This was originally intended to be a review of the plugin GOYO from Supertone that some people were raving about in the audio dialogue cleanup space (soon to be released as “Supertone Clear”). But then I saw the recently released Accentize dxRevive was getting a lot of noise (if you’ll forgive me) and I love testing, so it turned into a fully blown shootout of the best of today’s noise removal and clean up tools.

So I’ve tested both of these new tools against most of the other main players (I could never do them all!) – in three different real world scenarios.

Here is a handy spreadsheet to keep track:

Test 1 – Background noise

I first tested with a crazy amount of background noise to put these tools through their paces.

For me, I think Accentize dxRevive is the winner here. Like Adobe Enhance Speech, it is clearly trying to do more than just remove the noise – it’s trying to emulate what the voice would have sounded like in a better recording environment. And it does quite an impressive job here – as long as that’s what you want – there are plenty of post production workflows where you might need to keep the original voice tone.

Supertone Clear / GOYO is very good at pure noise removal – on a par with the equally good Waves Clarity Vx. Davinci Resolve Studio’s relatively recent Voice Isolation function (found in the Inspector on the Edit Page) is not quite as good, but decent.

And then there’s iZotope RX, which was what I swore by for many years, but that was before the AI revolution. It is clearly not as good as the other offerings, even using the tools in the costly RX Advanced. To be fair, there are over 60 separate tools in RX Advanced and I would hate to be without them (Ambience Match is so helpful for example). Still, I am amazed that in the bread and butter of basic noise removal, iZotope is currently a long way behind the pack.

Test 2 – Phone Recording

Test 2 is also fairly typical – someone sends you a voiceover they’ve recorded on their phone.

I think probably Adobe Enhance Speech edges the win here. It really is quite an impressive job. It’s fantastic to have it present in the app now, well the Beta at least, as the workflow is so much quicker, plus it has an amount slider.

If you wanted to voice to remain as it was, Supertone Clear / GOYO takes a lead over Waves Clarity Vx here, because it is much better at removing the room reverb & in fact has that as a separate dial. That said, Waves do also have Clarity Vx DeReverb as a separate plugin & you can get both for around $80, so it’s much of a muchness.

dxRevive struggled a bit in this test & I’ve seen Adobe’s Enhance Speech sometimes do the same – it’s the downside of those two that they try for more, but don’t always make it. iZotope RX Advanced’s Dialogue De-reverb did a pretty good job here & I do think it’s a great tool and quite a bit better than the general De-reverb that you get in RX Elements. Davinci Resolve also did pretty well, removing some reverb as well as noise.

Test 3 – Clipped audio

This isn’t super common any more (and can be ruled out completely with 32bit recorders thank goodness), but clipped audio sometimes comes across my path.

To be fair, a lot of these tools aren’t claiming to be able to fix clipped audio, but Clarity Vx and Supertone Clear (GOYO) don’t do anything for this, nor does Davinci Resolve do that much. But the voice rebuilders – dxRevive & Enhance Speech – do a wonderful job of removing the clipping. iZotope RX De-clip (in RX Elements) also does a good job and I’ve used this many a time to rescue audio.

Summary

When it comes down to it, workflow is king. You have to be able to get the right tool – or more likely tools, as they have different strengths and weaknesses – to work well for you. Happily most VST/AU/AAX plugins work in most apps these days (though always check) and can sit on a dialogue track or a submix track to avoid any round trip at all.

Plugins

• Supertone Clear (GOYO) – has basically the same excellent noise removal as Waves Clarity Vx, but with much better reverb removal. Out soon for $99 ($29 for Beta testers).
• Accentize dxRevive – very impressive noise removal and voice enhancement, similar to Adobe Enhance Speech, but in a VST/AU/AAX that you can use in your favourite DAW/NLE. $99 (or $299 for the Pro version). They do also have a pure noise removal tool – VoiceGate – that you might want to check out, plus DeRoom for reverb removal.
• Waves Clarity Vx – beats Supertone Clear on price, if you don’t need the reverb removal. Normally on perma-sale for $39 (also a Pro version available normally for $249) & Clarity Vx DeReverb (normally $39.99 or $149 for Pro)
• iZotope RX Elements – very good for light noise removal work, but can’t compete past that. Includes 6 plugins which are useful (particularly De-click). $99.

Apps

• Davinci Resolve Studio – useful Voice Isolation tool, but not as strong as the plugins above.
• Adobe Premiere Pro subscribers ($21 per month) can download and install the Beta alongside the regular version to take advantage of the excellent Enhance Speech or anyone can use it on the website for free (though it’s quite slow for longer files).