Remove silence from audio
Automatically detects and removes the pauses in meeting and lecture recordings. An hour-long recording often shrinks to 40 minutes, saving time when listening back or transcribing. Feed the shortened file to Transcriber (in-browser transcription) and the transcription is faster too.
Settings
How to use
- 1
Add audio
Drop the recording you want to tighten up. Ideal for meetings, lectures and podcasts.
- 2
Set threshold and minimum length
Any stretch quieter than the threshold (dB) that lasts at least the minimum length counts as silence. Start with the defaults; lower the threshold if speech gets cut.
- 3
Run and check
After processing you see how many seconds were removed and the lengths before and after. Set the kept silence to 0 to close gaps completely.
How it works and how to tune it
The audio is measured in 20-millisecond windows (RMS level). Any stretch below the threshold that lasts at least the minimum silence length is treated as silence and removed. A margin equal to "Silence to keep" is left on either side so the start of words is not clipped.
The default −40 dB suits recordings made in a quiet room. With air conditioning or street noise in the background, silence may not be detected; raise the threshold to −35 to −30 dB. If speech gets cut, lower it to −45 to −50 dB.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do if speech is cut mid-sentence?
Lower the threshold (e.g. −45 dB) or increase the minimum silence length (e.g. 1 s). Short pauses between words are then left alone and only long silences are removed.
Why is no silence detected at all?
Background noise can keep "silent" parts above the threshold. Try raising the threshold to around −30 dB.
How much shorter will it get?
It depends on the material: meeting recordings often shrink 20–40%, lectures 10–30%. The number of seconds removed is shown after processing.
Can I remove silence from a video?
This tool outputs audio only. Dropping a video produces an audio file with the silence removed; tightening the video itself is not supported.
Help us improve the service
If a conversion fails, sending us the circumstances helps us track down the cause. Knowing which devices and formats fail most often, and how long processing takes, lets us revise the supported formats and fix the bugs behind them. If you don't mind, leaving this on is a real help.
What is sent
- The tool you used and the settings you chose (output format, quality, etc.)
- Your device specs (GPU, memory, core count)
- The input format with a rough size
- How many files succeeded or failed and how long it took
- The error type and details when something fails
What is never sent
- The files themselves and file names
- Text, subtitles or prompts you add to a video
- The text to be read aloud, voice descriptions, the pronunciation dictionary and saved voices
- The text in PDFs, the text you rewrote or redacted, passwords, font names and the page ranges you enter
- IP addresses
The data goes only to this site's own server, never to a third-party service.
Details sent by specific tools (counts, times, kinds and yes/no only)
In addition to “What is sent”, text to speech and the PDF tools send the following details.
- Text to speech
- The approximate number of characters and sentences, how many parts the text was generated in, and how long the AI model took to load.
- PDF tools (all)
- The page count range, whether editing is restricted, whether a permissions password was entered, and whether the PDF is signed or encrypted.
- PDF text editing and redaction
- The numbers of rewrites, deletions, white-outs and redactions, the number of rewritten characters by source (original font or fallback font, the latter as a range) and the fallback typeface, the kinds of reasons why lines cannot be edited, and the number of pages turned into images by redaction and the reasons.
- PDF page operations and conversion between images and PDF
- The numbers of inputs and outputs, of pages rotated, deleted, duplicated or moved, of images inserted as they are, converted, in HEIC format or with corrected orientation, and of pages rendered at a lower resolution (all as ranges), whether the original was updated in place or a new document was created, and whether the original protection was reapplied, form fields were written into the page and bookmarks were added back.
- PDF compression
- The numbers of inputs and outputs, of images downsized, not downsized and black-and-white, of downsized images whose transparency was also downsized, that stayed lossless or that were converted from CMYK to RGB, and how many times the file was compressed (all as ranges), the kinds of reasons images were not downsized, whether the target size was met and the kind of reason it was not met, the range of how much smaller the file got, whether the original protection was reapplied, and whether the original PDF was returned unchanged.
- PDF cropping and page numbers
- The numbers of inputs and outputs and of pages cropped, numbered or with their margins reduced (all as ranges), how the margins were set, how the pages to crop or number were chosen, the number format and position, the range of the starting number, that the original was updated in place, and whether the original protection was reapplied.