So where do we start? Here’s an example chunk of dialogue that we’ll take as far as we can with our new strategy. For the rest of this article, I’m going to lay out those “deep damage” ratings, and a plan of attack based on them.

Learning to rate various audio artifacts by the depth of their damage, rather than the amount, is critical to this process. Even if other damage is more immediately audible, the key is to address artifacts that affect subsequent audio. To clarify, deepest refers to the most pervasive or numerous throughout the audio file. Being a fan of science rather than voodoo, I’m going to focus on a well-accepted convention that’s based on a clear, central idea: always try to tackle the deepest damage first. To disassemble the crud so it comes away cleanly, we must choose the most effective order in which to work our audio repair magic.Įngineers love to argue, and there are several different prevailing ideas about the precise order of audio repair actions will work best.

When we undertake multiple audio repairs, we’re using this process in reverse – peeling away layers of crud to reveal the clean audio underneath. A tiny bit of noise that you could have dealt with earlier has a disproportionately large impact on your final audio, so the cleaner you keep earlier stages in the chain, the less crud builds up. If you dump a bucket of mud on another bucket of mud, you have two buckets of mud, right? But if you have a little bit of extra crud in the low-voltage signal coming from a microphone, that crud is going to get massively louder when your signal hits the preamp. The important point here is that crud doesn’t build up the way actual mud does. One of those principles is that ‘ Mud Flows Downstream.’ As presented in that article, the idea is that much like mud travels downstream and accumulates in greater and greater amounts, distortion and artifacts, the technical term here is crud, will build up as you go from micing to tracking to mixing. In my article 5 Tips for Better Audio at Home, I discussed some basic principles for thoughtful studio work rather than reactive. Well, it does, and often drastically, so read on to learn how and why the order of operations matters in audio repair. The order in which you use your tools is as important as the tools themselves, and each deserves equal consideration.Īt first glance, that would seem strange, if all the tools are going to get used, does the order really matter? There are going to be times when two or more of these problems come up at once, and that makes repair a tricky business. The fix may often be an easy one, requiring a single type of repair-but what if it isn’t? All kinds of problems can creep into your music, from a noisy environment or bad recording technique to mixing issues and sloppy edits. In this article we look at how RX can help to repair audio issues in music recordings, as well as look at what is the best order to fix multiple issues, iZotope contributor Mike Metlay, explains…Īudio repair is an inevitability for anyone who records music or dialogue at home.

So often we read about the essential role iZotope RX plays in audio post-production.

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