Hush | AI-powered tools for dialogue repair

Hush Pro User Manual

Thanks for downloading Hush Pro! This guide should get you up and running.
If you have any questions or run into any issues, please don’t hestitate to reach out to ian@hushaudioapp.com.

Installation

  • Double-click the downloaded file (HushPro.dmg or HushProTrial.dmg) to unpack the installer.
  • Double-click the installer (HushPro.pkg or HushProTrial.pkg) and follow the prompts.
  • If you only have a single user account on your Mac, you’re all set. If you have multiple user accounts, you may need to restart the computer before Hush Pro will work properly on your other accounts.

Usage

Open the AudioSuite menu in Pro Tools. You can find the Hush Mix and Hush Split plugins under either Noise Reduction or Ian Sampson. Both plugins use the same engine under the hood, but offer two different workflows.

Hush Mix

Hush Mix works just like a regular mixer — with separate channels for clean dialogue, room reflections, and ambient noise (or voice, reverb, and noise
for short).

Select a clip and click the speaker icon in the bottom left to preview results in real time. Use the decibel-based gain faders to adjust the levels: the lower the fader, the more reduction is applied. You can also set a channel to unity gain (i.e. 0 dB) by holding down the Option key and clicking anywhere on the fader.

Hush Pro is an adaptive processor: the amount of processing applied depends on how loud the noise and reverb are in the original recording. The faders simply control the balance between the three channels, after the Hush AI has separated them as cleanly as it can.

Below the fader, each channel also has four buttons for adjusting the mix:

  • The mute and solo buttons work just as they would on a mixing console, toggling audio on or off for a given channel.
  • The bypass button disables the fader on a channel, as if it were set to unity gain — useful for quick A/B comparisons.
  • The link button lets you link the faders on two or more channels. Any linked faders will move in tandem, retaining their relative gain, like grouped tracks in Pro Tools. You can adjust an individual fader without unlinking it by holding down the Control key while moving it. Noise and reverb are linked by default in the initial preset, but you can create your own presets with any linking configuration you like.

While Hush Pro is designed mainly for mono dialogue, you can also process multiple channels at once: Hush Mix will handle each channel separately, i.e. in multi-mono. Since the Hush AI has to process all these channels simultaneously, you may run into performance issues if you select too many channels at once. If that happens, try rendering each channel separately, or in smaller groups.

Hush Split

Hush Split separates your audio into four clips (original, voice, reverb, and noise) so can you can edit them non-destructively or process them with other plugins.

This is especially useful for more fine-grained work: if Hush Pro miscategorizes a vocal sound as noise, for example, you can copy just that part of the clip back into the voice channel. Or you can remove the dialogue entirely and isolate a slice of room tone to layer with dubbing or ADR.

To use Hush Split, you’ll need three additional tracks below the source track — for voice, reverb, and noise respectively. Select your original clip as well as the three lanes below it. (There are several ways to do this, but the fastest is to hold down Shift and Control together, and press Colon (:) three times.) You should end up with all four lanes selected. Then click Render. Hush Split will preserve your original clip unchanged on the first lane, and print the clean dialogue, room reflections, and ambient noise onto the other three.

Uninstallation

You might need to uninstall Hush Pro for a variety of reasons. If you encounter errors after an update, it can be helpful to uninstall the plugin and reinstall from scratch. If you’re downgrading to a previous version, you may need to uninstall first, since the built-in macOS installer will often refuse to replace newer packages with older ones. Finally, if you install Hush Pro on a shared computer — and not all the other users have valid licenses — the License Agreement requires that you uninstall the plugin when your session or work is complete.

To uninstall Hush Pro, consult the ReadMe.txt packaged with your download (HushPro.dmg or HushProTrial.dmg) and follow the steps under Uninstallation.

In general, Hush Pro installs the following files:

  • Library/Application Support/Hush/HushXPC.bundle
  • Library/LaunchAgents/ca.iansampson.HushXPC.plist
  • Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins/HushPro.aaxplugin

It is important to remove all of these files (and not just HushPro.aaxplugin) to avoid conflicts with future installations. Since different versions of Hush Pro may place files at different locations, make sure to consult the ReadMe.txt included with the specific version you have installed.