SOLIPSIUMAlpha

SOLIPSIUM Super-resolution audio engine

Improve audio quality

How to improve the audio quality of a recording.

Start with the file you have: drop it here, and Solipsium names what is wrong before anything changes.

Drop a recording to check

Solipsium checks it in your browser for clipping, hum and noise, without uploading it. It can then repair 20 seconds for you to hear, with no account.

WAV, MP3, M4A, MP4 and more, up to five minutes for the check.

Choose a recording

Step 1

Find out what is wrong.

Solipsium repairs noisy or damaged recordings. Its check, in the box above, runs in your browser and names each problem with its time.

Background noise sits under the voice.

A fan or tape hiss leaves a steady floor. Solipsium lowers it with Full-band speech cleanup.

Mains hum is a low buzz.

Mains wiring or a ground loop can add it at 50 or 60 Hz. Solipsium notches it out, with its harmonics.

Clipping flattens the loudest moments.

They reached full scale while recording. Solipsium partly raises the flattened peaks back from the samples around them.

A dropout is a hole of silence.

A lost call packet can leave one. Solipsium fills holes of digital silence up to 100 ms from the sound on each side, as an estimate.

Muffled or phone audio has lost its treble.

Solipsium rebuilds it only for a phone line or a file saved at 16 kHz, and labels what it adds as inferred.

A very quiet recording is low in level.

That alone needs no repair. Make audio louder raises it in your browser.

Step 2

Fix the cause on the next take.

A repair works with what the microphone caught. If you can record again, start here.

Get the microphone close.

Every step back lets in more of the room. A phone a hand's width from the mouth hears more voice than one across the table.

Choose a soft room.

Curtains, a rug or a full wardrobe soak up echo, and bare walls ring after every word.

Turn off what hums and whirs.

An air conditioner or a fridge leaves a steady floor under the voice.

Set the level on the loudest moment.

A recording that reaches full scale clips, and clipped peaks can only be partly raised back.

Keep the recorder's own file.

A copy sent through a messaging app can be shrunk. Save the original, as a WAV where you can.

Step 3

Repair what is already recorded.

Solipsium repairs 20 seconds with no account, and the whole file in the editor with a free account.

The try repairs 20 seconds.

Ask for the try once the check is done. Solipsium's server runs Suggested repair and lists a reason for each step, such as “Mains hum was found, so it is notched out before any cleanup.”

Compare before you keep it.

Switch between Original and Repaired as they play, on one clock, and listen to the same words in each.

The editor repairs the whole file.

With a free account, it takes up to 30 minutes and 1 GB at a time, lists every change with its time and keeps your original.

Questions

What a repair cannot do.

Can a repair bring back what the microphone missed?

No. Cleanup lowers what surrounds a voice, but a voice the microphone hardly picked up stays hard to follow, and a word drowned by noise is not in the file. Recording again, closer, gives the repair more to work with.

Does it work on music?

Solipsium's free try is built for speech. Where it hears music and no loud noise under the voice, it leaves out speech cleanup and echo reduction, which would remove the music. If it still hears music with the hum notched out, it leaves out the hum notches too, since they would cut into the notes.

How loud should the finished file be?

That depends on where it goes. The loudness checker measures a file in your browser against ACX, Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and normalize audio sets one loudness for the whole file.

Is my recording uploaded?

Not for the check, which runs in your browser. Pressing Repair the first 20 seconds sends those 20 seconds. If your browser could not open the file, or it runs over five minutes, the whole file goes to Solipsium's server instead, so the try is offered for such a file only up to 25 MB. Solipsium keeps only those 20 seconds and deletes them within an hour. If you are signed in, a file you drop or choose is uploaded to your account and opens in the editor instead. The privacy notice has the rest.

Free audio tools

Related free tools.

These help with the repair and with the next take.

Want Solipsium to do the whole recording the same way?

The editor runs the same Suggested repair on the whole file, up to 30 minutes at a time.

Repair the whole recording

Free for a limited time, whole recordings included. No card.