How to improve bad audio with Descript

Very little impresses me anymore when it comes to business tools, but when Descript literally saved several days worth of poorly recorded audio I did for a summit, I legit broke down in tears. I’m not just impressed with the ease at which it salvaged my work… but also with its surprisingly reasonable price point.

Bad audio quality happens to the best of us

I recorded several screenshares using Loom over the course of a week. Loom is nothing new to me – I’ve used it for years without problem. So I didn’t think to check audio quality in between… why would I? So imagine my surprise when I moved on to the stage of piecing it all together, only to discover that the intro I recorded in Audacity was far superior in quality compared to the recordings done in Loom… using the same Blue Yet mic in the same office space.

WTF doesn’t begin to cover my feelings.

I’ll never really know what the heck happened. I’m gonna chalk it up to a case of “new computer, new problems”, but Loom seems to think I have 3 versions of the same mic, and depending on which I choose, I get a totally different result. Whatever the reason, I had zero time and energy available for recording this all again. I was recording this to give away for free in a summit, and I had a lot of other work that needed to be done.

After trying to fix the audio myself in Adobe Premiere, and then going the extra mile to extract the audio to try to fix it in Adobe Audition (which is what I usually record and edit most of my bigger, important audio in), I ended up with better results than what I started with… but it still sounded terrible enough for me to resort to hiring a professional. I figured… better I spent $40-50 having someone fix 35 minutes of audio than to have to spend countless hours setting up each screen again and recording it.

A professional told me my audio couldn’t be fixed

I reached out to a few different podcast editors who all told me the same thing: They couldn’t fix the grainy, distant, echoed audio I’d brought to them without making me sound like a robot. Thanks “Dave”… I could have managed that much myself. 🙄

I had resolved to fixing the audio as best I could. It would mean that the properly recorded intro would sound great, but the actual presentation wouldn’t match. “Oh well… it’s free. They get what they get, and they don’t get upset” I tried to tell myself. And I wouldn’t have been wrong for that I guess… I mean they could understand what I was saying, it wasn’t painful to the ears, and it got the point across. It just wasn’t the audio quality I hoped for or would normally produce.

And then someone mentioned Descript.

A friend of mine also had some poor quality audio she wished to not record again if she could help it – just old audio from before she had invested in a better mic. Descript was suggested to her, and so I figured I’d give it a shot. They have a free trial, so I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain at that point.

Descript was surprisingly easy

I’m far from being any sort of expert when it comes to audio, but I know my way around Audacity and even Adobe Premiere when it comes to ridding audio of unnecessary background noise (seriously… I swear my neighbor mows his lawn like 4 times a week). I can hold my own there… and I get compliments on my audio regularly. I’m proud of what I normally produce considering I really only know a little about these tools.

But Descript was soooo much easier, and the results it produced were so beyond the improvements I know how to make myself… and it took a fraction of the time.

Before I show you how to use it, I’m gonna let Descript speak for itself so you can hear the difference in quality. Both of these audio clips were recorded by me using the same mic, in the same office space… back to back.

Version 1 (Pre-Edited)

Version 2 (Edited with Descript)

Transcription:
Hi, I’m Kimi Kinsey and you are listening to audio I recorded in my office on a Blue Yeti Mic. If you are listening to Version 1, you are hearing poorly recorded audio that doesn’t represent the typical quality I get from my mic. It sounds grainy, distant, and sort of echo-y… as if I’m in a room much larger than I actually am.

If you are listening to Version 2, you are listening to a repaired version of the same audio thanks to Descript’s Studio Sound setting, which uses all the professional tricks to improve sound quality overall in literally a click.

How to improve audio quality with Descript’s Studio Sound Setting

Wait until you see how surprisingly simple this really is! In the (incredibly meta) video below, I’m using Descript’s Studio Sound setting to improve the quality of the Version 1 audio you listened to above. It’s literally a couple of clicks!

I love that it offers a transcript, and you can upload just audio, or even a whole video, like I did for the summit presentation that needed saving!

Guess what? It’s FREE

Of course there are different tiers you might consider, but you can try Descript right now for free and even make use of the Studio Sound feature. Here’s everything you’ll get for free:

• 3hrs of transcription
• Full audio & video editing
• Unlimited screen recordings
• Overdub trial
• Studio Sound effect 🎉

I personally upgraded to the $15/mo “Creator” tier because the free version leaves a watermark on exported video. It was well worth the $15 considering a professional was going to easily cost me $50 and not be able to produce these results.