I’ve been a huge fan of iZotope for many years, and RX has always been my go-to standard for audio restoration. Over time, it has become indispensable in my daily work as a sound designer.

Leading post-production engineers rely on the multi-award-winning audio repair suite RX Advanced to efficiently and effectively prepare audio for commercial release. RX has built a reputation for powerful tools that not only cleanly remove hum, clipping, clicks, and background noise, but also isolate dialogue from complex environments – something I find invaluable when working on sound design projects.

iZotope RX 11 continues this legacy with refined enhancements that make an already exceptional toolkit even better. For me, especially when editing field recordings, RX 11 has become absolutely essential. These recordings often demand intensive post-processing to eliminate unwanted noise, environmental reverb, and inconsistent tonal artifacts – and RX 11 handles it all with impressive precision.

It’s also been a tremendous help in the studio when dealing with problematic microphone recordings – cleaning up mouth clicks, plosives, sibilance, or background hum with ease. This has saved me countless hours, allowing me to concentrate on the creative side of sound design instead of getting stuck in technical cleanup

FEATURES OF RX 11 ADVANCED

Repair Assistant

The new Repair Assistant in RX 11 has become one of those tools I rely on almost daily. It actually listens to the audio and gives me intelligent repair suggestions that make a real difference, whether I’m cleaning up dialogue, vocals, or messy field recordings. The updated interface feels much more intuitive, and I can still fine-tune everything afterwards if I need to. This alone has saved me countless hours of editing.

What I really like is how quickly it diagnoses issues and builds a sensible processing chain without me having to think about which module to grab first. For someone who spends a lot of time with unpredictable recordings, that’s huge. Combined with the expanded 30-step undo history, it keeps the workflow smooth and lets me stay focused on the creative side instead of getting stuck in endless repair passes.

Under the hood, the smarter neural networks clearly make a difference – it’s faster, reacts more accurately, and the results just sound cleaner right out of the gate. For me as a sound designer, that means less technical struggle and more time shaping the sound the way I want it.

Dialogue Isolate

now included in the Standard version, offers two powerful modes: real-time and high-quality offline rendering. The Advanced version even adds multiband noise and reverb suppression, which significantly improves the clarity of vocals and spoken content. The ability to control reverb in dialogues with this level of quality is simply impressive. I can wholeheartedly recommend the advanced version, with its multiband processing, high-quality mode, to anyone who works with vocals.

Spectral Recovery

has also seen a boost, helping restore high-end frequencies in poorly recorded or bandwidth-limited audio. Similarly, De-reverb effortlessly brings dry clarity to recordings captured in overly ambient spaces.

Streaming Preview

One of iZotope RX 11’s most impressive new features is Streaming Preview, which lets you monitor exactly how your mix will sound once it’s been compressed for platforms like Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Music. Alongside that is Loudness Optimize, which fine-tunes your output to meet platform-specific LUFS targets while preventing clipping – an absolute time-saver during final mastering stages. While this new feature isn’t particularly important in the area of ​​sound design I work in, I know several mastering engineers who use this amazing feature in their daily work. It’s super helpful.

Music Rebalance

now uses an upgraded algorithm to more accurately isolate and adjust elements like vocals, bass, drums, and other instruments within a mix. The integrated mixer interface makes this process straightforward and fast, even for complex tracks where stems aren’t available. When I build demo tracks, they’re often constructed from different musical sections, and sometimes the overall balance isn’t quite right in the end. Music Rebalance gives me a brilliant shortcut to fix that. Instead of going back into the Cubase project to rebalance everything manually, I can quickly tweak just the bass or vocals on the rendered file.

But I also know mastering engineers who really enjoy using this feature. When mastering an album, it can happen that the tracks don’t sound 100% balanced with each other. With Music Rebalance, you can quickly fine-tune a stereo mix, adjusting individual elements so the track feels more balanced and cohesive in no time. Absolutely genius!

ARA 2 integration

Another standout upgrade is the support for ARA 2 integration in compatible DAWs, allowing the Spectral Editor to be used directly inside your DAW. This streamlines the editing process and minimizes unnecessary back-and-forth between apps. As someone who spends countless hours fine-tuning audio in the DAW, I’m absolutely thrilled about this seamless integration of iZotope RX 11

Dialogue Contour

now features additional pitch and formant control with real-time visual feedback, perfect for fine-tuning dialogue or creatively reshaping voices in game sound design or ADR work. For spatial precision, Mid/Side support has been added to more modules, enabling detailed stereo field adjustments and targeted spectral repair. It’s amazing how easy it is to elevate the character of a vocal recording to a new level with this quality and speed. The graphic editing is simply fantastic.

Driver change

Another welcome improvement: RX 11 now lets you switch between audio drivers without restarting the application, a small but impactful change, especially useful during mobile or location-based sessions.

Additional Information

The real-time performance of core modules, such as Repair Assistant and Dialogue Isolate, is especially noteworthy – delivering faster results with no compromise in quality. DAW integration has never felt smoother, with tighter responsiveness and a cleaner user experience when working directly within your audio workstation. The merging of the old Dialogue De-reverb module into the new Dialogue Isolate is a smart and streamlined move, combining clarity and control in one place. Being able to use Dialogue Isolate as a real-time plugin inside my DAW is a huge improvement, making my everyday workflow significantly more efficient. The added multiband support in the Advanced version allows even more precise reverb and noise removal across specific frequency ranges – incredibly useful for fine vocal or field recording cleanup.

Which version of iZotope RX 11 is the right one?

RX 11 is available in three editions: Elements, Standard, and Advanced. A detailed comparison can be found on the iZotope website.

Things to Consider

If you’re expecting a revolutionary leap in features, it’s worth knowing that iZotope RX 11 focuses more on refinement than reinvention. Most new functions – such as Streaming Preview, Loudness Optimize, Mid/Side processing, and audio device refresh – are practical additions rather than game changers. Also noteworthy: the previously separate ‘Dialogue De-reverb’ module has been merged into ‘Dialogue Isolate’. While this streamlines the interface, some may miss having both as standalone tools. One frequently requested feature – voice resynthesis – is still missing in iZotope RX 11. Competing tools from Adobe or Accentize offer that, but RX continues to focus on real-world repair, not synthetic reconstruction.

That said, none of these limitations diminishes iZotope RX 11’s core strengths. It remains an essential, powerful, and incredibly well-integrated solution for anyone working seriously with sound.

Verdict & Conclusion

For me no other tool in this category offers such a perfect combination of deeply effective, intelligently designed modules.

I’m truly impressed by how seamlessly I can now work with individual components right inside my DAW without losing time or precision. Whether it’s denoising, declipping, stem separation, or spectral reshaping – RX 11 handles it all with surgical precision and unmatched efficiency. It’s not just a utility, but a creative tool that actively improves how I shape sound.

Sure, the Advanced version comes with a serious price tag. But if you’re working professionally, the time you save easily pays for itself – RX Advanced is a massive shortcut. And for everyone else, the Standard version already packs plenty of power to get the job done.

However, in my opinion, you can’t find anything comparable on the market. RX 11 Advanced represents the gold standard in audio restoration, and it absolutely earns the Sounds of Revolution Award.

Visit my BLOG for other vst recommendations, production tips and more!

Cheers,
Oliver Schmitt aka Sounds of Revolution (SOR)