I am Brandon Hayes, an audio restoration engineer and post-production specialist based in Nashville, Tennessee. I have worked in professional audio since 2013 — dialogue editing for commercials and corporate video first, then full post-production on documentaries and podcasts, then four years leading a three-person restoration department whose clients were podcast networks, independent labels and a regional museum with a field-recording archive. iZotope RX has been the daily tool through all of it, first as the thing you reached for when a client brought in a location recording with an air conditioner underneath, and since 2015 as the centre of the job rather than a helper.
Since 2022 I have run an independent practice — TV dialogue cleanup, archival transfers, podcast post-production — and edited this site. It grew out of the internal training notes I wrote for the restoration team, a set of documents we called AudioRecovery, which kept getting forwarded to people outside the company. iZotope RX World is the public version of those notes.
What every guide has to do
This is the publication I wish I had in year two, staring at a waveform full of HVAC hum with a client asking about a reshoot and a deadline in four hours. Every article here has to do four things, no exceptions:
- Open with a real session problem — the kind where you have ninety minutes to prove a retake is not needed.
- Show actual RX settings: module name, parameter, the value range that worked. Not "adjust the threshold to taste".
- Name a number when claiming one approach beats another. "Noise floor down 14 dB without audible smearing at 3 kHz", not "sounds noticeably cleaner".
- Say when RX cannot fix it — the part most tutorials skip because it does not fit a course-sales funnel.
The modules I work in and write about most weeks: Dialogue Isolate, Spectral Repair, Spectral De-noise and Voice De-noise, De-reverb, De-clip, Ambience Match, Music Rebalance and Repair Assistant — with honest notes on where the machine-learning tools earn their keep and where they quietly invent frequency content you did not ask for.
What you will not find here
- "10 RX tricks that will save every recording" listicles.
- Affiliate links to plugins I do not use in paid sessions.
- Workflow screenshots taken on a clean studio file. Every example starts with a genuinely broken recording.
- Vendor-supplied before-and-after numbers presented as independent benchmarks.
How the site makes money
Freelance restoration and post-production work. A number of the guides come directly out of client sessions — TV dialogue cleanup, archival transfers, podcast production — with identifying details removed. The site runs no display ads and takes no sponsored posts. Both would kill the clinical honesty that makes a restoration tutorial worth reading.
Version scope and corrections
Guides state the RX version and edition they were written against; the current reference is RX 12. When iZotope changes a module, the guide is revised and its revision date moves. If you find a setting that no longer matches the software, or a claim you can disprove with a file, write to me through the contact page — corrections are published, not buried.
iZotope RX World is an independent publication. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by iZotope or Boris FX. iZotope and RX are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here for editorial coverage only. Read the full editorial policy.