What is Enhance Speech?

Turn any recording into studio-quality audio with Enhance Speech.

Starting a podcast is all fun and games until you have to actually edit an episode. Although audio quality is by far the most important part of a good podcast, editing the audio itself is tedious and time-consuming, often taking longer than all other parts of the process combined.

Luckily, AI-driven tools—and AI audio enhancers, in particular—have effectively democratized podcast audio editing.

AI tools can help new and aspiring podcasters dramatically improve the clarity and quality of their audio recordings. With the right software, you can have a less-than-ideal recording setup and still achieve professional-quality sound.

What are AI audio enhancers?

AI sound enhancers go by many names: audio enhancers, speech enhancer, voice enhancer, godsend wizard. But no matter what you call them, they are tools that automatically improve the clarity, quality, and intelligibility of recorded audio (including audio in videos). They help remove unwanted sounds within recorded audio, allowing you to publish significantly more polished podcast episodes.

AI audio enhancers use algorithms that can do all of the following:

• Reduce background noise
• Remove distortions like pops, clicks, or dropouts
• Enhance speech clarity

Why AI audio enhancers matter

You can get a cleaner recording if you purchase higher-quality recording equipment and improve the soundproofing in your home studio. However, this won’t solve every problem, and it’s not feasible for many new podcasters. But no setup can completely remove unwanted artifacts or noises from your recordings.

As easy as it would be to throw in the towel and just accept loud background noises, Dallas Taylor, the host and creator of Twenty Thousand Hertz shared with us his thoughts on what makes good audio so important: “ I believe that [audio] quality is a respect to the audience... editing is the ultimate in respect for the audience and respect for their time.”

If someone is listening to your podcast, it’s important to put in enough work that it’s worth their time. The good news? AI audio enhancers can easily rescue you from hours of post-production editing.

There are four key benefits that everyone can enjoy with AI audio enhancers:

• Time-saving: Editing in post-production commonly takes around three to five minutes per minute of recorded audio. For a 30-minute podcast, that means you can expect to spend 1.5 to 2.5 hours to edit. AI video editing software can reduce that time, by a lot. You can skip the trial and error phase of cleaning up your audio and avoid unnecessary rerecording.
• Improved audio quality: AI podcast editing software helps podcasters of all skill levels achieve professional-quality sound by removing background noise, distortions, and unclear audio.

• Accessibility: Audio editing tools like Adobe Podcast’s Enhance Speech are incredibly easy to use. A simple web interface allows you to upload video and audio files and download the enhanced file within minutes.
• Cost-effective: Adobe’s Enhance Speech is completely free for everyone to try and use on a daily basis, with a low-cost premium option for even more features.

How to use Adobe’s Enhance Speech

Adobe’s Enhance Speech tool is a simple web-based tool that takes just minutes to clean up audio files.

You try Enhance Speech for free right now. Here’s how:

• Go to the Adobe Podcast Enhance Speech page on desktop or mobile.
• Click on “Choose files”.
• Select the file you want to enhance.
• Dial in the amount of enhancement you want (Premium).

And you’re done. Depending on your file size, Enhance Speech may take several minutes to finish cleaning up your audio. Once it’s complete, you can explore other ways to edit your recording, like downloading a transcript and adding into, outro, or background music.

Enhance Speech is a free way to quickly clean audio during post-production. You can enhance larger audio and video files with Adobe Podcast Premium, as well as add additional edits to your audio right from your browser.

Hot tip: Before you record your audio, use Adobe’s free Mic Check tool. Mic Check is a secure tool that will give you recommendations on how to improve the quality of your mic setup to give you better audio quality after you hit record.

When should you use AI audio enhancement?

Enhance Speech is an incredibly versatile tool, even without a premium subscription to Adobe Podcast. It’s incredibly useful for new and upcoming podcasters who are still learning how to navigate the recording and post-production process. However, it’s a useful tool for anyone, from beginners to pros.

Enhance Speech is particularly useful for podcasters of every level. You’ll find it useful for:

• Improving audio from mobile devices.
• Cleaning audio from lower-quality mic and studio setups.
• Enhancing audio from remote interviews.
• Giving new life to old audio files.
• Fixing unbalanced audio volumes.

And, you can edit audio files on-the-go using your mobile device. This comes in handy in situations when you need to rely on a mobile device for audio recording.

Best practices for Enhance Speech v1 and v2

Enhance Speech currently has two versions available. While Enhance Speech v2 is the new and improved model, there may be certain use cases where v1 is better suited for your needs.

If you’re unsure which version to use, run a short clip (30 seconds or less) through v1 and v2 and see (or hear) which version you like more.

General best practices and tips:

• Record in as quiet a setting as possible to avoid background noise.
• Use your best mic (or upgrade to a better-quality mic if you have the budget for it).
• Use Adobe’s Mic Check to get recommendations on your mic setup.
• Test and adjust your mic and sound equipment settings multiple times before you start recording.
• Consider adding additional post-production editing or enhancements to fine-tune the results.

Even without the ability to adjust the enhancement level, Enhance Speech provides high-quality results in most cases without much or any additional editing needed to fix unwanted artifacts.

Conclusion

Unwanted noises and mistakes happen to every podcaster. Because redoing a recording is often difficult or impossible (especially if you have guest interviews), most podcasters rely on post-production editing to clean up audio. This tedious task can take hours, or it can take minutes if you use AI audience enhancement.

The more time you save on post-production clean-up, the more time you have for the fun stuff: adding music, marketing your podcast, and engaging with your listeners.