What you need to know
- Pro audio app iZotope RX has added support for Apple silicon.
- Early testing shows a massive speed increase over using Rosetta emulation.
- The update is a paid one for users of older versions.
If you're a podcaster who uses iZotope RX and also happens to have a Mac running Apple silicon, today is your lucky day — because the app now finally supports Apple's M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips, removing the need for Rosetta.
The audio tool is often used heavily by podcasters because it can do some pretty magical things when removing noise from recordings, as Jason Snell of SixColors points out when sharing the news earlier.
I use iZotope's RX audio utilities constantly. They clean up background noise, remove buzzing and humming, and even remove the reverberations from echoey rooms. There was even that one time when someone played three hours of D&D with a sump pump beeping in the background every 30 seconds, and I used iZotope's tools to isolate that frequency and eliminate the beeping entirely. It's pretty great stuff.
Pretty great indeed. Almost as great as the performance improvements this update offers thanks to that native Apple silicon support. As an example, removing background noise took 60% less time in Snell's testing and handily beat out an 8-core iMac Pro in one test, too.
While iZotope RX might not be a tool everyone needs, those who do use it will definitely benefit from its support for Apple's speedy chips. They're also the ones likely to be using the M1 Pro and M1 Max, too, while Snell was doing his testing on an M1 MacBook Air. Wowzers!
There is, however, bad news — the upgrade appears to be a paid one for users of older versions of the app. Still, if it's for podcasting there's a good chance it'll be a business expense so... yay?
The updated app is available now.
