Background Noise Removal Solutions

Picture the scene: you’ve landed your dream celebrity to interview on your podcast. It’s all going great and you’re getting fabulous content when suddenly… an airplane flies overhead or your neighbor’s dog kicks off, barking at a squirrel. Or worse, your dream interviewee keeps smacking their lips and is all ums and ahs when it comes to answering your probing and insightful questions.

Nightmare! Luckily, help is at hand. Here we’ll look at software solutions to background and unwanted noise removal, including Cleanvoice AI, that will keep your podcast episodes clean, crisp, and popular.

What is Background Noise Removal

There are many ways you can reduce background noise and other unwanted noises on your podcast recording which generally involves the physical setup of your speakers and mics. But once you’ve made all the physical changes you can to your recording space, bought the best equipment in your budget, and tweaked their settings, and yet you still have background noises on your podcast recordings it’s time to bring in specialist software.

There are two types of software available to the podcaster:

  • Noise canceling - software that reduces or removes noises during recording
  • Noise removal - software that removes unwanted background noise or sounds from an audio file that’s already been recorded

Cleanvoice is the latter. It’s a tool that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to remove unexpected noises, filler sounds, stuttering and mouth sounds from your podcast or audio recording. Problem solved!

Why Background Noise Removal is Important

Think for a moment about where people listen to your podcast. They might be out for a run, shopping, doing the cooking, or walking the dog. Wherever they are and whatever they’re doing they’ll be dealing with background noise and other distractions. That means if your podcast also has distracting background noise, you’ll lose your audience - fast.

For flawless interviews and clear recordings, get some help from the software designed to solve exactly these problems.

Software Solutions

Background noise removal tools use algorithms to differentiate background and unwanted noise from voice audio. But which tool is the best one for you?

There are multiple choices out there, some of them standalone apps or online-only tools, while others are built into popular recording platforms. Depending on the tool, they either remove noise during recording or from a recorded audio file. Some of these tools are developed to remove audio with low frequencies, while some of them remove noise from a wider spectrum of both high and low audio frequencies.

#1. Cleanvoice

Cleanvoice uses a simple, online, drag-and-drop interface to automatically deal with multiple issues on your recordings.

You need a licence key and once an audio file has been uploaded, enter your key and hit “Clean my audio”. And that’s about it. Processing time depends on the file size but if you don’t want to wait, the system will email you a link to download the filtered file later. The link stays active for 7 days, after which unclaimed files are removed from the server.

Key Features

  • Background noise remover - filters out everything except spoken words from ecorded audio files so you can record outdoors or in a cafe and lose wind and background chatter
  • Mouth sound remover - removes all kinds of lip-smacking noises as well as awkward ums and ahs that regularly crop up during interviews
  • Multilingual - works with languages including German and French

Pricing

  • CleanVoice pricing is based on the number of hours in regard to processed audio. Prices start from 10 Euro for both their subscription and pay-as-you-go plans. Plus, you can test out CleanVoice, by processing 30 minutes of audio for free!

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Natural Language Processing
  • Machine Learning
  • Free trial available, no credit card required
  • Can also be used as a podcast editing suite
  • Subscription or pay-as-you-go options

Cons

  • Higher price than some competitors
  • Doesn’t clean during recording

#2. Krisp

Krisp is another AI-powered noise-canceling app that is designed to eliminate external noise at the time of recording.

The AI automatically identifies and reduces ambient noise that’s picked up by your microphone. Whilst it’s intended for use as a videoconferencing tool, it can also be used by podcasters to remove background noise at source.

Key Features

  • Background noise remover - filters out background noise during recording
  • AI - uses an AI to identify what to keep and what to remove
  • Simple interface - because it works during recording, you just need to select input and output in the app settings

Pricing

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Great for real-time noise cancellation during recording
  • Cross-platform compatibility
  • Compatible with popular recording applications

Cons

  • Doesn’t clean recorded files
  • No timeline editing functions

#3. Audacity

Audacity is a free and open-source audio editing software that you can use to adjust the audio settings on a pre-recorded file.

Audacity does not support active noise canceling. What it does support is removing noise and disturbance from a recorded audio file. You can open almost any audio file in Audacity and increase or decrease DB gain. All changes must be set manually, and there is no AI functionality to help you remove mouth noises or dead air.

Key Features

  • Simple noise reduction tool - toggle the settings to get the best result possible
  • Open source - being open source means there’s a really good community to help you out if you get stuck

Pricing

Audacity is completely free to use. For a free tool, it does the job of clearing up audio well, though you might find it lacking if you’re looking for something a bit more comprehensive.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Open source, free to download
  • Great community and user forums are available
  • It is a cross-platform noise reduction tool

Cons

  • Manual adjustments needed to remove background noise
  • Complex UI can be intimidating for newbies

#4. NoiseGator

Like Krisp, NoiseGator was originally designed for videoconferencing but can be utilized by podcasters to remove background noises at source.

NoiseGator is a much simpler app than Krisp but can still remove the noise coming from your microphone or speakers. You need to designate your input and output devices in the app settings, and NoiseGator then analyzes the background noise levels and volumes, then sets a threshold that filters out any sound above them.

Key Features

  • Creates a gate - The app closes the “gate” on all sounds if the level drops below the set threshold, hence the name. Noise gate… NoiseGator. Get it?
  • Background tool - Noisegator works in the background, directly accessing your input and output sources while you concentrate on your podcast production

Pricing

NoiseGator is free to use, with no additional costs.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Kills background hiss noise in real-time
  • Light-weight with a simple UI
  • Free to use

Cons

  • It requires Java 7 or higher for Windows
  • Requires Java 6 or higher for Mac
  • Requires avirtual audio cable for VOIP recording

#5. Riverside.fm

Riverside.fm is a popular podcasting tool and is billed as a portable, online recording studio. It allows podcasters to use their phone, tablet, or laptop to record good-quality audio from any location.

The software includes noise reduction settings that filter unwanted frequencies and has been used to record many award-winning podcasts, including Hilary Clinton’s You and Me Both, and The New York Times podcasts like The Daily and Hard Fork.

Key Features

  • Mobile - Can be used with a smartphone or tablet, giving you a recording studio in your pocket
  • Cloud upload - Files are continuously uploaded to cloud servers so you don’t need to store them on your mobile device and can access them for editing once you get back to your studio
  • Video - Riverside.fm also allows for video recording, creating separate tracks for video and audio

Pricing

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Portable and online
  • Reduces background noise
  • Multiple recording studio functions all in one place

Cons

  • Basic noise-reduction features
  • Requires subscription for more than 2 hours use per month

#6. GarageBand

GarageBand is a free audio production app included with macOS and iOS.

Because it was originally created for music production, there are a few workarounds you need in order for GarageBand to function as a podcasting tool, but once you’ve set up a podcast template for yourself you’ll be able to access all the necessary recording, editing, and exporting functions for podcasting.

Key Features

  • Slick and packed with features - Well, it’s a Mac product so that’s what you’d expect.
  • Audio only template - Setting up a podcasting template for yourself is pretty straightforward and you only need to do it once
  • Samples - The app comes with many built-in, royalty-free music samples that can be used for intros and background music for your podcast.

Pricing

  • Free on Mac products

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Excellent GUI
  • Record, edit, and export functions

Cons

  • Mac only
  • Requires setting up a podcast template
  • Noise reduction functions not obvious

Conclusion

As you can see, there’s a wide range of noise reduction software options available, from established sources like Adobe to newcomers like Krisp. Your choice depends on whether you want to reduce noise during recording or clean up a file afterwards and your decision will depend on the recording equipment and software you use (or plan o use) and your budget.

Cleanvoice is a solution that puts AI with Natural Language Processsing and Machine Learning to work for you. Check out our prices to see how they compare with the alternatives.