Audio Noise Reduction Beta
Reduce background noise in recordings. Works best on consistent, steady noise.
How to audio noise reduction
- Add a recording with unwanted background noise.
- Try strength 5 first. If it is not enough, increase it — but listen for the characteristic watery artefacts that appear at high settings.
- Download and check in headphones before deciding on the final setting.
About this tool
Background noise in recordings comes from the environment: air conditioning systems, computer fans, the natural ambience of a room, and the self-noise of the microphone itself. These noises are characteristically steady and spectrally consistent, which is exactly what noise reduction algorithms exploit. A spectral gate measures the noise floor during quiet sections, builds a model of the noise spectrum, and attenuates those frequencies across the whole file.
The honest limit of this approach is that "noise" and "signal" are not always well-separated in the frequency domain. A recording made in a reverberant room contains reflections of the speaker's voice in every direction — some of which look like noise to a spectral analyser. Reducing the noise also slightly reduces those reflections, which changes the acoustic character of the recording. At moderate settings this is usually acceptable. At aggressive settings it becomes the dominant character of the output — that watery, processed sound that reveals the algorithm.