Waves Clarity Vx noise reduction

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by BobbyDazzler

I quite like the plugin. It seems to leave the source nicely intact.
But yeah, using it real time in a track gives some wide variation in results.
I was however using it as an insert on a dialog track at a 128 buffer and didn't experience any drop outs at all.

What's your experience when using it as AudioSuite?

Waves gave me a fairly rote reply on this issue.

In the matter of Clarity VX Pro's CPU usage - the plugin does require an extensive amount of CPU and we advise users to not open more instances than needed. About the AudioSuite, I can advise you only to set a high buffer size for Clarity VX Pro to perform better.
You can also try and remove unnecessary plugins from the session, or bounce off the audio once processed with Clarity VX Pro.

If the community as a whole decides that working with Vx Pro makes more sense as an offline process, I think folks need to let Waves know. It must be possible to reduce the CPU hit when used offline.

[Stephen Bond]

Originally Posted by Stephen Bond

Tried to install it on my M1 Mini yesterday but was out of space.

It's pretty greedy at 4.00Gb required for install

I've been meaning to have a reshuffle so will hopefully try it soon.

Stephen

I tried again to install and no such message today

Will get the blender out and give the plugin a try later

Stephen

[Cheesehead]

I gave it a try on some difficult material from interviews shot on a building site. Trucks passing, drills, general construction work etc.

It's good, but it didn't produce substantially better results that RX9 Dialogue Isolate on the same clips. It processes quicker than the RX plug though.
Occasionally I felt it hit the top end on the dialogue a bit harder than RX did, but it was a very tiny difference.

This was all with the Audiosuite version. Personally I didn't have any problems with the Audiosuite version, but then I'm always on 1024 buffer, so maybe that's why?


When I tried it live on a track, the cpu usage of the session went up by 30% for one instance! There's no way you could use it on multiple channels in a big post session, it would just grind to standstill. Maybe on a Dialogue bus, but if the results are non repeatable as Dr Sound suggests, that's a no go too. It's certainly not a replacement for Cedar DNS1, which is still great even after all these years and such a small cpu hit you can have it on very track.


I'm in two minds whether to get it. It's nice to have as many options as possible for noise reduction in case something particularly stubborn comes along, but I don't feel it's the 'game changer' the Waves publicity suggests.

[its2loud]

Originally Posted by Cheesehead

I gave it a try on some difficult material from interviews shot on a building site. Trucks passing, drills, general construction work etc.

It's good, but it didn't produce substantially better results that RX9 Dialogue Isolate on the same clips. It processes quicker than the RX plug though.
Occasionally I felt it hit the top end on the dialogue a bit harder than RX did, but it was a very tiny difference.

This was all with the Audiosuite version. Personally I didn't have any problems with the Audiosuite version, but then I'm always on 1024 buffer, so maybe that's why?


When I tried it live on a track, the cpu usage of the session went up by 30% for one instance! There's no way you could use it on multiple channels in a big post session, it would just grind to standstill. Maybe on a Dialogue bus, but if the results are non repeatable as Dr Sound suggests, that's a no go too. It's certainly not a replacement for Cedar DNS1, which is still great even after all these years and such a small cpu hit you can have it on very track.


I'm in two minds whether to get it. It's nice to have as many options as possible for noise reduction in case something particularly stubborn comes along, but I don't feel it's the 'game changer' the Waves publicity suggests.

I second this experience and opinion. Tried using Clarity Vx Pro on a mono dx bus
in a medium size 5.1 mix session for a show. Session came to grinding halt and wouldn’t even play back. Consistent CPU spikes. This is on a Mac Mini M1 16GB.

[noiseboyuk]

I still have problems with the dialogue detection part of the RX9 Dialogue Isolate algorithm. It responds to some environments well, some terribly (try it against something like moving water spray). In one test last week it did great until the last words of a clip when the presenter gave it a bit more, when RX9 obliterated the dialogue completely.

I provided iZotope with multiple problem examples, they agreed and said for some material it’s better to use Spectral Denoise. Which it usually is, but that comes with its own problems on variable backgrounds of course. Thus far AFAIK they have not improved dialogue detection.

In my early use, Clairty Vx has been FAR more consistent in its dialogue detection. It also handles spaces better, with natural (and added) reverb passing through near-perfectly usually. I also find it is usually cleaner with its artefacts, which means I can push it to 100% in many cases and it sounds just fine - which is a life-saver when having to generate M&Es for example. In short - I’ve found it more reliable and more consistent, which means less time taken and increased productivity.

[Benoni]

Originally Posted by Cheesehead

I gave it a try on some difficult material from interviews shot on a building site. Trucks passing, drills, general construction work etc.

It's good, but it didn't produce substantially better results that RX9 Dialogue Isolate on the same clips. It processes quicker than the RX plug though.
Occasionally I felt it hit the top end on the dialogue a bit harder than RX did, but it was a very tiny difference.

This was all with the Audiosuite version. Personally I didn't have any problems with the Audiosuite version, but then I'm always on 1024 buffer, so maybe that's why?


When I tried it live on a track, the cpu usage of the session went up by 30% for one instance! There's no way you could use it on multiple channels in a big post session, it would just grind to standstill. Maybe on a Dialogue bus, but if the results are non repeatable as Dr Sound suggests, that's a no go too. It's certainly not a replacement for Cedar DNS1, which is still great even after all these years and such a small cpu hit you can have it on very track.


I'm in two minds whether to get it. It's nice to have as many options as possible for noise reduction in case something particularly stubborn comes along, but I don't feel it's the 'game changer' the Waves publicity suggests.

Did you try the PRO version? It sounds like you would benefit from the extra features.

[Cheesehead]

Thanks for the replies.
Interesting what you say Guy, I didn't try it on a wide variety of material and it was plenty good enough on the one I did try it on.
It's promising that it has the option for different machine learning algos, so potentially it could be tweaked towards a particular problem. Of course RX also has 2 Algos currently, but I see in the latest version of Clarity they already have 3, which is promising.


Hi Brian, yes I was using the Pro version for the tests. Although In basic operation I didn't feel there was much to be gained from the advanced version. I will probably buy it anyway, it will no doubt come in useful.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by Cheesehead

Of course RX also has 2 Algos currently.

They do, and indeed it's useful. In general I've found the quality of RX8 (Legacy) is not as good as RX9's Best quality, but the dialogue detection part of Legacy is better.

For Clarity, I've found Broad 1 best for mechanical / industrial sounds, Broad 1 HF best where it's sounds without much LF, and Broad 2 when competing with more human voices or random / musical sounds.

[BobbyDazzler]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

What's your experience when using it as AudioSuite?

Does Audiosuite use the sample buffer of the playback engine?
I always assumed it was a completely different animal.

A/Bing audiosuite with Dia-Iso (ver8) and Clarity (non pro), Clarity was holding its own, and as described above, there was the odd occasion where dialog isolation obliterates the DX all together.

Not being able to audition Dia-Iso audiosuite also is a thumbs up to Clarity, which can.
Considering I got Clarity for $6 after using deluxe bucks, I'm pretty darn impressed!

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by BobbyDazzler

Does Audiosuite use the sample buffer of the playback engine?
I always assumed it was a completely different animal.

I honestly don't know how it works, but it's clearly a very different performance from real time. It's counter-intuitive - I think of offline rendering as being a much smaller challenge than real time performance, but for Clarity it's precisely the opposite in practice.

On another matter I was quite surprised yesterday when a real time instance of fairly modest aircon noise did not get correctly detected by either of the main algorithms in Vx. However, the HF one detected it fine. It's another reminder to me that everything is case-by-case, that trying to somehow automate all this wild variation would seem crazy.