Has anyone tried RX4?
Does the new “connect” feature add any workflow enhancements for Nuendo users?
Hi Oliver,
I recently updated to RX4 and I’m thrilled. The connect feature is so fast, it makes me want to repair every little flaw in those crappy recordings I have to work with 
I love it!
All the best,
Martijn.
Yes , you can now scrub audio in the spectral repair tool , very handy.
Mike
Am I the only one finding it a huge pain in the butt having to reopen the connect plugin to send the audio back from RX? And I wish you could process a range selection using connect. If I want to use the ambiance match plugin over several clips I have to bounce them to one clip first, not a big deal but it doesn’t look anywhere near as smooth as it is in pro tools. I do wish steinberg would get it so you can continue to select more clips to process with a plug without having to reopen the plugin every time, it would make using the noise reduction stuff a whole lot easier.
Dave
Voice your concern about that here: Leave off-line plugin window open AND continue DAW control - Nuendo - Steinberg Forums
Martijn,
there must be something I do not get.
When I open the connect plugin I need to capture the audio in realtime?
Is there something I am overlooking?
Ollie
- select event
- open offline RX Connect plugin
- choose option (repair or reference)
- choose “process” (window closes - again; quite inconvenient)
- switch to RX and do you tweaks
- press send back to nuendo
- open offline RX Connect plugin for selected event (again)
- choose “process”
You now have replaced your selected unprocessed event with the one you tweaked in RX. You save a bit of time when you do this since otherwise you’d have to choose “open” in RX, then save, then “import” the audio you saved back into Nuendo, then line it up to original.
Thanks!
Looks like a classic RTFM 
By the way, for me RX Connect and then “reference” doesn’t work at all. 
In addition, my connection when using RX Monitor is incredibly spotty. Sometimes it connects, a lot of times it doesn’t. And the peculiar thing is I have to select a separate specific input S/PDIF on my card to get it to accept any signal. Very weird.
I was waiting to see what everyone else thought, but RX Connect feels really clunky to me. It feels like this was a fix for Pro Tools users who really had very few flexibility options when working with RX.
Personally, I think the send to/from RX is great, but the reference vs. repair/preview vs. process is confusing and/or misleading. It works differently, and better, in Pro Tools methinks.
For the record, Nuendo seems to record both the Nuendo > RX Connect, and RX Connect > Nuendo as two separate offline processes. In order to undo the processing in RX, you can deactivate the second of the two RX Connect processes. At that point, RX simply opens up full screen again with the unprocessed file in the original state after it was brought into RX. At that point you can process it again and send it back, but then you need to open RX Connect. Again.
As best I can tell, Nuendo still keeps that second, deactivated offline process, and counts the newly processed file after that as the third offline process.
Too confusing. I see the positives, but for me my original workflow seems to be a bit less clunky and more efficient, but this seems far from a smooth workflow for any heavy dialogue editing projects. Would love to hear thoughts.
I’m tired after a day of work, exercise and a beer, so I don’t really understand what you’re talking about Phonetical.
What I do know however is that iZotope support have gotten back to me several times on my issues and some are related to Nuendo (connect problems) and some possibly with my Lynx (monitor problems).
The connect problem is very irritating. It seems to me it’s entirely related to Nuendo’s unnecessary closing of offline process windows. The other problem for me though is “reference”; does “reference” actually work for you? For me selecting “reference” followed by “process” does nothing.
The main benefit I see with the ‘connect’ functionality is not having to import into RX, and not having to ‘spot’ in Nuendo. I’m not sure exactly how much faster or easier it’ll end up being, but it seems promising, assuming iZotope can get their stuff in order.
I’m super-annoyed at this. I expected way more from them to be honest. It wasn’t a cheap upgrate.
I’m gonna have a closer look soon, I have a couple of days off. My first impression was: Improved but far from perfect.
To me it looks like a general weakness of many DAWs (Nuendo included)
Celemony tried to adress this with ARA, but the industry is busy trying to ignore the user’s wishes and everyone comes up with their own workarounds for the same common problems.
Why do you guys think MIDI is still around?
Yeah it was wordy. Was making the point a clip’s offline process history becomes jumbled once the clip is sent to RX Connect and sent back to Nuendo. At that point, the clip’s offline RX processing history is stored within RX as a chain, not inside Nuendo as a offline process chain (denoise > eq > spectral for instance). Adjusting any of the clip’s history, as I often do to fine tune, would require not only going back to RX (via RX Connect), but also, then, adding another offline process history item for each subsequent trip back from RX Connect > Nuendo WITHOUT removing the previous trip from RX Connect from the offline process history.
So every trip to/from RX Connect gets an offline process history item.
I see.
I think that’s the way it will need to be though since you’re actually leaving Nuendo for a different app to do processing. It’d probably be tricky to send all those settings back properly into the host from RX standalone. Short of complete integration of the RX technology will likely see workarounds being necessary.
For me a slight tweak of my workflow would be necessary to accommodate the “connect” feature - assuming it worked as advertized - and I don’t have a big problem with it. But “reference” not working is quite irritating. I’ll look at this again later today.
After testing some more I’m convinced that Nuendo’s handling of off-line processing creates huge problems for this plugin/application. The only workaround I’ve managed to come up with so far involves 12 steps and also involves having to listen to whole events before sending them over, a big waste of time… 
One look at Pro Tools the way it integrates with RX and it makes me not want to work in Nuendo for this sort of thing.
Before, we didn’t need to leave Nuendo to go to RX. And, ultimately, we still don’t need to use RX Connect in Nuendo.
PT’s RX Connect workflow is fast to send out, and send back. Far more efficient than Nuendo’s RX Connect workflow.
In Pro Tools, the process of undoing/recalling combinations of RX’s offline processes requires saving every file you run into RX through RX Connect as a separate .rxdoc. Sending another file into RX through Connect before saving the previous file clears the history of that previous file, effectively losing the file’s RX offline process history. Additionally, you can only have 16 tabs open in RX simultaneously, which either requires saving each file individually immediately after sending back to PT, or creating new tabs each time and stopping your workflow every 16 files to save and name each .rxdoc.
Hardly seems more efficient than off-lining the files in Nuendo, which saves each RX process as an offline process, which you can easily, and instantly, go back to and tweak, then go back again to a different process and tweak, deactivate, etc.
I understand that perhaps for simple NR, doubling your tracks to maintain the original files while working in RX is acceptable, and that you’d probably have little need for an actual process history. But I think Steinberg has the lock on the workflow still.
RX Connect seems more like a crutch for ProTools than a feature for any other DAW, despite the fact that it’s being marketed that way.
Cheers!
I think that’s well phrased and I certainly see the point in it. The only issue with it is that they took out Spectral Repair of the offline plug-in suite and it is now only accessible in the standalone app. When I spoke with support he promised to keep lobbying for bringing it back.
There is however the other way of looking at it which is that if one gets fast at working in the standalone app then all the tools are available right there. For the workflow you describe above you’d have to open and apply each process you’d need for each piece of audio. So if an event requires for example first a pass of DeNoising, then DeClicking, then a hint of DeReverb, a pass of Ambience Match, and a final DeNoising, then you’d be looking at opening 5 plugins. Granted, you’d have the offline history available, but when it’s not needed I’m willing to bet it’s a slower workflow than just doing all that in RX.
I’ll keep tweaking my workflow this week on a short I’m mixing, but intuitively it seems that the issue hinges upon what type of content your working on. A 30-60 second commercial with only VO and a few dialog lines could probably be done faster in RX than offline in Nuendo. On the other hand I can see how some types of programming with more varying sources where we’d need to make decisions later about which source to denoise how much etc will make “locking” one’s processed files in RX a bit of a potential issue.
I double the tracks in both Nuendo and PT anyway. The imported omf/aaf lives untouched somewhere, always. In PT I do a first pass edit on a new set of playlists, right on the omf/aaf tracks (it’s just faster for me that way) after which I transfer that to my template tracks. Then before I do anything I do new playlist for those template tracks. I just love having that “safety”. So for me it’s really no difference from that standpoint.
I think Steinberg would have the lock on workflow if only they allowed offline plugin windows to remain open until I - the user - decide to close them; all while retaining control over the rest of Nuendo. In PT, during my first pass, I leave the RX DeClick open at the corner of the screen and then fly through the first edit pass, quickly hitting “process” whenever I encounter a click. It’s super fast and better than having to wait for the plug to open every single time. I think if Steinberg addressed this we’d have the best of all worlds; what I just described, what you just described, and what is done in PT.
FWIW, pretty deep into a tough dialogue edit on a film and trying to make this RX Connect workflow work efficiently. Finding it difficult.
RX Connect seems to overwrite the file previously Connected to RX even if you make and select a new tab in RX.
In my opinion, each RX Connected file should open up in a new tab until the user reaches the max of 16 tabs. Give a warning after 16 tabs, go and save your files, close tabs and start up.
Also - where does the filename disappear to? I can’t seem to find the information in the RX file inspector - it would appear that the file name is overwritten. Is that an import thing on RX Connect’s side or an export thing on Nuendo’s side? If I open the same file I RX Connected (instead of RX Connecting it), the file name comes up with the file.
Can someone else reproduce?
Realize these might not be Steinberg issues, but I’d certainly think they could have some input with Izotope.
I think part of the problem has to do with the basic issue of whether or not to do “destructive” offline processing to a file when editing dialog. I’m trying it on a short right now and that’s my main concern; when do I “commit” to changes and when do I save it for later and/or real time processing?
When you say “file”, do you mean the actual audio file? It’s not supposed to do that. I just checked in my short (since you just scared me) and the files I treated remain untouched. Upon ‘rendering’ in Nuendo a new file is created and placed on the timeline instead of the one selected event. I verified this by checking the original (I processed only copied events in RX standalone), and if the ‘underlying’ file had been overwritten then the original that the copy came from would have sounded different. So I’m not sure what you mean.
I think replacing the event on the timeline is intended behavior and the main point of ‘connect’.
iZotope is aware of the problems working with Nuendo. You should contact their support and open a dialog with them about it. I found them to be very receptive to criticism and input.
Sorry, probably need some better terminology here:
OG 1 File: original audio file #1
RX 1 File: RX’d audio file #1
OG 2 File: original audio file #2
RX 2 file: RX’d audio file #2
So try this in your timeline/RX Connect workflow:
Highlight OG1
Open RX Connect, send OG1 into RX
OG1 shows up in RX window as a tab
Process OG1, now becomes RX1
“Send Back” RX1 to Nuendo
RX1 overlaps/replaces OG1 correctly in timeline
Without going back to RX, select next file to work on called OG2
Open RX Connect, send OG2 int RX
OG2 shows up on SAME TAB OG1/RX1 WAS JUST ON - now the process history for OG1, as best I can tell, has vanished away from RX along with the RX1 file.
The other part of this is even if you create a new tab in RX, any file sent to RX via RX Connect populates the same tab every time, effectively erasing the history of the previously processed file, assuming it was sent via RX Connect.
I’m probably making this far more complicated than it is, but this doesn’t seem right.