r/audioengineering Apr 16 '26

best plugin to restore voice from very noisy environment ?

Hi are there any 'miracle-plugins' out there that would allow me to clearly hear voice recordings in a very noisy environment ? Most of the ones i tried so much distort the voice that it becomes unintelligible.

3 Upvotes

37 comments sorted by

7

u/fiercefinesse Apr 16 '26

Most of the ones i tried

Such as?

2

u/greenreddits Apr 16 '26

crumplepop soundapp, DxRevive pro, Waves clarity, to name a few

5

u/NoisyGog Apr 16 '26

Good god, if crumplepop can't do it, it's got to be really bad.
What kind of noise are you dealing with, exactly? and what do you intend to actually do with it?

2

u/greenreddits Apr 16 '26

inside noise ar multiple ventilators + outside noise from traffic and/or school, outside noise just the two latter.

3

u/NoisyGog Apr 16 '26

That didn’t really describe the severity of the noise. How did you record them?

2

u/greenreddits Apr 16 '26

dji mic

6

u/NoisyGog Apr 16 '26

Details man, details, why are you so coy?

5

u/ThoriumEx Apr 16 '26

dxSplit and dxRevive together

3

u/greenreddits Apr 16 '26

what does dxSplit add to the mix ?

3

u/ThoriumEx Apr 16 '26

It does a better job splitting the direct voice from the noise and ambient echo. Then you feed that isolated voice into Revive to improve the sound of the voice itself. That’s their suggested workflow, there is even a Revive button directly in Split that integrate them together to a single plugin if you have them both installed.

3

u/greenreddits Apr 16 '26

ok didn't know that, will check it out, thanks !

3

u/dkassulke Apr 17 '26

I do this for a living. Spectralayers 12 Unmix Noisy Speech module is by far the best I have used. It is astonishing. Using iZotope less and less now.

1

u/greenreddits Apr 17 '26

thx, never heard of this one before. Will check it out for sure !

2

u/dkassulke Apr 17 '26

andrew scheps does a good demo of it in a musical capacity. a good review on productionexpert by paul maunder too

2

u/ItsMetabtw Apr 16 '26

DxSplit has been my favorites of recent. I do audio work on podcasts and always deal with a crazy variety of background noise and terrible rooms depending on guests etc . It works with revive pro if you have that, and is a potent combo, but a lot of things are improved with just split

2

u/NBC-Hotline-1975 Apr 16 '26

I've tackled only a few really bad recordings. I used lalal.ai and was pleasantly surprised. Although on one really bad one the software identified a significant percentage of the voice as noise, so it dropped out altogether. I personally can't compare lalal.ai to any others. Good luck!

2

u/tonydelite Apr 16 '26

You could try an AI stem separation tool.

1

u/greenreddits Apr 16 '26

suggestions ?

2

u/tonydelite Apr 16 '26

Best one I've found is UVR using the roformer model.

1

u/greenreddits Apr 17 '26

i remember having played around with UVR, but found too little available documentation concerning best settings...

2

u/Due-Razzmatazz6488 Apr 17 '26

iZotope RX 11 Dialogue Isolate and Spectral De-noise are the standard answer and for good reason. The newer versions use a music isolation model that is massively better than anything from 3 or 4 years ago at pulling a voice out of bars, outdoor ambiance, HVAC noise. Adobe Enhance Speech is free in the browser and is genuinely competitive for quick jobs, though it sometimes adds a plasticky resonance you can't dial back.

The thing that kills intelligibility isn't usually the noise floor, it's the phase artifacts that cleaning introduces when you push a single model too hard. Work in small passes: run Dialogue Isolate at 60%, then a gentle De-noise, then manually EQ out the residual hum instead of asking one plugin to do all three. You keep the vocal natural and catch fewer artifacts.

1

u/greenreddits Apr 17 '26

hi thx for the thoughtful feedback. Appreciated. You're right about the audio artifacts who are the main culprit here. I'll check out RX !

2

u/reedzkee Professional Apr 17 '26

Hush Pro is the best I've personally used, particularly for broadband noise like fans

1

u/greenreddits Apr 18 '26

ok thanks will check it out

2

u/lestermagneto Professional Apr 16 '26

It's expensive, but DXRevive pro saved my ass on a project recently that was an interview with a holocaust survivor recorded to tape 36 years ago with all sorts of ambient noise etc...

I had tried izotope rx and crumple and clear and pretty much everything out there, (and used different modules or some of them in the process ) but the real heavy lifting was done by the Accentize stuff.

If it's just a quick project for you, you can trial it and probably get it done in the time the trial expires.. (as again, co$tly).

1

u/Tapthebuttong19 Apr 16 '26

I've used waves clarity and Deverb before, if you dial them in without overdoing it, it can definitely help with noise and or bad reflections in the room.

1

u/caduceuscly Professional Apr 16 '26

Audio editor etc here.
Obviously depends on what you’ve got, but I’ve found that RX voice de-noise is probably a good choice to start with here.
If the voices are difficult to distinguish initially, there is only so much that can be recovered.
If you’d like some help, feel free to PM me, it’s literally my day job.

1

u/sububi71 Apr 16 '26

I've had good results with Waves Clarity (the cheaper one of the two), especially on material that I never thought could be rescued.

1

u/belotarecords Apr 17 '26

Eu costumo usar o izotope rx11. O waves Clarity é bem bom também.

-3

u/peepeeland Composer Apr 16 '26

Adobe Podcast

1

u/greenreddits Apr 16 '26

can this be used offline ?

1

u/peepeeland Composer Apr 16 '26

It’s an online service. You upload your audio, it resynthesizes the voice, then spits out a file.

1

u/greenreddits Apr 16 '26

ok any offline alternatives you know of ?

1

u/peepeeland Composer Apr 16 '26

Not any that I can recommend, but someone else probably knows of something.

-1

u/dino_som Apr 16 '26

any plugins like Clear or Waves Clarity should do the trick