolla Campbell | @Patrick nice question, I’ll flag this one! |
| Stephen Fitzmaurice | Does De-Bleed Reference (noise sample) need to be in Sync with target track to be effective? |
| Steve Urban | @Stephen F- Yes |
| Johana Orrego | If I’m in a bar, can I reduce the background noise with the reference song? |
| Matt Mulvihill | Do you get better results in a film post setting with dialog isolate or debleed? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Matt, Dialogue Isolate for when you don’t have the bleed source, De-Bleed when you do! Or both. |
| Alexey Lukin | De-Bleed is more generic: it can take one signal from the other, no matter what signals. Dialogue Isolate is more specialized: it extracts a single-speaker speech from all sorts of noises. |
| Karol Urban | There is a video in the lower right hand corner called “Using RX 7 for Powerful Dialog Editing” by David Barber that includes examples of him using spectrograph to draw out mic bleed. |
| Joseph Geisinger | Sherry, I am a film production mixer. When you refer to “unprocessed production tracks” are you referring to add on and plug in devices, or are you referring to EQ? I find that sometimes a totally “Flat” EQ leaves a lack of intelligibility and some EQ is necessary. Is your preference to receive production dialogue “Flat” even if it’s Dull sounding or is a little EQ acceptable? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Joseph I’ll flag this for the Panel! |
| Juan Montoya | Which microphones do you recommend to use to record voice over that work well with RX? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Juan, RX doesn’t require any specific microphone requirements, it can fix a lot of the issues associated with a poor mic! |
| Todd Grace | Dialog Match Question: Tried using it recently on a project where I was matching ADR to dialog recorded on a beach… for some reason, dialog match wanted to add reverb to dialog that was clearly BONE DRY. Obviously I know that can be removed, but why? |
| Rolla Campbell | @Todd, interesting. If you have specific questions like that, you can hit up support@izotope.com to take a closer look 🙂 |
| Karol Urban | @Todd I have had that occur with heavy broadband noise samples too. Thats why I asked my question. Appears I should just turn down the verb setting manually within the module. It is a little odd. |
| Alexey Lukin | @Todd G, DIalogue Match provides its best guess of the reverb, but it can’t be perfect all the time and requires manual tuning, especially when the reference signal is dry or the room size is small. |
| Todd Grace | Yeah Karol … of course that’s what we have to do … just a curiosity. |
| Charles Dayton | 2 requests for Insight. TASA metering for trailers. Also, having a window that just shows the numbers. Most of the time I don’t need to see the meters jumping, I just need the dial norm numbers and true peak numbers. Less screen real estate. |
| Rolla Campbell | @Charles, great suggestions there! I’ll pass these along to our team |
| Rodrigo Meirelles | Could you explain a little bit more how the intelligibility algorithm works? What’s the bg noise level estimation for each environment preset, for instance. |
| Rolla Campbell | @Rodrigo, I’ll flag this for Dominic! |
| Todd Grace | Further Dialog Match suggestion … have DM analyze the DYNAMIC and pitch content of the source material … compression and pitch are often overlooked when matching ADR. |
| Rolla Campbell | @Todd, great suggestion here! I’ll pass this along to the team. |
| Alex Markowski | How do you arrange the windows in Insight 2 I never used it because I can only stack the differrent internal windows |
| Rolla Campbell | @Alex, you can enable different meters and resize the overall window size. What sort of window arrangement were you looking for? |
| Cory Rizos | Insight 2 is totally part of my work flow. I don’t use hardware meters at all anymore both in my home studio and dub stage. I’ also use the relay plugin on my dialog buss and monitor dialog intelligibility all the time. It’s a great way to keep an eye on your dialog |
| Chris Kahwaty | I’m so used to working in the RX editor and value how much more detail the spectrogram gives you than a typical waveform. I use insight 2’s spectrogram view in pro tools while i’m working to see inside my tracks. However, I wish insight had the same detail and zoom controls to use within pro tools in real time. |
| Rodrigo Meirelles | How’s RX7 Loudness control working / communication with insight 2? Loudness Control is doing an amazing job processing files to meet loudness standards but I miss a way to listen and preview in real time what the algorithm would do. |
| Rolla Campbell | @Rodrigo, RXLoudness Control doesn’t communicate with Insight 2 at the moment! |
| Rodrigo Meirelles | Yes, that would be a great feature 🙂 |
| Alexey Lukin | @Rodrigo: RX 7’s Loudness Control does not have a way to preview its results, because it runs multiple passes the audio data. |
| Rodrigo Meirelles | Thanks for the clarification, Alexey. Yes, the multiple passes works very good, actually. I was guessing if Insight 2 or a real time loudness processor could give us some preview of the processing. in RT. |
| Stephen Fitzmaurice | @Rolla I s there a way for Insight to keep a continuous and updated record of LKFS with respect to timecode? Whenever I rewind the LKFS meter clears and starts measuring afresh |
| Rolla Campbell | @Stephen, not at the moment, it’s kind of at the mercy of the host application’s transport controls – but that’s a great idea! There’s another product called RX Loudness Control which does a little more what you’re referring to |
| Glenn Eanes | @Rolla: When I have a string of clips edited together in PT and send them to RX, it would be handy to have a view where they show up strung together as they are in PT but be able to send them back and render them as individual clips back in PT (hope that makes sense) |
| Rolla Campbell | @Glenn, That makes sense! There are some audiosuite settings in the Pro Tools shell that dictate how these come and go. You may want to make sure this says “Clip by clip” and “Create individual files” in the window there! |
| Glenn Eanes | Additionally, if handles are set in the audio suite send window, those handles can be expanded/collapsed in this strung together view. |
| Rolla Campbell | I hope that makes sense ! I work in Support, so definitely hit me up if you’re unable to get the desired workflow there |
Last modified: May 26, 2020
