Paul Maunder has used iZotope RX for many years in his post production work. In this article and video, he uses Acon Digital’s Acoustica audio editor for the first time to see how it compares…

As a long term user of iZotope RX, it’s now become standard practice for me to transfer noisy audio from Pro Tools to RX, process it and send it back again. Of course, there are plenty of other noise reduction solutions out there and one which I was interested in trying out is Acoustica from Acon Digital.

Acoustica is an audio editor designed for recording, editing, restoration work, mixing and mastering. It comes in two versions; the Standard Edition priced at £49.90 and the Premium Edition priced at £169.90. The Premium Edition of course brings several additional features over Standard, including multi-channel support up to Dolby Atmos 7.1.2, spectral editing and more comprehensive noise reduction tools including Extract: Dialogue, DeWind: Dialogue, DeRustle: Dialogue, DeBuzz Dialogue, DeClick: Dialogue and the new DePlosive: Dialogue. As you can tell by their names these processors are intended with post production workflows in mind. Another new feature in the Premium Edition is DeBird. This does exactly what the name suggests and reduces bird noise in recordings.

Pro Tools To Acoustica Workflow

One thing which Pro Tools still desperately needs is ARA2 support. ARA2, or Audio Random Access version 2 is a technology which allows plug-ins and other software to exchange a greater amount of data with DAWs, including information such as audio data, tempo, pitch and rhythm. It eliminates the need for audio material to be transferred to and from plug-ins and provides better integration between software. Acoustica 7.4 includes ARA2, so if you use virtually any major DAW other than Pro Tools, the integration with Acoustica is very tight and changes made in Acoustica are immediately carried over to your DAW.

Fortunately, we can still send stuff to Acoustica from Pro Tools using the Transfer to Acoustica AudioSuite plug-in which installs with it. Just select your audio in Pro Tools, open this plug-in and the audio is sent straight there. This seemed familiar to me as it’s a very similar workflow to what I’m used to when using RX, with the RX Connect plug-in.

Acoustica Interface

Acoustica has an easy to understand layout, with the clip editor being the most prominent part of the interface. In the Premium Edition this can be switched to a spectrogram view. Spectral editing allows for selections to be made in the time-frequency domain. Processing can then be applied to selections as needed.

The interface is customisable and things can be shown, hidden or resized as you prefer. Other useful things shown in the default view include a BS.1770 loudness meter, spectrum analyser, stereo correlation meter and output level meter with true peak indication. There’s also an output level fader and a Processing Chain area where multiple processors can be added for a variety of tasks including dynamic control, time based effects such as reverb, echo and chorus and of course noise reduction.

Noise Reduction Tools

As a newcomer to Acoustica Premium Edition I was quite impressed to see such a comprehensive set of tools available for noise reduction, especially given that the software only costs £169.90. I tried out a number of these tools and was able to get good results without much effort. I should point out at this point that in our recent low cost noise reduction shootout, I slightly misunderstood the Acon Digital DeClip2 plug-in and didn’t turn down the output gain sufficiently to completely eliminate the clipping. This didn’t do the plug-in justice and I’ve since found that this output gain control is critical to achieving the best result. I tested this out properly along with DeWind: Dialogue, DePlosive: Dialogue, DeBird and Extract: Dialogue. Check out the video below to hear the results.

Sending Audio Back To Pro Tools

After processing your audio in Acoustica and applying the processing, it’s easy to send it back into your Pro Tools session by clicking the Render button at the top left hand side of the interface. The audio is then rendered into your Pro Tools session in place of the original. It’s a good idea to make a duplicate playlist before doing this so you can easily revert back to the original, unprocessed audio if needed.

Impressions Of Acoustica

After using Acoustica for a few days now, I’ve found it very user friendly. I’m coming to it with knowledge of iZotope RX, which shares a lot in common with it, but I think that even new users would find Acoustica pretty easy to get to grips with. The suite of noise reduction tools is very effective, especially for dialogue, so if you’re working in post production, particularly on a limited budget, Acoustica should definitely be something which you should consider.

I did experiment slightly with the spectral editing and it seems to provide much of the functionality that I’m familiar with from RX. I’m yet to test this thoroughly so I’ll reserve judgement for a later article but I can say that I was once again surprised with the feature set for a piece of software at this price point.

I know that I’ve only really scratched the surface of what Acoustica is capable of and haven’t even looked at the recording, editing or mastering options it provides. We’ll be covering more of these features soon. Suffice to say, Acoustica represents superb value for money and it exceeded my expectations. If you’re interested in giving Acoustica a go, Acon Digital offer a free 30 day trial.

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