Studio Tools – Solid Noise Reduction: Acon Extract Dialog v1.5

A voice actor’s daily challenge: Noise in the Home Studio

As anyone who has ever tried to record in their home studio knows, noise is not going away anytime soon. Ironically, I’m writing this with the sonic backdrop of my neighbor’s gas-powered pressure washer running at full throttle, a delightful tool that combines the sound of a small two-stroke engine with the thrumming of forced water. Luckily, they were kind enough to let me know this was going to occur, so I could schedule my recording time around it. 

Often we are unable to compensate for those situations. In many cases, a delivery truck may stop nearby blasting music, or someone down the street decides to fire up their chainsaw. If we are concentrating on our performance, we might not pick up on a subtle (or not-so-subtle) increase in our noise floor. In that instance, our choice is to throw out the recording and start again, or reach for a tool which might salvage things. 

Noise Reduction plug-ins with AI engines

It’s been interesting to see the significant improvement in after-the-fact noise reduction tools. Last year Waves Clarity Vx came out with its AI approach and raised the bar even higher – effectively eliminating non-recurring noises while leaving the voice recording intact. It’s an indispensable tool for cleaning up recordings.

Acon Digital is another company which has worked quietly for many years. Their original declick and noise removal tools have been an excellent alternative to more widely known restoration toolsets. Recently, when trying to salvage audio from a live recording, I found myself needing a slightly more specific noise reduction tool, and downloaded a trial version of the newly updated Acon Digital Extract Dialog version 1.5. The trial version randomly inserts silence into the recording, but otherwise presents a fully functional version which can be used in most common recording software as a VST,  AU, or AAX plug-in for both Windows and MacOS. 

Acon Digital: Extract Dialogue version 1.5

I had actually tried a much earlier version of Extract Dialog before, but was impressed by the improvements in the new v1.5 which is now available. The developer actually trained this version on an incredible amount of recorded sound libraries, so the tool recognizes all kinds of disparate noise sources. With that knowledge, Extract Dialog v1.5 can effectively remove them, providing a very clean result. 

The feature I really appreciated was the addition of a simple EQ stage in the effect. While in many cases, you can simply allow Extract Dialog to do its job, the EQ lets you add a little life back into the upper frequencies, or cut things off with a sharp high pass filter. As with any AI-trained system, it exhibited a quirk on a couple of specific noises – for some reason it made the closing of my booth door into an odd reverb-y ping. But then again, I could easily nick that type of noise when editing. The overall results on problematic audio was quite good. 

As always, it’s best to address those types of environmental noises at the source. The more we are able to reduce those sounds, the less work any of these tools have to do. But if you have to reach for a restoration tool, Acon’s new version of Extract Dialog is a solid choice. 

Noise Reduction Resource: Waves Clarity Vx
https://justaskjimvo.studio/tools-keep-getting-better/

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