In this article Tom Bullen shares some tips for getting the most out of RX and Pro Tools

I do wonder occasionally if I just didn’t hear a lot of erroneous noises in recorded audio before iZotope RX came along, or if rather recording quality standards have dropped a little in recent years knowing that problems can be removed easily later on. Maybe both. But over the years, and especially since the pandemic started and so much of the audio I’ve been working with has been recorded at somebody’s home, I’ve found myself reaching for RX more and more. 

With so many problems to fix so often, and the painful fact of life that audio has to be sent out of Pro Tools, fixed in RX and then sent back into Pro Tools, I’m always looking for ways to speed up my workflow. Here are a few tips I’ve gathered along the way.

Please note that this isn’t an article about how to use RX, but rather how to speed up the process of using it. 

Before I even touch RX…

I will make sure that something approximating my final processing is in place. A lot of audio is gated and high-pass filtered as standard, so if I work with these on right from the start, a lot of noises will just be removed the good old fashioned way. 

Batch Processing With AudioSuite

RX already has numerous plugins tailored to specific jobs which are extremely useful for a lot of common problems. 

Although they can be used as you come across each individual noise, using the Audiosuite plugins to blanket process all of the audio can do a lot of the hard work for you. Using de-hum on an entire electric guitar track for example will be much faster than removing the hum at the individual points in a song where the guitar part is exposed and the hum becomes noticeable. Or for a vocal part, mouth de-click can catch most of those distracting spitty noises without you having to go through the same process each time you come across one. 

But err or the side of caution here. You don’t want to overprocess and end up removing parts of the audio that you want to keep, and you certainly don’t want to slowly realise that you’ve done this as your editing session progresses.

If you’re working with playlists, or on an existing edit containing numerous clips, be sure to select “create individual files” in the dropdown menu in the top left of the AudioSuite window. This prevents your whole selection being consolidated into one new audio file. Even if you’re happy with your edit and suspect that you won’t need to change it, it is still useful to see your takes and playlist numbers preserved in the resulting audio file names.

Place RX Connect At The Top Of Your Audiosuite List

Even if these two methods have already reduced your RX workload considerably, you’ll inevitably still need to send some audio into the RX standalone application.

Firstly, place RX Connect at the top of your Audiosuite list, above the categories, by navigating to it in the AudioSuite menu and command clicking on a Mac or control clicking on a PC. I do try and leave the RX Connect AudioSuite window open and down in the corner of my screen for quick access later, but I somehow always end up closing it. Having it right at the top of my AudioSuite menu saves me a few clicks, as well as a tedious few seconds searching for it, because for some reason I can never find a plugin even when it’s staring me in the face.

If you had “create individual files” selected for any batch processing like I mentioned earlier, make sure it’s now set to “create continuous file” or you won’t get any handles either side of your processed audio when sending into RX or on your rendered clip.

Be Clever With The Selection Itself

So when you come across a problem and know pretty much where it is on the waveform, highlight the spot with the selector tool leaving only a small amount of audio selected either side before sending into RX. This way, the problematic audio should appear prominently and right in the middle of the RX spectrogram. Sending a whole clip or a large selection into RX will just make it difficult to locate and you’ll waste time searching for it. 

Another way to reduce the amount of audio that you send to RX is to make sure that your handles are short, say 0.5 seconds, by adjusting their length in the bottom right of the audiosuite window. (Any change here will be lost if you close the window, but the default can be changed in setup > preferences > processing)

Use RX Monitor Over CoreAudio

I will always listen through RX Monitor rather than CoreAudio for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I often change my system sound and it always throws me when I can’t hear what’s coming out of RX immediately. Secondly, using RX Monitor allows me to process it in the same way as the source audio in Pro Tools. I can either do this by duplicating the plugins onto the same aux channel as RX Monitor, or I can route the output of both channels to a dedicated processing channel. 

This way I can listen more in context. If I’m listening to the unprocessed audio I might not be able to hear a click or a background bang that will suddenly become very apparent when it’s gone through a compressor with a large amount of makeup gain.

Use Instant Process For Your Most Used Tool And Keep The Window Open For Your Second Most Used Tool

If I’m using RX a lot in a session, it’s usually for a specific problem. With spoken word it’s usually mouth clicks or plosives that the blanket processing just can’t get. But it could be anything like a creaky chair or a squeaky pedal. I recently edited an interview where somebody in the background was constantly double-clicking a mouse.

Whatever this common noise is, once I’ve removed it a few times I’ll be able to spot it by sight alone once it’s in the RX spectrogram, and I’ll have worked out which tool is the most useful for removing it.

Once I’ve got this sussed, I’ll turn on Instant Process by selecting the checkbox towards the bottom of the screen or hitting the I key. Instant Process doesn’t work with every tool, but I’ve found that Repair and Attenuate (both part of Spectral Repair) are the most useful. Whichever tool you use for Instant Process, the settings will be the last that you’ve used in the tool’s own pop up window. So once you’ve found a good setting for this common noise, all you need to do is select the problematic audio with Instant Process turned on and it will automatically be corrected when you release the mouse click. 

If there is another noise that is nearly as common, I’ll keep that tool’s popup window open and out of the way. So, on a spoken word session, I’ll usually use Replace in Instant Process for fixing mouth clicks and the Gain tool open for reducing plosives.

Just a few shortcuts are needed

A couple of easy to remember shortcuts are key

• I to turn Instant Process on and off 

• T for a Time based (vertical) selector tool

• F for a Frequency based (horizontal) selector tool

• R for a time and frequency based tool (or a Rectangular shape)

• B for a Brush selector tool

• L for a Lasso selector tool

• W for a Magic Wand selector tool

And scrolling up and down will zoom you in and out 

All of these are not too hard to remember and shouldn’t push any Pro Tools shortcuts out of your head.

Fast Workflow

Once I’m a good way into a session, I should have two tools set up to cover about 90% of the repairs I want to make in RX. I can fix my most common audio problems with two mouse clicks (selecting the clearly visible problem with Instant Process already on, then hitting Send Back) and the second most common with a keyboard shortcut and three mouse clicks (deselect Instant Processing by hitting I, make a selection, hit Render on the already open window, hit Send Back)

I might not even listen until it’s rendered back in Pro Tools, because I know the solution to these common issues is right almost every time. 

Don’t go back and quit RX. This will save yourself a few valuable seconds the next time you need it.

So even though each of these tricks is only small and maybe only saves a second or two at a time, the most important thing I’ve learned about workflow is that saving a few seconds here and there on repetitive tasks can quickly add up to minutes. And of course, saving a few minutes here and there will soon add up to hours.