PRODUCT
TESTS
iZotope Dialogue Match Plug-In
By Adam Gallant
T
he biggest hurdles in audio post-production for video tend to
live in the dialogue editor’s suite. Making seamless-sounding
dialogue that keeps the audience invested in the story is an
art form that can take years to master.
Dialogue captured during production is often littered with noises of
all sorts, as well as unique-sounding environments that affect the view-
ers’ perception of space. Add in dry-sounding, dubbed dialogue via ADR
and a lot of tedious manipulation is required on the part of the mixer
or dialogue editor to make the actors’ voices feel natural, clip to clip.
Manipulating one source recording to flow into and sound like
the next is detailed work and often involves a litany of plug-ins: EQ
to match tone, reverb to match space, and more modern tools that
allow us to match background ambiances (or noise) from clip to
clip. All three aspects have to be assessed and treated with specific
and individual attention in order for the dialogue to come across as
naturally on screen as it does in real life.
With that in mind, our friends at iZotope have released a new
AudioSuite plug-in for Pro Tools that gives quick access to these three
attributes in one well-designed interface. Dialogue Match, released in
November 2019, is designed specifically to take the tediousness out
of the hurdles described above. While there exists EQ matching in a
few areas of the plug-in world, no company has encompassed reverb
and ambiance match alongside it.
In my opinion, iZotope’s RX is a premier tool and a go-to for many
of today’s top feature films and TV shows. When working on a web
series in our studios, we send 90 per cent of the production dialogue
to RX for some form of cleanup during the dialogue editing process.
The dialogue edit and premix often takes many hours to finesse for
a 15-minute episode. A lot of time is spent matching lavalier micro-
phones to boom microphones via EQ matching and tweaking reverb
sends or AudioSuite-applied reverbs.
With Dialogue Match, what used to be a four- to six-step process
of sending clips to RX from Pro Tools and back and then getting the
reverb and ambiance match tweaked to perfection has been reduced
to two steps.
In Use
The workflow for Dialogue Match is super simple. Capture the sound of
a clip you want to emulate, then capture the clip you want to change
and apply via AudioSuite. The algorithm examines the reference file
for tone, reverb, and background ambiance, then examines the same
properties for the clip you want to change. The software then comes
up with a process to make them sound as close as possible.
The plug-in is flexible with two tiers of detailed controls that are
quickly accessible and re-callable. On the primary control panel, the
amount of EQ matching can be dialed in or out, the amount of reverb
application and dry signal can be controlled, and the amount of back-
ground ambiance can be turned up or down. The more advanced
options allow for specific control of the EQ curves and nodes as well as
the reverb attack, decay, type, and tone. Also, the ambiance-matching
portion of the tool allows you to print just ambiance to create fill.
On a web series our studio has been into for the past month, the
most common use of Dialogue Match was to make lav mics sound like
boom mics when editing scenes shot with different set-ups in which
the boom is not always used. Lavs often sound chesty and hollow to
my ear and the lack of room reverb makes dialogue jump towards
the front of the mix for me.
A quick dose of Dialogue Match seems to iron out these issues
in a quarter of the time it would take me to tackle them by ear with
22 PROFESSIONAL SOUND
the three or four other plug-ins I’m used to. Often, the EQ match and
ambiance match provided by the plug-in would feel perfect to my ear
and the reverb amount would need a subtle taming of the high end
in the Advanced tab at the bottom of the plug-in. FabFilter ProQ3 has
a great EQ match feature that I was previously working with for jobs
like this, but I have since replaced that plug-in with Dialogue Match
for this particular application given its speed and ability to apply
reverb and background ambiance simultaneously. The plug-in is also
very responsive to real-time changes when previewing in AudioSuite.
Summary
Matching ADR to production dialogue with this tool is a huge time
saver. ADR, in my experience, is always too dry-sounding and Dialogue
Match makes short work of matching spaces. For me, the exponential
time-saving factor comes into play with the ambiance match func-
tion. Having this tool built into one plug-in alongside EQ and reverb
has saved me thousands of clicks as well as screen real estate by not
needing the extra AudioSuite plug-ins open and waiting in the wings
(for some often-repetitive tasks). So, instead of having iZotope RX’s
ambiance match, FabFilter ProQ3, and a reverb plug-in open, I now
just have Dialogue Match there ready to tackle all three tasks in one
fell swoop.
Great work on a new product from iZotope; I’m looking forward
to checking out which other innovations are coming down the pipes.
Adam Gallant has worked in all facets of digital audio production, from
music composition to location and post audio for television and film. He
currently owns and operates The Hill Sound Studio in Charlottetown, PE.