WabeLab's Restoration Features vs. RX

WaveLab
#1

Hi

I’m a Nuendo and iZotope RX user, but for testing, I downloaded the trial version of WaveLab. I’ve seen it also has restoration features to mark audio in the spectrogram, reduce clicks, crackles, pops, remove noise from a recording etc. WaveLab has many features which one might use RX for.

Obviously WaveLab has a lot of features for project management of large amounts of files, metering, creating DDPs etc that RX is not focused on.

But on the restoration front, do you guys have experience with RX and WaveLab? And what do you use RX for and what do you do in WaveLab? I’d like to understand more how those software overlap. If you have WaveLab, is there a need to keep RX? Is it more specialized in restoration, are their algorithms better? Or is WaveLab your one stop shop? Just trying to grasp the position of those two software packs.

#2

What version of RX are you using? There have been some BIG improvements in the current version. I use RX almost every day in my restoration work. Wavelab is my go to mastering and restoration DAW. I find that they complement each other very nicely. Best of luck!

#3

I use the latest RX 6 Advanced. My feeling is that WaveLab has a lot of features to offer to organize, edit, batch convert, work with marker regions and loop regions, full metadata editing capabilities and such, that RX cannot do. But for specific restoration tasks, if it’s just audio you’re restoring and improving, RX has more tools that give you more options to choose from. I see where they complement each other but I was wondering if for most of the tasks you’d still need RX if you have WaveLab.

What do you use RX for that you won’t use WaveLab for?

#4

You should know that RestoreRig in WL is VERY new, only being part of it since 9.5. Up to WL9, Sonnox restoration plugs came with WL. Since I hardly do restoration work I can’t further comment on how WL and RX overlap.

#5

I also admit that I haven’t given the new WaveLab tools a fair shot.

My instinct is that the RestoreRig and spectral editing features in WaveLab 9.5 are a really great addition to Wavelab and if you don’t already have RX or other similar tools, you will use RestoreRig for sure.

If you are a long-time or power user of RX, I don’t think you’ll want to stop using RX based on the new WaveLab additions.

One thing I have yet to see any software including WaveLab come close to beating is the new Mouth De-Click new to RX6. Mouth Clicks are my enemy and RX6 makes very quick work of fixing them.

I really wish for some easy WaveLab/RX integration like we have with REAPER and RX. It makes for quick spot editing with easy visual reference in REAPER where all your edits are made incase you want to get rid of them, try them again, or need to do them again because a client has sent a new mix version.

#6

Since I own RX I use it and IMHO it is better for most things than WL’s tools BUT to be honest I have not really given WL’s tools a good long workout. I did use them for a transfer project but I also had to use RX for the final clean up. It is a start and hopefully they will get better as time goes on. FWIW

#7

The Wavelab tools tend to do the job, but I would use RX if I had to work with something that’s obviously in very poor condition and can’t be re-recorded.

#8

Note that the RX plugins all work very well within WaveLab, so as far as restoration goes, you can have the best of both worlds. There is now also RX Elements, which is occasionally on sale for as little as €29, which will give you De-click, De-hum, De-clip, Voice Denoise and others as VST3 plugins. For vinyl work however, you most notably don’t get De-crackle until you upgrade to either Standard or Advanced.

A feature much improved in WaveLab 9.5 is spectral editing, which is now comparable with RX, however, everyone has different ways of working so it really is down to spending time with each to see which one best suits your workflow. IMHO if your focus is on spectral edit and you already have RX, then WaveLab probably won’t bring much to the table, whereas WaveLab’s spectral edit is now good enough that it makes an additional purchase of RX unnecessary for those who don’t already have it. That said, the new “inpainting” is superb!

The bottom line? Does Restore Rig hold a candle to RX 6 for analog restoration? I’d have to say no, at least not yet, however the bulk of my time is spent in WaveLab (as my “home” environment) with the RX plugins, and I rarely use the RX editor.

#9

Sort of true but after working with REAPER with RX6 set as REAPER’s primary audio editor, I strongly prefer having the ability to send bits and pieces of audio (or entire songs) to RX6 standalone app for better visual feedback when I need to make edits.

Using just the VST plugin versions leaves something to desired and while I haven’t tried it lately, I do remember some potential issues at the edit points regarding click/pops etc.

Overall I think processing small or large sections of audio in WaveLab using plugins in the global master section and managing their bypass state etc. is really really clumsy compared to the way I’m using REAPER and RX as a team. If anything, WaveLab really needs something like Pro Tools Audio Suite which I think Cubase may have just added.

It would be great to see that added to WaveLab as well as a way to send copes of selected clips or clip sections to RX6 standalone for repair and then have them available in WaveLab montage on another take/playlist so you can easily flip between the original sound or your repair work which is also handy if you need to try another approach to that spot at a later time.

#10

Do tell! I haven’t been able to get RX Connect to work with either Cubase or WaveLab (or indeed any other application) because it looks in the wrong place to load the RX standalone.

#11

The secret is to not use RX Connect.

I don’t know about other DAWs but REAPER has the option to define a primary external audio editor, as well as a secondary external audio editor if needed.

When I first moved from Pro Tools to REAPER for my analog play/capture, I was worried about REAPER not having AudioSuite and playlists like Pro Tools because I thought that to be the best way to spot repair little sections in my analog play/capture. While AudioSuite combined with playlists isn’t bad, my REAPER method is way better for a few reasons. It’s also faster somehow than Pro Tools AudioSuite at 96k. Even though two apps are used, it can be just a touch faster and you get a better visual display of all your work whereas with AudioSuite only, you can’t see anything spectrally.

To do this in REAPER, I just highlight an area in REAPER that needs RX repair, and then I have a custom action/script that creates an item copy of that section (be it less than 1 second or an entire song) as a new take for that section and then it opens that item copy in RX6 standalone for me, it even shifts focus to RX6 for me automatically. Now I have a great spectral view to work with. I make my spectral edits, save the file in RX6, COMMAND + TAB back to REAPER and carry on down the timeline.

It’s so smooth and fast. Another thing I like about doing it this way is say the client sends you a new mix of a song to master because the first mix needed a change/fix/tweak etc. (happens often), now you have a visual map in REAPER of where all your original spectral edits are so you can quickly find them again and redo the work. It saves time.

I do use the AudioSuite version of RX Connect when I work in Pro Tools (which is becoming more rare these days) because not all RX modules are available as AudioSuite plugins.

Generally speaking, I dislike the RX connect app when it has to be inserted and running live on a channel or master output. Only in AudioSuite/offline mode is it somewhat decent. Luckily for REAPER users, you can bypass RX Connect completely and set RX6 to be REAPER’s primary external audio editor.

#12

While I do not currently use RX I can say that the latest spectral editor in M/S mode in WL is magic for this. You just have to put a little work into a pre set that works for you.

#13

Thanks. I can see M/S mode being useful for vocals panned to the center. I’m usually already in REAPER for my play/capture process so for the time being, I rely on RX6 as REAPER’s primary audio editor for quickly spot fixing stuff. I like that in REAPER I get a nice map of all the repairs I’ve made and the original version is easily accessible for any given moment incase I have to undo the repair or try another approach.

Next time I’m working 100% “in the box” with WaveLab though, maybe I’ll take a closer look. Without playlists and other handy features that DAWs like Pro Tools and REAPER have, I still don’t prefer to do this kind of work in WaveLab for some reason.

#14

For dialogue noise, The new algorithm in restorerig WL 9.5.2 is a very strong contender for deniose against rx deniose - its actually very very good.

But RX is just easy to manoeuvre and edit anywhere in the frequency spectrum. Easy to select a range (easy to select a range in WL) but editing the spectrum is still abit of a pain in wavelab with its dropdown menus in spectrum editor mode. Its easy in RX, select a range and select declick, job done.

Would prefer abit better layout like rx which just makes it easy.

#15

Hi,

I use WaveLab 9.5 and RX7 Advanced. I jump between the two all the time, using the best of both worlds. I use RX Connect to do this and it takes about 5 seconds to select the part of the audio clip that I want to work on and load it into the RX Editor. Once you’ve done it once, RX Connect is available under ‘Recently Used’ so you don’t need to go through the complete menu each time.

I don’t use the new stuff in WaveLab because RX is so much faster and easier to use, but the WaveLab stuff is good and getting better. Instead I use RX to remove ambience, de-click, de-noise, basically any edit that I can’t perform in WaveLab and then send it back. Sometimes I then use WaveLab to tidy up the beginning or the end of the returned clip. The saddest part is that iZotope do not support RX Connect in WaveLab. This is an email response that I received back from iZotope:

DEC 31, 2018 | 11:30AM EST
Lars replied:
Hi John,
My name is Lars and I’m the supervisor here for iZotope Customer Care team.
I wanted to reach out to you in regards to this issue, while we do try to do our best to help with issues like this Wavelab is not officially supported with RX Connect. I know you have been able to get it to function in Wavelab but because this has not been tested with RX connect issues with functionality or workflow can be exposed. Some of this could be due to how Wavelab handles audio files differently than other Steinberg products. From talking to Dom he has investigated these issues with Wavelab and in doing so he has noticed that results can vary as far as how well this functions.
We officially support RX connect in Cubase 9.5 and Nuendo 8 so for the best results. I would recommend utilizing RX Connect in one of those hosts to get the best performance possible moving forward as we will not be able to provide any further support for WaveLab.
Thanks for reaching out and for your support!
Sincerely,

Lars
iZotope Customer Care

Using RX with WaveLab isn’t recommended unless you use it in standalone mode. I wish it wasn’t the case because I can work 10x faster using WaveLab with RX than using Cubase with RX and I can load only the section that requires repair instead of the complete audio file. I am really amazed that iZotope do not support RX Connect in WaveLab because it offers a fast and efficient workflow and is ideal for audio restoration while editing an audio file. I work with stereo audio files that are in excess of 100 minutes and working on them inside of WaveLab is so much easier than using the likes of Cubase. In fact it would be better just to load the file straight into RX, clean it up and then run it through WaveLab.

Using both WaveLab and RX in conjunction with each other via RX Connect is even faster. You only have to go through the audio once, you can clean, repair, edit, add markers and titles as you go, all in one pass. What once took me 5 days to do, I can now do it comfortably in 2 and if push came to shove I could probably do it in 1.

Having the best of both worlds at my finger tips is best for me, so I’d say you need them both.

#16

^^^^

Thanks for the above info. It sounds like another developer taking the easy way expecting what they do to work for all Steinberg products equally.

That being said, I really feel strongly that WaveLab should just allow for editing in any generic external editor. The way I mentioned working in REAPER in my above post is so great and not very prone to easily breaking with software updates. REAPER just has a method of exporting a copy of takes to any generic external editor. It’s really efficient and stable.

Even if RX Connect worked properly in WaveLab, it would not nearly be as fast/solid of a workflow than the REAPER generic external editor method.