6 smart tools for audio restoration

Accusonus ERA Bundle Mac/PC From £7.45 per month

An acclaimed collection of uniformly smart tools that are designed to handle such processes as noise removal, voice deepening, auto-EQing, reverb removal and de-clipping. Accusonus’ swiss army knife of sonic sculptors provide a perfect control centre for audio repair, with the Audio Clean-Up Assistant granting a top-down view of its wares. accusonus.com

Adobe Audition CC Mac/PC From £19.97/mo

Adobe’s Audition CC applies the same remarkably ambidextrous approach that the company previously applied to images (via Photoshop) to audio. Audition offers multitrack, spectral and waveform displays of your source audio, and the current incarnation brings DeReverb and DeNoise plugins. These can cleverly suss out how best to apply themselves to the audio. adobe.com

Accentize Voice Gatee Mac/PC £120

Excelling at its sole objective of removing the audio from audio served up to it, Accentize’s Voice Gate uses its artificial neural network to determine any and all human speech in the audio and, well, eradicate it. Accentize are keen to update their algorithm, so if you come across any vocalsounds that Voice Gate hasn’t detected, feel free to email them to refine their algorithm further! accentize.com

iZotope RX9 Mac/PC From £95

Perhaps the closest to being the ultimate example of AI-as-audio engineer. RX9 is well-equipped to both judge and fix even the muddiest, messiest and most low-res audio. With a whole armada of smart plugins in its stable, the Repair Assistant is continually on hand to give instant feedback on what’s been detected, and action needed. It’s not been stumped yet. izotope.com

Sonible Frei:Raum Mac/PC £107

The debut AI product of Sonibile, Frei:Raum detects disturbing resonances and frequency notches, and cleverly gets to work correcting them, while its deep EQing abilities enable it to swiftly compensate for bad room acoustics or dialogue recording hiccups. Frei:Raum sets a precedent for intelligent, ever-learning plugins that Sonible continues to push. sonible.com

Zynaptiq Repair Bundle Mac/PC £550

Also known as the ‘Un’ series, Zynaptiq’s Unveil, Unfilter and Unchirp present smart ways to get rid of resonance, roll-offs and poorly encoded audio amongst other things, enhancing and sprucing up whatever is thrown their way. Driven by a desire to improve at what they do, Zynaptiq’s audio restoration suite is a reliable future-proof audio-repair arsenal. zynaptiq.com