An Exciting and Imaginative Program that Leaves a Large Market Segment Underserved
Izotope's RX10, along with their Neutron, Ozone and other sub-platforms, put professional-level mastering tools into the hands of customers at a preposterously low cost. Their tutorial videos and text materials are also first-rate, though I do feel that they tend to ignore users like me, who are interested in restoring and enhancing recordings on LP and other legacy media. The Izotope software contains all the tools anyone could hope for to restore the vitality of old recordings, or to bring to them a degree of bloom and realism they never before possessed. Unfortunately, it lies to the user to extract ideas on how to do this from texts and videos designed to cater to the needs of those who produce original recordings. To be sure, clicking on "Render" in the De-click module takes no great skill, but how is one to be sure that the settings are appropriate to the material and to the condition of the record? We know that most recordings, especially of classical music, had to be compressed in order to cover an irreducable floor of noise, so how should one go about restoring the s/n ratio of the original performance? The restorer of classical material has hundreds of such questions on how to apply the tools at his disposal in Izotope's products. They should take the trouble to answer them in a manner as clear and concise as is used in explaining how to achieve the best results in mastering an original recording.