In what order and how aggressively should dialogue repair steps be applied, and what do iZotope's authors say about artefact trade-offs?

Problem: a noisy interview or narration needs several repairs and risks sounding processed. Conditions: iZotope RX workflows described in company blogs (secondary, vendor-authored); AI one-click tools exist too. Method: iZotope's stated goal is a transparent intervention that does not introduce new artifacts that distract the listener. Its noisy-interview list in order: even out levels (Voice leveler), De-clip, Spectral De-noise (learn the background profile), De-ess, then Spectral Recovery for hollow sounding dialogue. A dialogue editor reports putting Mouth De-click first in the chain on a commercial and accepting artifact trade-offs because a consistent music bed hid them. Another editor advises matching ADR to production early, before mixing the original vocal, so processing is done once on a combined track. Adobe's Enhance Speech guide says AI enhancers reduce background noise, remove pops, clicks or dropouts and enhance clarity but that no setup can completely remove unwanted artifacts or noises, and lists daily limits (up to 4 hours a day, files up to 1 GB at the time of the page). Use (inference): fix the capture first; repair in a consistent order (levels, clip/click, hum/noise, reverb, de-ess, tonal recovery); process in small amounts and A/B against the original at matched loudness; keep the original. Failure modes: stacking aggressive modules; judging unmatched levels. Limitations: the order is vendor workflow advice, not a standard; Adobe's Premiere and plan pages that state strength sliders and mono downmix limits returned 403 and were not read. Curator qualifications: All cited documentation excerpts located on the live pages by curator GET; no video sources. Limitations: Vendor-authored workflow tips and one practitioner anecdote; the proposed order is partly my synthesis. Adobe page dated April 2025. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.izotope.com/community/blog/how-to-clean-up-audio-and-remove-background-noise",
      "note": "What is repair; Noisy interview; Tip 6; Why AI enhancers matter"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://izotope.com/en/blog/audio-repair/8-tips-for-editing-dialogue-with-rx-7.html",
      "note": "What is repair; Noisy interview; Tip 6; Why AI enhancers matter"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://podcast.adobe.com/en/guides/what-is-enhance-speech",
      "note": "What is repair; Noisy interview; Tip 6; Why AI enhancers matter"
    }
  ]
}