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How to remove background noise from a recording (hiss, hum, fans)

Record at home on a phone or a starter mic and you'll often hear a layer of hiss, the whoosh of an air conditioner or laptop fan, or the buzz of electrical hum. It's obvious on headphones and makes an episode sound less professional. Here's how to record less of it, three ways to remove it afterwards, the one-click steps, and the sounds noise reduction can't take out.

Upload a recording and remove the noise in one click: try Respeak's Enhance voice (free) →

Record less noise in the first place

• Turn off what you can: air conditioning, fans, humidifiers; don't record next to the fridge. If the laptop fan is loud, move the laptop away.
• Get closer to the mic: 15–20 cm (6–8 inches) from the phone or mic. A louder voice makes the same noise sound smaller.
• Pick a soft room: curtains, a sofa or a wardrobe full of clothes beat an empty living room, and they cut echo too.
• Test 10 seconds first: listen on headphones before the real take. It saves a lot of fixing later.

Already recorded: three ways to remove the noise

• Noise reduction in your editing app: CapCut, Premiere and others have a noise-reduction switch or an "enhance speech" option. If you're editing the episode there anyway, that's the least work.
• Manual noise reduction in an audio app: in Audacity, for example, you sample a stretch that's only noise, then reduce it across the recording. You can fine-tune it, but it takes a few tries: push it too far and the voice turns muffled or watery.
• Respeak's Enhance voice: upload and click once; an AI noise-reduction model separates the voice from the noise, with no sampling and no settings, and you can undo it. In the same place you can cut ums and pauses and fix a wrong sentence in your own voice. Made for podcasts, courses and voice-overs.

Remove the noise in one click with Respeak

1. Upload the recording: MP3, M4A, WAV and other common formats; for MP4 and MOV videos only the sound is read. It's transcribed automatically.
2. Click Enhance voice: top right of the editor, next to Undo. Once you confirm, it takes about an eighth of the recording's length: a little over a minute for 10 minutes.
3. Listen: when it's done the button says Enhanced. The length and every sentence's position stay the same, and the transcript doesn't need redoing. Not happy? Undo brings back the recording as it was.
4. Keep editing, or export: enhance first, then cut fillers or fix sentences. In a noisy recording you can hear the noise drop out around a replaced sentence; with the noise gone first, you can't.

Try it on your recording →

What noise reduction can't fix, or shouldn't be used on

• Background music: it gets removed as noise too. Clean up the voice without music first, then add the music.
• Room echo: the boomy reverb of an empty room is the voice's own reflection; noise reduction can't remove it. Record in another room, or hang up something soft.
• Distortion: if the level was too high and the voice clipped, noise reduction can't bring it back. Turn the input level down next time.
• Several people talking at once: someone else's voice is still a voice, so it stays.

Free, and limits: Enhance voice is free; you need an account, and each account can enhance up to 120 minutes of recordings a day. On the free trial a recording can be up to 10 minutes long, and up to 30 minutes after buying any credit pack. It runs on Respeak's own server, not a third party. The server enhances one recording at a time; if it's busy, try again in a minute or two.

Common questions

Will the voice sound fake or muffled afterwards?

Respeak's Enhance voice turns the noise down and leaves the voice's level and tone about the same. Noise goes down by at most 30 dB, so a trace of the room stays and the voice doesn't sound cut out. Listen once it's done; if you don't like it, Undo brings back the original.

Can I use it on a recording with background music?

Better not. Enhance voice treats everything that isn't voice as noise, so the music goes too. Clean up the voice without music first and add the music last in your editing app.

Is Enhance voice free?

Yes; you need an account. Each account can enhance up to 120 minutes of recordings a day. On the free trial a recording can be up to 10 minutes long, and up to 30 minutes after buying any credit pack.