ZEEP

Clean up a voice recording

This guide takes a voice recording with background noise and long pauses and turns it into a clean, even file. It uses five tools in this order: Denoise, Strip Silence, Equalizer, Compress and Volume. It takes a few minutes, everything happens on your phone, and every step can be undone.

You need: ZEEP on an Android phone and a voice recording (or record one in the app).

1Add your recording

  1. Open ZEEP. You start on the Editor tab.
  2. Tap the + button at the bottom right.
  3. Tap Record to record now, or Audio File to pick a recording from your phone.
  4. You should see your recording as a clip on the timeline.

2Remove the background noise

  1. Tap the clip on the timeline to select it.
  2. Tap Denoise.
  3. Tap play. Drag Strength to the right until the noise drops away.
  4. You should hear the voice stay while the fan, traffic or hiss behind it gets quieter.
  5. If the voice starts to sound watery or robotic, drag Strength back a little.
  6. Leave Clean gaps on. If words start to sound cut off, turn it off.
  7. Tap Apply.
Denoise in ZEEP with the Strength slider and Clean gaps switch

3Cut the long pauses

  1. With the clip still selected, tap Strip Silence.
  2. Look at the waveform. The shaded areas are the pauses that will be removed.
  3. Too much shaded? Drag Min duration to the right so only longer pauses count.
  4. Words starting too abruptly? Drag Edge padding to the right.
  5. Tap play to check, then tap Apply.
Strip Silence in ZEEP with the pauses shaded on the waveform

4Clear up the tone and remove hum

  1. Tap Equalizer.
  2. Tap Voice at the top. This removes the rumble below the voice.
  3. Tap play. Hear a steady low buzz? Tap a bell band that is still on the middle line.
  4. Roll its wheel to Hum (EU) in Europe and most of the world (50 Hz power), or Hum (US) in North America (60 Hz power).
  5. Tap the bypass icon on the graph to compare. You should hear the buzz gone and the voice unchanged. If you can't hear a difference, undo the band.
  6. Tap Apply.
ZEEP Equalizer with the Voice preset selected

5Even out loud and quiet words

  1. Tap Compress. It opens on Even out voice, the right preset for talking.
  2. Tap play and watch the bar with the green zone at the right edge of the waveform. That is the gain reduction meter.
  3. Drag Threshold until the meter stays in the green on the loud words.
  4. You should hear quiet words move closer to loud ones. The whole clip also gets quieter. That's normal; the next step fixes it.
  5. Tap Apply.
ZEEP Compress on Even out voice with the gain reduction meter in its green zone

6Set the loudness

  1. Tap Volume.
  2. Tap the green Match button under the waveform. It shows your clip's loudness and the target, -16 LUFS unless you changed it.
  3. You should see the Volume slider move and the readout land on the target.
  4. Tap Apply.
The Match button in the ZEEP Volume tool

7Export

  1. Tap Export at the top right.
  2. Type a name and tap Export. The file goes into your Library as FLAC.
  3. Open the Library tab and tap your file.
  4. Tap Share to send it to an app, or Save to device to put it in a folder. Pick MP3 if you need a small file, WAV or FLAC if you want full quality.

What this does not do

  • Denoise is for voice. On music or sound effects it damages the sound; use the Equalizer's Hiss, Hum or Rumble picks instead.
  • Echo and room reverb stay. Denoise treats them as part of the voice.
  • Clicks and pops are too short for Denoise. Cut them out with Trim & Cut.
  • Audio that clipped while it was recorded stays clipped. ZEEP marks it on the waveform, but it can't rebuild the flattened peaks.