One of the dreams of post engineers has been to find a device or plugin
that allows you to strip the reverberation from a sound. Dialog or
effects recording with unwanted ambience eventually have to be replaced,
costing time and money, and a music track swimming in too much reverb
can turn into a muddy mess. Now comes an announcement from a company
called Zynaptiq regarding a Mac plugin called UNVEIL, which they say accomplishes real-time de-reverberation and "signal focusing."
By using artificial intelligence, UNVIEL claims to be able to not only
strip the ambience from a sound, but to add more of the natural ambience
back into the sound, as well as attenuating some of the components that
cause a sound to be "muddy" or masked.
If it works as claimed, it could
immediately find a place in the plugin lists of DAWs everywhere. Not
only would it be invaluable for post, but during a mix as well. Instead
of adding artificial reverb to a mix element, it would be great just to
be able to adjust the natural ambience of the element itself. That
means, of course, that you have to record the sound well complete with
some natural ambience in the first place, but that's a topic for a
different discussion.
Check out UNVIEL at the Zynaptiq site. A free trial is available.