If you follow the plugin releases closely, you probably noticed that Waves recently released a new plugin: Clarity Vx. The feedback from users is extremely good, but is it worth spending $30 on this plugin? Let’s find out together in this article!

We recently tried Clarity Vx at IDeez Studio. And if your first question is whether this plugin is good or not, we can give you a clear answer: Yes, it is. But why is this plugin so special? What makes it a real revolution? Several elements make us think that it could quickly surpass all its competitors…

What is Clarity Vx ?

Clarity Vx is advertised by Waves as a plugin that “cleans up voices and dialogues at the highest quality, in a fraction of the time”.

What does that mean? It means that this plugin will allow you to isolate voices from ambient noise in real time. So you can enjoy a sound without disturbing or invading background noise.

This principle can be very useful in recording situations where background noise is a problem: music recording in a poorly insulated room, podcasts with relatively pronounced motion noise, outdoor recordings for movies or videos,… The situations are endless, and it is very likely that you will need a plugin like Clarity Vx several times in your future

Clarity Vx has a very nice interface where everything looks easy!

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How It Works

The most important element of the plugin is in the center. The more you turn this big knob to the right, the more the ambient sound will be reduced. At 100% it is supposed to be inaudible.

Honestly, Waves could have stopped there and created a plugin in a OneKnob form as they already did for some plugins, but they didn’t. They decided to add some features that allow you to sculpt your filter as you like. We can find :

• Width : Adjusts the width of the output signal. If you ambiant sound is a stereo signal, it can be pretty useful.
• Neural network : Sets and adjusts the focus on your source.
• Analysis (if stereo) : Analyzes sum of the stereo channels and uses less CPU in single mode.

For vocal mixing in music, we recommend using it with Broad 1, with the center knob at 75-80%. This allows you, whether your studio is noisy or not, to remove the background noise of the music playing in the singer’s headphones.

In this article, we will not dive into the explanations of Clarity Vx Pro, which is a more advanced version dedicated to cinema, an area that is not our focus at IDeez Studio.

Why it Might become the future of De-Noise ?

A. Speed

Open the plugin, push the knob to the right, and your ambient noise is gone. As simple as that. It’s rare to find plugins that are so easy to use for operations that are technically very complicated.

B. Artifacts ? None.

Artifacts are parasites (clicks, pops, timbre modification) that appear in an audio signal during any processing of this source. You might think that there are a lot of them with Clarity Vx because it seems impossible for an algorithm to differentiate between voice and ambience. But even with concentration it is impossible to hear any artifact.

C. Automatable

That’s a fact : this is the very first automatable De-Noiser in the market. If you want to play with the ambient sounds of your vocal recordings during the audio mixing process, Clarity Vx will allow you to do so in a very simple way. This can sometimes give more life to certain tracks.

C. Sound quality

Besides the absence of artifacts, the output sound quality of this plugin is impressive. No audio information is lost in the process, even in the high end of the spectrum.

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Conclusion

Clarity Vx is a fast, efficient and easy way to remove noise from your vocal recordings. Its efficiency and the sound quality can make Clarity a revolutionary plugin in the music industry AND in the movie industry. With the turn of a single knob, you’ll get rid of annoying background and headphones noise.

If you want to make vocal mixing your future career or just something serious, Clarity Vx will quickly become a priority! It will save you way more time than you believe!

Make sure to contact me if you have any question about Clarity Vx or about anything in the field of vocal mixing, I’m always very happy to help!

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