Software for cleaning up rough, old live recordings?

[Josh Paxton]

This question might be better suited for the audio forum, but I thought I'd try here first. I know there's software now that can do some remarkable things with using AI to "deconstruct" and repair recordings. I was wondering if there was any that, by design or happenstance, is particularly good for cleaning up old, crappy live recordings and making them more listenable?

 

I've got a number of such recordings lying around, mostly gigs that were recorded from the audience with a very cheap mic and tape deck. I've been able to make surprising improvements with just the EQ and spectral analysis tools built into Logic, but I'm wondering what else can be done without breaking the bank. I know there are tools out there that can (allegedly) do things like clipping repair, intelligently reducing room reverb, undoing compression from auto-leveling, etc., and am wondering which if any are worth looking into. Bear in mind I'm not looking for miracles or expecting studio-quality results; I'm just hoping to make crappy recordings moderately less crappy and more listenable. Any recommendations much appreciated.

[David R]

iZotope RX is what you need. Depending on how noisy and how particular you want to be, you might be able to get away with only Elements but from what you describe you might need Standard. There's a 30-day free trial for it.

[Josh Paxton]

I've looked at iZotope RX and also SpectraLayers, which seemed similar. Any thoughts on one versus the other?

[David R]

I haven't used (or even heard of) SpectraLayers... it looks almost identical. Reviews seem to indicate that SpectraLayers has a better UI. I'm not sure if, like RX, you can load each module separately or as needed.

[MAJUSCULE]

I haven't used either, but Jim A just posted a mini-review of SpectraLayers on FB the other day. He really liked it, a little more than RX, IIRC.

[Jim Alfredson]

I have used both. I find SpectraLayers much more intuitive and quicker. The results seem better to me as well. I own RX7 and just bought SpectraLayers because it just works. If you want, send me a clip of something and I'll run it through some things. But you could also download the free 30 day trial of SpectraLayers and give it a go yourself.

[KuruPrionz]

Get consecutive 30 day trials, first one then the other (RX7 and Spectral Layers. Based on Jim A's posting above mine, try Spectral Layers first.

 

Make copies of your files, clean one up with Spectral Layers as best you can.

Clean up one with RX7.

 

And try cleaning up one with Spectral Layers and then RX7 since you'll have them both. If you can swing it, buy your favorite.

 

I have RX7, have not really used it yet. I owned RX Elements and just before they introduced RX8, Izotope offered RX7 Standard to me for some absurdly low price - I want to say $49.95. So I grabbed it. Someday I'll need it and be glad I have it.

 

Gonna check out Spectral Layers too when that time comes. The ability to repair damaged files could be extremely valuable.

[Josh Paxton]

I downloaded the free trial of SpectraLayers, and holy crap! I came for the audio repair capabilities, but I think I may stay for the "unmix stems" feature. I was hoping to spend a little less than what it costs, but given how useful it will be in other areas besides what I was originally looking for, I think it'll end up being worth it.

[RudyS]

Do I understand correctly that this software is able to tear apart music in separate stems?

[ProfD]

To use as a sampler on steroids, SpectraLayers looks like a piece of software I may be buying as well.

[Josh Paxton]

Do I understand correctly that this software is able to tear apart music in separate stems?

 

Exactly. It's not perfect, but it's pretty amazingly good, especially for certain instruments. By default it separates audio into five tracks: drums, bass, piano, vocal, and "other." If a given tune doesn't have one of those, you can uncheck that instrument and it will be lumped in with "other." That is, if you're working with an instrumental tune, you can uncheck vocal, and then it will split it into drums, bass, piano, and "vocal and other." The "other" track seems to always end up having a little bit of auditory info from all the instruments, and each individual track ends up with a little bit of "bleed" from the other instruments. So you're not going to get, for example, a pristine isolated piano track that would fool people into thinking it was a solo piano recording. But for purposes less extreme than that, like just rebalancing the levels between instruments, I'm pretty shocked at how good it is.

[KuruPrionz]

Spectral Layers sounds awesome!

 

Bear in mind that the current version of Izotope's RX is 8 and the posts so far have been mostly about RX7. It might serve you well to investigate.

 

It seems likely that each software will be capable of doing certain things better than the other. Whether those things matter is an individual decision but until the options are known it is not a rational choice to pick either one unless the cost is a factor (as it is for me and why I grabbed a $50 version of RX7).

[Dr Mike Metlay]

RX 8 kicks ass at stuff like this. I haven't tried SpectraLayers since it was first introduced.

[zampa]

I also need that kind of software in which the someone are given these facilities as well as convert the online video in to audio like i am using this site of https://convertidor.live/descargar-video-de-youtube/ but it was not working in these days.