Almost everyone has encountered unpleasant background noises in their audio. Whether it’s highway sounds in your music, excited fans on a podcast, or a loud air conditioner in your voice recording—cleaning up noisy tracks can be both tedious and time-consuming.
Fortunately, a vast collection of high-tech noise reduction plugins are readily available on the market. Not only do they restore and repair your audio in just a few clicks, but they also retain the quality of the recording! Most are user-friendly, cost-effective, and highly tweakable, too.
If you’re interested in getting to know the best noise reduction plugins out there, this guide is for you! Keep on reading to discover several top-performing audio enhancement plugins and suites, and their impressive features.
At an incredibly affordable price, Waves Clarity VX will take care of unwanted background noises and other sound issues, leaving you with clean and clear voice recordings. This AI-driven noise removal plugin works incredibly fast and provides high-quality and artifact-free results.
Clarity VX uses Waves Neural Networks technology to instantly recognize vocals and take away the noise. This advanced engine has processed millions of hours of audio and can separate vocal and non-vocal sounds easily. It doesn’t need to “learn” your audio beforehand.
This tool is great for a variety of media—whether it’s music recording, voiceovers, podcasts, or professional films. Plus, it has little to no learning curve, so both beginners and pros can use it! Clarity VX works on both stereo and mono tracks as a real-time channel insert or can be rendered to save CPU.
What’s more, Clarity VX is non-destructive and doesn’t require any rendering or consolidation time. Its real-time workflow and automation function allows you to save several hours of work in each session! All you have to do is choose a specific vocal/noise balance with a knob.
Here are some more of Clarity VX’s cutting-edge features:
Related Article: My Top 5 Best Waves Plugins | I Use These In Every Mix
If you haven’t heard about Brusfri yet, it’s a straightforward and seamless solution for noisy audio recordings in need of a good clean up! Compared to other noise reduction software, Brusfri is incredibly simple to learn and use. It retains your audio’s sound quality, too.
What’s unique about this tool is that it utilizes several fine-tuned gates to effectively get rid of unwanted noise. Unlike other noise reducers that use audio phasing, Brusfri has multiple frequency-trimmed expanders. They act as intelligent suppressors that prevent squishy artifacts.
Brusfri is suitable for most types of unnecessary noise. Do you hear a hiss, static, or buzz on your audio recordings? Don’t worry—this tool has got you covered. Brusfri runs on macOS 10.10 or later and Windows 7 or later. It’s available in AAX, VST, and AU formats.
All you need is one glance to understand and appreciate Brusfri’s sleek interface. This tool comprises three sections, the first one being the Attack, Release, and Threshold functions. The attack function controls how fast the gate opens, while release determines how quickly it closes.
The second section contains the essential Learn button. This feature allows Brusfri to analyze the noise and work to eliminate it. Push and hold this button to feed your audio data into the software and create a unique noise profile.
In most cases, Brusfri flawlessly develops a noise profile that gets the job done. However, there are times when you’ll need the third section to make tonality adjustments on recordings with heavy noise. There are five dials in this section: Smooth, SC HPF, Treble, Gain, and Mix.
Related Article: Top 5 Noise Gate Plugins
Whether you’re dealing with damaged recordings, unusable audio, or imperfect vocals, SoundSoap can help you achieve clean and enhanced tracks in no time. All you have to do is click a button! This high-tech software comes from Antares Tech, the developer of Auto-Tune.
SoundSoap repairs, restores, and reanimates dead recordings, bringing them back to life. Its vast array of features polishes the tone, timbre, and overall aural profile of any project. Add an easy-to-use UI and instant detection of abnormalities, and you’re all set!
This must-have tool is the right match for audio engineers and sound editors who want crystal-clear sound minus pesky background noise. You won’t need special training to use this simple and functional software. Any clipping, hum, clicks, and sibilance will be gone in a flash!
SoundSoap’s light and dark modes allow you to work in your preferred setting. It gets the job done efficiently with a one-click application and track-wide enhancements for making large-scale changes. You can swap between the Waveform and Spectrogram View in the Wash Window.
In the same window, you’ll find the Broadband Noise Reduction Controls. Use the Noise Reduction knob to control the amount of reduction applied to your source audio. A handy Noise Tuner knob is also available to differentiate undesirable noise from your audio signal.
Here are some other exciting features brought to you by SoundSoap:
With Acon Digital’s Restoration Suite 2, you’ll be getting not one, but four revolutionary plugins for noise reduction and audio restoration! All plugins produce professional and high-quality results with a well-designed and upgraded interface. This jam-packed suite is affordable, too!
The DeNoise plugin effectively reduces unwanted sounds, like camera noise, buzzing, wind, and hiss. You can cut down the noise after measuring its characteristics in the noise profile mode. A quicker way would be to use the adaptive mode for automatic noise reduction.
On the other hand, DeHum focuses on the humming and buzzing that you’ll often hear from poorly grounded electrical equipment and tonal noise sources. Compared to the previous version, Restoration Suite 2’s detection algorithm has improved with a new fine-tune button.
Restoration Suite 2 also features Mid/Side processing. Additionally, the DeClip 2 plugin repairs distorted audio recordings affected by analog or digital clipping. As for the DeClick plugin, it specializes in eliminating impulsive noises, including thumps, crackles, and clicks.
Note that Restoration Suite 2 is available as AAX, VST3, and VST for Mac and Windows. You can also utilize the suite as an AU plugin if you’re using Mac. Both 32 and 64-bit versions are available for Windows, and there’s a 64-bit version for Mac.
Other unique features worth considering are as follows:
Another well-known brand in the audio enhancement industry is iZotope. In addition to noise reduction software, this company offers a set of tools for audio recording, mixing, mastering, and sound design. The RX 10 Advanced is one of iZotope’s award-winning creations.
Speedy, intelligent, and intuitive are some of the ways to describe the RX 10 Advanced. It’s the ultimate audio repair suite that has everything you need to clean, restore, and enhance recordings. This versatile suite can handle music, content creation, and post-production needs.
With surgical noise removal, you’ll gain access to countless selection tools for removing or replacing unnecessary sounds. A new Repair Assistant is also ready to help you out by recognizing audio issues and providing repair suggestions that are tweakable via dials.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of the RX 10 Advanced’s amazing features! Did you know that this suite enables text navigation and multiple speaker detection too? These tools instantly analyze dialogue, display corresponding text, and distinguish between voices for separate edits!
A Dynamic Adaptive Mode helps you save time when removing unwanted hum. For recordings that lack highs and lows, the RX 10 Advanced boasts Upgraded Spectral Recovery for improving re-synthesized upper frequencies and recreating missing lower frequencies.
Here are other special features for you to enjoy:
Noise reduction plugins are essential to maintaining the cleanliness and clarity of your recordings. Whether you’re a seasoned editor or a budding music producer, you’ll definitely appreciate having one of these cutting-edge programs in your audio toolkit.
Note that the abovementioned plugins greatly vary in terms of pricing, the technology used, and the number of features. That said, it’s important to thoroughly assess your audio processing needs first before committing to an individual software or an entire suite.
Hopefully, these highly rated plugins will help you get one step closer to solving your background noise issues, leveling up your recordings, and allowing your special sound to shine through!
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