Voiceover Tools Keep Getting Better – Waves Clarity Vx – Tuesday Tech Tip

About a month ago, a new tool popped up from the folks over at Waves: Clarity Vx. At first glance, it seemed to be another flavor of noise reduction promising to eliminate unwanted background sound. I have to admit that my first reaction was toward the negative end of the spectrum. My core belief is that it’s best to capture the highest quality recordings at the source. That means setting up an appropriate space, capturing the audio effectively at the source, and paying attention to input levels to prevent distortion.

Relying solely on Effects and processing to salvage bad audio causes many problems throughout the production workflow. Since you cannot “un” process those Effects, the next person who has to work with the recordings ends up with fewer ways to fix things. That’s why many clients will only work with raw audio. Through classes, clients and my audio reviews, I’ve encountered a variety of problematic audio. The core issue is that people often try to attain a good result by applying excessive processing to poor quality original recordings. Anyone listening with somewhat experienced ears is likely to hear the tools that were applied.

While those negatives still exist, I will say that this tool is pretty darned good.

Waves Clarity Vx “First Look” video

In this “First Look” video (which also appears below), I demonstrated it on a file I use in my recording classes. It worked quite well. Since that time, I’ve had an opportunity to use it on “real world” audio and Clarity Vx has not lost any of its luster. In fact, I’d say that it’s worked well on everything I’ve applied it to – both client work and the serendipitous moment when my neighbor fired up a gas powered weed whacker outside my studio window. Digging deeper into interviews and detailed technical reports, it’s pretty clear that this tool differs from other high quality noise reduction options.

Waves describe it as “AI Noise Reduction” (as in “Artificial Intelligence”) – which could be neural network, some type of machine learning system, or just clever programming. I don’t really care how they got there, because it works very well. As with all software, it’s going to get smarter and more refined as we move forward. If there’s a learning algorithm under the hood, it can probably be focused on other issues that face us in our home studios. Right now, however, Clarity Vx does a fine job of removing noise without damaging the voice in our recordings.

Better Noise Removal – What does that mean for us?

It doesn’t release us from the basics. We still need to work in a well set up environment. Waves Clarify Vx will not deal with excessive reflections or echo within our recording space. That’s a common issue for most home VO studios. If you work to fix those reflection issues, a good deal of background noise will tend to be addressed as well. Which, in turn, means that Clarity has to do a bit less heavy lifting.

It’s similar to the EQ’s and other processing presets I set up for clients. When the core audio quality is high, those tools can be used to polish the recordings to a luster which compliments our voice, instead of overwhelming it.

Our Task as Voice Actors

Whether we are considering the newest microphone, fanciest interface, or some super-smart repair tool, there’s a simple test. The result should all focus attention back to our core task. We still need to be brilliant behind the microphone.

I continue to believe that it’s in our interest to keep things simple – to work with the minimum amount of layers possible between us and the creative spark. It’s OK to adopt those tools that work. Any tool that makes things sound better without distracting from the performance is fine with me.

This information recently went out directly to my email community.
If you would like to join in to receive those emails the day they publish, please take a moment to share your contact information through this sign up form.
Thank you!

If you don’t want to wander over to my YouTube channel, here’s the “First Look: Waves Clarity Vx Noise Reduction and Vocal Clarity Plug-in” video (posted March, 2022) –