The sample, however, doesn’t provide rich enough bass material for you to play with. Should we continue in that direction, we can make creative tapestries out of an initial loop, edging our results into the mix for flavors unachievable through other means. So, it is with pleasure that I present seven ways to utilize Music Rebalance as a music production and mixing tool. After experimenting, I kept my tricks to myself, until asked to expound on them for this article.

I set about testing Music Rebalance along these lines, looking to see if I could fashion new feats of sound design, or solve heretofore impossible utilitarian problems. So, I began to ruminate on how to push this processor as far as it could go: what if I didn’t just raise or lower a vocal part, but isolated an element completely, then processed it to extreme degrees? Sure it could add artifacts, but so what? What’s a little artifacting when it pushes the envelope of sound design? I don’t know about you, but my contrarian brain always yearns to thwart intended uses. For example, I could lower the vocal within a background music track, thereby minimizing conflict with the predominant dialogue. When Music Rebalance in RX first came out, I remember thinking, “This’ll be very interesting.” The tool was first explained to me as a life-saver in post production.

Izotope master rebalance