Remove background noise

What it does

Takes steady background noise out of a recording: hiss, fan and air-conditioning noise, computer hum, and the tone of a quiet room. It works best on speech with pauses: interviews, voice memos, lectures and podcasts.

How to remove background noise

1. Open the recording. Reduce noise is ticked.
2. Set the Noise amount. 60% is a good start; the range runs from 20 to 95%.
3. Listen to a quiet stretch: the noise should drop without the voice sounding hollow.
4. Export. If mains buzz is left, tick Remove hum as well.

How it works

The tool learns what your noise sounds like from the quietest passages, the moments when nobody is speaking, then turns each frequency down by how closely it matches that noise. This is spectral gating, the same idea as the noise reduction in desktop editors. It is fast and predictable, and the page tells you how far the noise floor dropped.

Push the amount too high and you get musical noise, a faint warbling in the silences. If you hear it, back the amount off.