By Brady Betzel

With each passing year it seems that the job title of “editor” changes. It’s not just someone responsible for shaping the story of the show but also for certain aspects of finishing, including color correction and audio mixing.

In the past, when I was offline editing more often, I learned just how important sending a properly mixed and leveled offline cut was. Whether it was a rough cut, fine cut or locked cut — the mantra to always put my best foot forward was constantly repeating in my head. I am definitely a “video” editor but, as I said, with editors becoming responsible for so many aspects of finishing, you have to know everything. For me this means finding ways to take my cuts from the middle of the road to polished with just a few clicks.

On the audio side, that means using tools like Accusonus Era 4 Pro audio repair plugins. Accusonus advertises these Era 4 plugins as one-button solutions, and they are as easy as one button but you can also nuance the audio if you like. The Era 4 Pro plugins work not only work with your typical DAW like Pro Tools 12.x and higher, but within nonlinear editors like Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 or higher, FCP X 10.4 or higher and Avid Media Composer 2018.12.

Digging In
Accusonus’ Era 4 Pro Bundle will cost you $499 for the eight plugins included in its audio repair offering. This includes De-Esser Pro, De-Esser, Era-D, Noise Remover, Reverb Remover, Voice Leveler, Plosive Remover and De-Clipper. There is also an Era 4 (non-pro) bundle for $149 that includes everything mentioned previously except for De-Esser Pro and Era-D. I will go over a few of the plugins in this review and why the Pro bundle might warrant the additional $350.

I installed the Era 4 Pro Bundle on a Wacom MobileStudio Pro tablet that is a few years old but can still run Premiere. I did this intentionally to see just how light the plugins would run. To my surprise my system was able to toggle each plug-in off and on without any issue. Playback was seamless when all plugins were applied. Now I wasn’t playing anything but video, but sometimes when I do an audio pass I turn off video monitoring to be extra sure I am concentrating on the audio only.

De-Esser
First up is the De-Esser, which tackles harsh sounds resulting from “s,” “z,” “ch,” “j” and “sh.” So if you run into someone who has some ear piercing “s” pronunciations, apply the De-Esser plugin and choose from narrow, normal or broad. Once you find which mode helps remove the harsh sounds (otherwise known as sibilance), you can enable “intense” to add more processing power (but doing this can potentially require rendering). In addition, there is an output gain setting, “Diff,” that plays only the parts De-Esser is affecting. If you want to just try the “one button” approach, the Processing dial is really all you need to touch. In realtime, you can hear the sibilance diminish. I personally like a little reality in my work so I might dial the processing to the “perfect” amount then dial it back 5% or 10%.

De-Esser Pro
Next up is De-Esser Pro. This one is for the editor who wants the one-touch processing but also the ability to dive into the specific audio spectrum being affected and see how the falloff is being performed. In addition, there are presets such as male vocals, female speech, etc. to jump immediately to where you need help. I personally find the De-Esser Pro more useful than the De-Esser. I can really shape the plugin. However, if you don’t want to be bothered with the more intricate settings, the De-Esser is a still a great solution. Is it worth the extra $350? I’m not sure, but combining it with the Era-D might make you want to shell out the cash for the Era 4 Pro bundle.

Era-D
Speaking of the Era-D, it’s the only plugin not described by its own title, funnily enough, but it is a joint de-noise and de-reverberation plugin. However, Era-D goes way beyond simple hum or hiss removal. With Era-D, you get “regions” (I love saying that because of the audio mixers who constantly talk in regions and not timecode) that can not only be split at certain frequencies — and have different percentage of plugin applied to said region — but also have individual frequency cutoff levels.

Something I had never heard of before is the ability to use two mics to fix a suboptimal recording on one of the two mics, which can be done in the Era-D plugin. There is a signal path window that you can use to mix the amount of de-noise and de-reverb. It’s possible to only use one or the other, and you can even run the plugin in parallel or cascade. If that isn’t enough, there is an advanced window with artifact control and more. Era-D is really the reason for that extra $350 between the standard Era 4 bundle and the Era 4 Bundle Pro — and it is definitely worth it if you find yourself removing tons of noise and reverb.

Noise Remover
My second favorite plugin in the Era 4 Bundle Pro is the Noise Remover. Not only is the noise removal pretty high-quality (again, I dial it back to avoid robot sounds), but it is painless. Dial in the amount of processing and you are 80% done. If you need to go further, then there are five buttons that let you focus where the processing occurs: all-frequencies (flat), high frequencies, low frequencies, high and low frequencies and mid frequencies. I love clicking the power button to hear the differences — with and without the noise removal — but also dialing the knob around to really get the noise removed without going overboard. Whether removing noise in video or audio, there is a fine art in noise reduction, and the Era 4 Noise Removal makes it easy … even for an online editor.

Reverb Remover
The Reverb Remover operates very much like the Noise Remover, but instead of noise, it removes echo. Have you ever gotten a line of ADR clearly recorded on an iPhone in a bathtub? I’ve worked on my fair share of reality, documentary, stage and scripted shows, and at some point, someone will send you this — and then the producers will wonder why it doesn’t match the professionally recorded interviews. With Era 4 Noise Remover, Reverb Remover and Era-D, you will get much closer to matching the audio between different recording devices than without plugins. Dial that Reverb Remover processing knob to taste and then level out your audio, and you will be surprised at how much better it will sound.

Voice Leveler
To level out your audio, Accusonus also has included the Voice Leveler, which does just what is says: It levels your audio so you won’t get one line blasting in your ears while the next one doesn’t because the speaker backed away from the mic. Much like the De-Esser, you get a waveform visual of what is being affected in your audio. In addition, there are two modes: tight and normal, helping to normalize your dialog. Think of the tight mode as being much more distinctive than a normal interview conversation. Accusonus describes tight as a more focused “radio” sound. The Emphasis button helps to address issues when the speaker turns away from a microphone and introduces tonal problems. Breath control is a simple

De-Clipper and Plosive Remover
The final two plugins in the Era 4 Bundle Pro are the Plosive Remover and De-Clipper. De-Clipper is an interesting little plugin that tries to restore lost audio due to clipping. If you recorded audio at high gain and it came out horribly, then it’s probably been clipped. De-Clipper tries to salvage this clipped audio by recreating overly saturated audio segments. While it’s always better to monitor your audio recording on set and re-record if possible, sometimes it is just too late. That’s when you should try De-Clipper. There are two modes: normal/standard use and one for trickier cases that take a little more processing power.

The final plugin, Plosive Remover, focuses on artifacting that’s typically caused by “p” and “b” sounds. This can happen if no pop screen is used and/or if the person being recorded is too close to the microphone. There are two modes: normal and extreme. Subtle pops will easily be repaired in normal mode, but extreme pops will definitely need the extreme mode. Much like De-Esser, Plosive Remover has an audio waveform display to show what is being affected, while the “Diff” mode only plays back what is being affected. However, if you just want to stick to that “one button” mantra, the Processing dial is really all you need to mess with. The Plosive Remover is another amazing plugin that, when you need it, really does a great job fast and easily.

Summing Up
In the end, I downloaded all of the Accusonus audio demos found on the Era 4 website, along with installers. This is the same place you can download the installers if you want to take part in the 14-day trial. I purposely limited my audio editing time to under one minute per clip and plugin to see what I could do. Check out my work with the Accusonus Era 4 Pro audio repair plugins on YouTube and see if anything jumps out at you. In my opinion, the Noise Remover, Reverb Remover and Era-D are worth the price of admission, but each plugin from Accusonus does great work.

Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and The Shop. He is also a member of the Producer’s Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.