New Gear Review: Sonnox Restore Suite Update

Sonnox has lowered the price and updated their Restore suite of restoration plug-ins to support 64-bit AAX Native, RTAS, AU and VST host DAWs.

The Sonnox Restore bundle has three plug-ins. DeClicker is for removing pops, clicks and scratches displaying them as “bubbles” on its GUI. It has an intelligent dialog mode for cleaning up voice-over recordings with an “exclude” box where certain audio moments (bubbles) that sound like clicks can be “lassoed” and excluded from removal. DeBuzzer has three frequency ranges for the real-time tracking of buzzes and hums and their harmonics even if they vary in frequency. Lastly, DeNoiser, along with its de-hisser section removes wideband noise and hiss.

The process of audio restoration is as much science as it is art because of the many subjectively aesthetic decisions and compromises routinely made by the expert restoration engineer. The most crucial decisions being: in what order should these processes be done and at what point does the audio’s original fidelity start to be diminished.

There are great starting or stored default settings that’ll get you very close quickly. All three plug-ins provide intuitive, graphical information using their improved, larger GUI screens and there are various controls to sweeten restored audio and to do A/B comparisons quickly.

Available separately or bundled, the bundle sells for $599 MSRP.

sonnox.com/pub/plugins/products/restore.htm

Barry Rudolph is a recording engineer/mixer who has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs and more. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing editor for Mix Magazine. barryrudolph.com