iZotope RX 8 Advanced is Mike Thornton's Software Product Of 2020, he explains why.

I know that I am not the first person to say that 2020 has been an odd year. However, as a result of the pandemic, my work outside of the blog has been very different. I have had to learn about video streaming and as well as handling so much self-shoot video content to enable our church to have an online presence, producing two different broadcasts, one for Facebook and one for Zoom.

When it comes to the audio side, in 2020, RX 8 Advanced has been very busy here in my studio, in many respects much more than in previous years.

Regular work this year has been importing the audio from a video, shot on an iPad using the internal mic or Airpods. Firstly, removing the noise using the spectral denoise module and then using the new Loudness Control module in RX 8 Advanced to get the loudness to -16LUFS.

Then there were the times when content had been recorded in all kinds of environments, especially outside using a smartphone, with no windshield and so De-wind got a serious workout on that one.

There was the repurposed content, which more often than not, had been mixed with the music bed too high. The improved version of Music Rebalance has been invaluable to make sure that the voiceover or vocals could be clearly understood over the music bed. Then back to Loudness Control to get the loudness to -16LUFS.

Even so-called ‘professionally shot’ video has issues where every time the presenter moved we got mic rustle because the mic was being brushed by the presenter’s hair, so De-rustle got a serious workout with me needing to process each hair rustle one by one.

Finally, I was approached by a producer responsible for putting together the UK Children In Need telethon charity single because one of the contributors had recorded their vocal on a smartphone outside in a field. Not only was there a lot of wind noise, but there was a plane flying overhead as well as a lot of other background noise. Using the various modules in RX 8 Advanced, including the new Spectral Recovery module to put the top end back in, as well as developing some new techniques, I was able to resurrect the track and they were able to use it in the single.

None of this work was on the horizon back in February, but thanks to the very clever people at iZotope, yet again, I have been able to save the lives of some very different clients this year.