iZotope has emailed all its RX Loudness Control users to tell them that they will be discontinuing the loudness management software. We have the details.

What Is RX Loudness Control - What Does It Do

We have to go back to March 2015 when iZotope announced RX Loudness Control. It was designed to enable video and audio editors to choose the broadcast standard they wish to adhere to from a set of global templates. In faster than real-time, RX Loudness Control automatically analyzes the audio and renders out a compliant file and an accompanying CSV-formatted loudness report in just two clicks. At the time, Matt Hines, Product Manager at iZotope, told us…

We’re thrilled to offer post and broadcast professionals an automatic loudness correction solution that meets their needs for quality and accuracy. RX Loudness Control will give users absolute confidence in their work, while being easy to use and compatible with most major audio and video-editing platforms.

The intelligent DSP processing inside RX Loudness Control is brand new and has been developed specifically to guarantee transparent loudness correction, and to offer loudness tolerance metering across a range of program types. RX Loudness Control supports mono, stereo, and surround channel counts, up to 5.1, for seamless integration into any workflow.

Then in April 2015, we presented an exclusive preview of iZotope’s RX Loudness Control…

Then in May 2015, iZotope released RX Loudness Control with an MSRP of $349 (€325 / £239).

Roll forward to September 2022, and iZotope has announced they are discontinuing RX Loudness Control.

What iZotope Have Said About Discontinuing RX Loudness Control

The email’s subject line is “RX Loudness Control no longer available for purchase” and starts as follows…

“RX Loudness Control to be discontinued in 2023

Dear RX Loudness Control User,

iZotope is continually developing new products, services, and solutions to enable and inspire our customers to be more creative. Because of the resources needed to create and support new and better solutions, and the inevitability of product obsolescence, we occasionally retire older products and discontinue their customer and technical support.  

Since we offer very comprehensive tools for metering in other products like RX Standard and Advanced and Insight 2, we decided to stop selling the RX Loudness Control plug-in effective immediately. RX Loudness Control will no longer be available for purchase, and technical support will end on September 7, 2023.”

 However, when you follow the link in the email to learn more, you get a slightly different story…

“The RX Loudness Control plug-in has been discontinued. Effective September, 7 2022, it is no longer available for purchase.”

This contradicts the title of the email, however further on in the ‘learn more’ article, we get a clearer picture…

“… we decided to discontinue the RX Loudness Control plug-in effective immediately. After September 7, 2022, RX Loudness Control will no longer be available for purchase, and technical support will end on September 7, 2023.”

So iZotope stopped selling it on September 7th 2022 and will withdraw support 12 months later on September 7th 2023. Compare this to Avid’s end-of-life policy of providing support for 5 years after the end-of-sale date.

In addition, iZotope sent out this email to all users on September 30th 2022, more than three weeks after the end-of-sale date.

Why Did iZotope Discontinue RX Loudness Control?

iZotope explained it with this statement…

“Since we offer very comprehensive tools for metering in other products like RX Standard and Advanced and Insight 2, we decided to discontinue the RX Loudness Control plug-in effective immediately.”

When asked why they chose not to develop RX Loudness Control 2, they said…

“We know that a change such as this can be disruptive and we hope to minimize this as much as possible. While we will continue to support RX Loudness Control for the next twelve months, we will also be offering license owners affordable crossgrades to RX Standard or Insight 2, check your loyalty upgrades section.”

The crossgrade prices are RX Loudness Control to RX 10 Standard - $99 or RX Loudness Control to Insight 2 - $49.

iZotope Planning Loudness Control as an RX component plug-in

iZotope has revealed that they are planning…

“Knowing that some of you prefer the Loudness Control plug-in over a larger tool like RX, we plan on developing Loudness Control as an RX component plug-in in the near future so your workflow will remain the same.”

But there is no indication of what “in the near future” might mean. Maybe a new feature in RX 11?

What Do You Think?

Will you miss RX Loudness Control? Have you forgotten you had it? Would you prefer to see it as a module in RX?

Please do share your thoughts in the comments below.

Want To Know More About What Happens When Brands Discontinue Products?

Following a decision by iZotope not to update the older Exponential Audio reverb plugins to run natively on Apple Silicon, some users have been bemoaning the loss of these excellent reverbs and what they will need to do with their projects. However, this isn’t the first time users have felt abandoned by software developers pulling the plug on products. In this article, we look at the broader reasons developers discontinue software and offer some practical advice on how to best protect yourself from this.

Learn more in our article What Happens When Audio Software And Plugins Become Unavailable?