Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/681510
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 41 to this … we sign agreements, and we hear the raw audio you don't … so when people watching live television or sports wonder what was really being said, we actually know! Of course, we can't be omnipresent, but we do have the Internet. We communicate with users via forums, social media, email, and phone. The conversation never ends: it's always evolving. RX5's "Instant Process" ups the convenience factor significantly. How do you decide which new features to implement? We prioritize new features based on either the requested vol- ume or the perceived opportunity. Ambience Match for instance, was an opportunity … nobody was specifically requesting those features, but we were seeing a lot of users experiencing the pain of ambient noise gaps and dropouts, no handles from the video editor, and so on. Instant Process, on the other hand, was definitely a popular request. Users were keen for us to speed up the spectral editing workflow, and articulately describing repetitive tasks that an Instant Process feature would help speed up. We also have a traditional beta team from a wide swath of disciplines. They keep us honest and accountable, as do some of our VIP users who may not be on the beta, but are very inti- mately involved in our research and development. Last year, you all mentioned that you were building a mastering room, a mix room, and a performance space to have a more controlled environment to perform evaluations. Are those complete? Yes, they are complete, and they are very useful! A primary driver for the studio's installation was to support product design and development—making a real-world environment more readily accessible to the entire staff for critical listening, feature testing, audio example creation, preset design, and research into digital signal pro- cessing. We also really enjoy hosting educa- tional events onsite, bringing in students, and professionals from the local communi- ty. And, of course, we also love to use them for fun! The majority of iZotope employees are musicians themselves, so we make good use of the studios after hours for staff jams, personal projects, synth fairs, listening par- ties, and anything else our crew dreams up. Finally, are there any other interesting RX facts you'd like to share? Well, RX has one of iZotope's best Easter eggs: it's a video game inspired by Breakout, the classic Atari game. It's been in RX for years, and it's rarely discovered. No, I won't tell you how to get there! Congratulations on, once again, improv- ing a product that is a staple in the field of sound for picture. • The team puts RX through its paces in the control room of iZotope Studios. Photo: VentureFizz