Update: Received a message from Izotope. What do you guys think?

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Andrew (iZotope)
Sep 23, 2020, 11:33 AM EDT

Hello Mosca,

Thanks for taking the time to reach out. My apologies for the delayed response to this, we're experiencing high support volume and are working hard to respond to everyone.

Please note that we take user feedback seriously. I will be sharing your thoughts with the RX team on this limitation of RX8 when compared to RX7. If you have any other questions for now, please don't hesitate to reach out and take care!
Best,
Andrew"

I think they'll add the feature back for RX9, charge you to 'upgrade', and break all the projects you use RX8 plugs in. Such is iZotope's arrogance and entitlement. I hope for your sake I'm wrong.

I have the feeling that they will correct this soon in an update. For now I’ll just keep using rx7. If they do then I upgrade.

Heads up: there's a free patch RX 8.1 that addresses many concerns over the batch processor.

That’s good news! I’m gonna check it. Thanks.

I hope apple buys them....

Buys Izotope?

Hi Alexey,

Only info I found on rx 8.1 is:

New Features & Enhancements:
Batch Processor (saving presets)

Could not understand if "RX8 excluded the "file name prefixes or suffixes" from the new Batch Processor" is back on 8.1.

Could you clear this up for me?

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Ricardo

Ricardo, prefixes and suffixes have always been present in RX 8's batch processor (under Output - Naming). Now in RX 8.1 these settings are automatically saved when you close the batch processor.

Thank you very much. Upgrading right now.

Why? Apple are one of the few companies more money hungry and abusive of loyal customers than iZotope!

I'd prefer if Ableton bought them. They'd put an end to this backwards incompatibility nonsense.

Yeah, I spent $200 on Logic X in 2013 there haven’t been any free updates or major improvements...oh, wait....🤯

1. Am I correct in assuming that the SRC and de-clip have not seen improvements (SQ-wise) since RX 6 standard (which I own)? It would appear so from the RX 7 and RX 8 press releases anyway.

2. About SRC: I've read some things about RX possibly doing some unwanted dithering (?), which confuses me. So just wanting to make sure that when selecting "None (truncate)" for dither in the batch processing output settings, there is NO dither at any stage (i.e., when processing in 32bit-float and outputting to a 24bit file), right?

Apple would integrate everything into logic... it would be great... just updated to music production 4...

That's not happening. Izotope are doing pretty good. They just opened a office in Berlin not to long ago.

Don't worry they won't.

Correct, no improvements in these departments. However you may see a slightly improved noise floor after doing SRC in RX 8.1 because of better internal dithering.


It should be easy to test. I remember seeing some issues with "extra" dithering in RX 7. For example, when the original file is 16-bit, even if your output format is set to 32-bit float, RX would still dither it at 16 bits. I believe, these issues have been resolved since then, I'm not seeing them in RX 8.1.

Edit: the actual issue is less severe. It only affects encoding in lossy formats, see below.

I upgraded immediately to 8 since I actually needed a new license for a separate computer but it was the wrong move, the new batch processor is terrible. Luckily for me Zynaptiq has been doing fast work on Myriad and I’ve been using that instead of RX with great benefits.

What exactly you're missing in RX 8.1? By the first look you have everything what was available before, you can do multiple output formats at the same time and as file naming pre and suffixes can be saved to presets with the latest update..
I'm not sure, why you feel, it's wrong move (from older version) or why it is terrible?

Michal

Not sure about the latest update since it just came out and it’s the weekend but talking about the initial release and like other folks reported: I had no presets and the output folders where not stored. So I had to manually create each action every time and it’s destination.

But to me the worst was the SRC settings that were also not working properly, I had to double check each rendered file to see if it actually applied SRC or not. Sometimes loading a setting or changing sliders on the SRC window wouldn’t actually render those settings. I had to open/close the settings window 2-3x for it to actually store those settings.

Also, multiple output formats doesn’t really interest me in the way they’re implemented since I have to do different processing for each one of those. For instance, I can’t output a 96/24, 48/24 and 44.1/16 WAV from the same source 96/32 since I need to have different SRC settings for each of those. Exception only for creating a 44.1/16 and MP3 simultaneously, since those would have had the same SRC settings and that can indeed be done.

The “new” batch processing in RX8 feels like the same limited and basic batch processing tool we’ve had before with a couple extra settings and a new interface, it still isn’t the batch processor most of us wanted. And because it was released with a ton of bugs it only made things worse! I have used alpha and beta releases of plugins and applications that where more stable than the batch processor on the RX8 release version.

Because my RX 6 seems to behave as expected, I see little reason to upgrade to RX 8 right now.

I created an empty audio file in Reaper and rendered it to 24bit/192KHz. I then imported the file to RX 6, and downsampled with RX 6's batch processor to 96KHz. Neither when outputting to 16bit or 24bit file was dither noise present as long as "None (truncated)" was selected for dithering. (I used Voxengo Span to check, with the spectrum range down to -180dB).

Hi Miguel and thanks for expanding..

However the biggest complaint mentioned at previous posts seems to be resolved with the update.
I wrote it seems, because I have old full RX4 adv version at other DAW, RX7 elements at other NLE (for quick voiceover cleanups) and just testing RX 8.1 std, but the demo won't allow you to save output or start the batch process to fully test that.
But if you use custom naming suffixes and output folders, it's now correctly recalled with presets.
So to me it looks like it's functionally equivalent to previous RX versions.

I see, the overhauled RX batch processor UI doesn't seem to bring so much to the table for power users. You're true, that if you want to use different outputs with different sample rates, it wont help.
But on the other hand, I have always took batch processor there like nice addon for simple things (like resampler to 32 bit for later processing) and the main point of RX is in restoration and spectral editing.

It's another question, whether iZotope would like to promote this functionality in the editor to batch processor with all bells and whistles (like the Myriad).
I can imagine, it would require to rethink whole concept to allow building of complex "workflows" with branching (like process start of the chain in native input sample rate with some modules, then mult that to several different outputs, each with individual additional modules (like resampler, loudness normalization, limiter, dither) and finally output each to different respective format.. essentially build node based flowchart of batch process.
Then some missing editing functions there.. like some parametrized trimming or silence detection trimming. Furthermore some formats could be added there, AAC for example. Then it would be nice to include proper batch tagging according to some input or derived metadata.. someone would definitely like watchfolders and so on..
So with all of that, it depends, if they want to include it to a tool primarily developed for restoration and broaden its functionality that way.. or whether it will be better suited to some other tool aimed for batch processing and compete with Myriad or so..
I don't know.. of course, just thinking loud

Michal

You're making good points and indeed people want different things from the same apps. To me a batch processor needs to be more powerful than what it currently is, though I obviously didn't purchase RX8 for its batch processing capabilities.

Anyway, I'm back at the studio and just installed the 8.1 update, still broken! Presets are not all being saved and SRC presets inside the batch processor still don't behave well. My SRC settings display one thing and the preset name is another!

TLDR - Regarding ARA..... I can only speak for Neundo, but ARA compatibility is actually less malleable/flexible than using a standard process.

I use Nuendo and have been comparing RX and Spectralayers as I need a tool at home for cleaning up audio/dialogue/sfx. I had it in my mind that Spectralayers would be the clear winner for at least the 'workflow' side of things, considering it has ARA support, whereas Izotope requires you to send the audio to their editor and then fly it back into the project. But here's the thing...

When you take an audio file on your timeline and open it in Spectralayers using the ARA plugin, it will first render that audio and replace it on your timeline. This means that all your fades get baked in, and any clip gain you had gets baked in as well. Even if you don't process the audio at all and you then remove the Spectralayers ARA plugin..., you are still left with that newly baked file. Also, once you have the ARA plugin on a clip, you can no longer use any clip gain, draw fades, etc. The only way to get that functionality back is to 'bounce' the file. This completely destroys the workflow IMO. You have to be damn sure that before you instantiate the Spectralayers ARA plugin that you are 1,0000% happy with the clip gain and fades.

Now, when using RX connect.. your fades and clip gain stay 'live' in the project window. Even after you've used RX to work on a clip, you can still remove the fades, draw new fades, adjust clip gain, etc.

I won't go into comparing the sound of the two as that's highly subjective, but strictly speaking from a workflow side of things, at least for Nuendo, the whole ARA thing is mostly useless. I will say that I've heard there are updates coming for Nuendo 11 that address some of these issues, but who knows what the end result will actually look like. All I can say is that as of 'today' RX is the clear winner when it comes to workflow and staying flexible.... at least with Nuendo.

Thanks for the info. Couldn't you simply duplicate the track and hide the other in case you want to go back to it and then work with SL7 on the new duplicated track. Only a couple of clicks in the project window.

Yeah, I could..., but IMO that kills the whole point of ARA in this case. If it was 1 track, maybe not a big deal. But if I have 20 tracks it gets annoying fast. That's how I used to work years ago before RX had the connect plugin.

With RX, I don't have to duplicate anything. I can always go back to the original. Plus, even if I duplicated the track to use SL7, I would still be in a situation where all my fades and clip gain are baked in. So if I feel I need to change a fade, or adjust the clip gain, I have to revert to the original file on the duplicated track, adjust my fade/clip gain, then re-do the SL7 processing.

If I thought SL7 blew RX away in terms of restoration/noise reduction/clean up (which I don't), then maybe I would go that route. It would have to be better by quite a bit though because the workflow would be so messy.

Anybody else have issues with rx8 and Pro Tools 20.9.1 Utimate on Windows Home?

I'm having major issues with lag/slow behaviour when rx8 is installed.
Works fine when I remove rx8.

Was this issue ever resolved in RX 7 itself?

I actually stand corrected. The issue was less significant: when encoding in lossy formats from a 16-bit source file, RX 7 would apply an extra pass of dithering to 16 bits before encoding (or truncation, depending on your last Export settings). This did not happen when encoding from a 32-bit source. This issue has been fixed in RX 8.

Oh cool, this was the issue I harped about. I'll probably buy it just for that.

I think people just have to realize Izotope is actually a subscription based company, but they just don't overtly state that they are. Basically yearly/bi-yearly upgrade fees that are largely bug fixes and the like, with some new features thrown in.