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NEW TOYS: ANTARES AUDIO TECHNOLOGY Auto-Tune SoundSoap

Antares Audio Technology has released a redesigned and improved version of SoundSoap. Antares Audio Technology's CEO Steve Berkley originally created SoundSoap in 2002 when he was at Bias Software.

SoundSoap repairs or even rescues audio trashed with: broadband noise, hum, rumbles, clicks and crackles, clips, and sibilance. Restoration of audio is an imperfect art that can require tedious trial and error and may produce less than great results if the wrong tools are used. There is always a tradeoff between how much noise is removed versus the change in the overall audio quality.

I chose a dialog track that was immersed in rumble and background noise—basically unusable. I tackled a 60Hz ground loop/hum using the De-Hum control set to 60Hz and that also got rid of parts of the low frequency components of the air conditioning/traffic noise as well; then the Noise Reduction section removed the rest of the broadband hash with minimal change in the audio quality. The art here is to decide how much broadband noise to remove versus retaining voice intelligibility. I was constantly bypassing to judge the audio's improvement and fine-tune the simple controls in real time.

Auto-Tune SoundSoap has a re-designed De-Ess module for getting rid of heavy 'ess' sounds—it works great to wash vocal tracks before starting a mix.

I found Auto-Tune SoundSoap the easiest and fastest software for reducing noise and cleaning up audio. I like repairing clips and overloaded recordings, hums, and pops and clicks—it works marvelously!

The user interface matches the rest of the Auto-Tune Unlimited product family with Light and Dark modes. Auto-Tune SoundSoap is available as part of the Auto-Tune Unlimited subscription at $24.99 monthly, or $14.58 a month as an annual subscription. A free, 14-day trial is also available.

antarestech.com/demo-downloads